https://www.justice.gov/file/1071991/downloadI haven't had much time to read any of it, but just now I got a few minutes to read through pages 329+ where it describes the genesis of the Weiner laptop evidence and Comey's decision making in going public
Essentially TLDR: The OIG found no credible explanation for why the laptop was suppressed and rejected every excuse given to him by the FBI agents and said they were all bullshit. But he also found no proof of it being suppressed intentionally. So rather than give some authoritative conclusion to the question of how the laptop managed to stay invisible for a month, it just says that McCabe/Strzok had it and failed to follow up on it even though they had every logical reason and natural step to do so, and their excuses about jurisdiction / low interest were bogus. But again, no actual proof of wrongdoing. So the OIG leaves that one up in the air, proof that they didn't act responsibily, not proof they acted maliciously.
Comey's decision to go public lays out his explanation for his reasoning very much consistent with what we talked about above;
Quote
I couldn’t see a door—I said to the people inside the organization—I
can’t see a door labeled, no action here. I can only see two doors and
both were actions. One is speak, the other is conceal. Because having
testified about this multiple, multiple times, like working backwards in
September, July and having spoken about it on July 5th, and told
Congress, the American people, a material fact which is, this is done
and there is no there there. To now restart and not just in a marginal
way, in a way where we may have found the missing emails, that to
not speak about that would be, in my view, an affirmative act of
concealment. And so I said okay, those are the doors. One says
speak, the other says conceal. Let’s see what’s behind the speak door.
It’s really bad. We’re 11 days from a presidential election. Given the
norm I’ve long operated under, that’s really bad. That will bring such
a storm. Okay, close that one, really bad. Open the second one.
Catastrophic. And again this is something reasonable people can
disagree about, but my view was to conceal at that point given all I
had said would be catastrophic. Not just to the Bureau, but beyond
the Bureau and that as between catastrophic and really bad, that’s
actually not that hard a choice. I’ll take really bad over catastrophic
any day. And so I said to the team, welcome to the world of really
bad.
...
Yeah, so I’m sitting there. It’s October 27th and there’s a reasonable
likelihood that we are going to find material—one possibility—that will
change our view of the Hillary Clinton case. Two, even if it doesn’t,
that we know something that is materially different than what the rest
of the world knows and has relied upon since I spoke about this....
The FBI is done. There is no there there and that to conceal that, in
my view, would be—subject the FBI and the Justice Department,
frankly more broadly...to a corrosive doubt that you had engineered a
cover up to protect a particular political candidate. And that especially
given your pledges of transparency, not—I don’t actually put much
stock in the notion that I promised to get back to Congress, but that I
had said to everybody, the credibility of the Justice enterprise is
enhanced by maximal credibility, maximal transparency. I offer that
transparency, and then I know something that materially changes that
picture and I hide it, I think the results would be generations-long
damage to the credibility of the FBI and the Justice Department.
That’s what I think about it.
Quote
[T]he overriding question was say nothing and get accused, worst case
scenario, of covering up. Or be transparent and say we have
something, we just don’t know what it is, and let that course play out.
And I, you know, again, I, I describe the Director as a very
transparent, communicative...person. And I want to say that that
transparent piece probably weighed on him more than the not saying
anything piece. And also I think his, his belief that he had somehow
made that pledge to Congress.
and finally:
Quote
[N]ot to notify Congress is...an action because it also potentially could
have an impact on the election...so for example, [imagine] we don’t
say anything. We push past the election, and then we announce that,
well, by the way, we’ve authorized a search warrant, and we found all
these emails. Let’s imagine, right? Because we don’t know what the
facts are.
We find all these emails. You guys have probably heard this story, but
I’ll just say it again. And it turns out that, oh, my God, there were
more classified emails of a different type, or there’s clear evidence that
she knew what she was doing. It kind of pushes us from the probable
cause thing up to the beyond a reasonable doubt. And now we’re
going to change our view about charging her.... If she’s been elected
president of the United States, then Donald Trump would say, oh my
God, these people knew this beforehand and didn’t say anything. This
is a rigged system. This is, this, these people intentionally hid that
until after the election so that they could get her elected and, and
thwart me.
Steinbach also stated a similar concern. He stated:
I think weighing on everyone’s mind is if, if we get through this and a
week after the general election we find relevant material, the Congress
and the American public will never allow the FBI to live that down.
You clearly hid this from the American public. And you knew you had
something, yet you waited until after, until after she became president
before you disclosed that you found something relevant. That was one
course of action. The other course of action is we, we state it and get
accused of influencing the election beforehand.
We felt that, again, the, the Congress, the American people, would
never be able to say FBI, you withheld this. The last thing we wanted
to have happen was, hey, I wouldn’t have voted for her if I had known
this. And so that was weighing on our minds. We wanted there to be
transparency, both in November as well as in, in July. Hey, here is the
set of facts. Here is the good and the bad. You, and again, I think
that’s, there’s somebody, many feel that’s not your job, but I think the
discussion items were, lay out the facts and let people decide for
themselves. And that, and maybe not in those exact words, that was
a theme through the course of this.