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The Inspector General’s office interviewed Giuliani, as well as four FBI employees identified by the FBI as having potentially been in contact with Donald Trump’s ally. Giuliani, in public comments in October, appeared to preview the decision of then-FBI Director James Comey to reopen the investigation ahead of the election. Giuliani said at the time that he heard “rumors” from “former agents, and even a few active agents”.
According to the new report, Giuliani, in his interview with the Inspector General, denied having received any information about the Clinton investigation directly or indirectly. He told the Inspector General that he had not been in contact with any active FBI agent this month, saying his use of “assets” in those 2016 public comments referred to agents at the retreat always making security.
The four FBI employees also denied having had any contact with Giuliani. When the Inspector General further examined the information on their FBI phones, the office found that these agents had been in contact with numbers that were not “specific to Giuliani.”
“As a result, the alleged investigative leads provided by the FBI based on alleged contacts of FBI employees with Giuliani were inaccurate,” the Inspector General’s report said.
The review of unauthorized media leaks during the 2016 campaign follows the 2018 Inspector General’s report on the Justice Department’s handling of Hillary Clinton and Trump-Russia investigations in 2016.
Thursday’s inspector general report said the office was unable to identify the “source (s) of the alleged unauthorized disclosures of non-public information described in the 2016 pre-election report.” The new report states that the “number of employees communicating with these reporters remains substantial, making it extremely difficult, absent an admission, to determine whether any of these FBI employees had in fact disclosed any information. non-public information “.
Still, the Inspector General recommends that six FBI agents face further scrutiny and, potentially, disciplinary action for their alleged media contacts in the run-up to the 2016 election.
The latest report states that the Inspector General’s office interviewed more than 50 current and former FBI employees who had been identified as having been in contact with reporters who wrote relevant media articles about politically sensitive FBI investigations, including his investigations into the Clinton mail server and the Clinton Foundation.
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