In Report Regarding FBI Sexual Misconduct Overseas, Why Are the Dates Omitted?

T here is something strange going on here.

On Tuesday, Justice Department inspector general Michael Horowitz publicly released an “investigative summary” (i.e., not the full internal report) that is called “Findings of Misconduct by then FBI Officials for Soliciting, Procuring, and Accepting Commercial Sex while On FBI Assignment Overseas, Lack of Candor to the OIG, and Related Misconduct.” Despite the laborious title, the summary is barely a page long. Weirdly, its description of the relevant offenses tells us nothing about when they occurred.

The summary centers on six FBI officials said to have violated the DOJ prohibition against soliciting prostitution, particularly in foreign countries (where the peril of blackmail is obvious). Evidently, four agents engaged in sexual activity with prostitutes, one solicited prostitution, and a sixth was derelict in reporting the misconduct.

Besides withholding information about when the violations occurred, the IG has also concealed where they happened. That could be understandable: Publicizing where this misconduct occurred could compromise cooperation by the governments in the country (or countries) involved with their U.S. counterparts.

But what possible rationale could there be for withholding when the misconduct happened?

My main curiosity about this has little to do with the lewd behavior outlined in the summary (presumably the full internal report has more detail). The summary indicates that several of the agents “lacked candor” when they were interviewed in the investigation, and it bluntly concludes that “one of those officials made false statements in an OIG compelled interview and compelled polygraph examination in violation of federal law.”

The question thus arises, and not for the first time: “Why is no one being prosecuted?”

The FBI and Justice Department prosecute many people for making false statements to investigators — as we’ve recently noted, for example, in connection with special counsel John Durham’s indictment of Democratic lawyer Michael Sussmann (focusing on the due-process complaints frequently made about such cases). Yet, government agents who mislead investigators frequently get a pass . . . as we observed in connection with the Justice Department’s decision not to prosecute the FBI’s former deputy director, Andrew McCabe, notwithstanding a scathing IG report describing multiple false statements (including under oath).

Is it possible that the agents who lied in this case are not being prosecuted because the bureau and Justice Department took so long to investigate that the five-year statute of limitations has lapsed? Can it be that the IG’s summary does not provide dates so as not to call attention to the embarrassingly long time it seems to have taken to complete this probe?

I thought this could be possible due to the New York Post’s coverage of the IG report, though I’m still skeptical. The Post article indicates that the FBI alerted the Justice Department to the misconduct sometime in 2018 and intriguingly concludes with this tidbit: “The bureau declined to say if the probe had been tied in any way to a similar scandal in 2012, six years before it called on the DOJ to launch its just-completed investigation.”

The reason I doubt that this conduct goes back to 2012 relates to the only time frame that is specified in the IG’s investigative summary: One FBI official is said to have committed misconduct by failing to report suspected violations of a 2015 attorney general memorandum (“Prohibition on the Solicitation of Prostitution”), which set the relevant DOJ and FBI policies. I must presume, then, that the violations this official failed to report occurred after the 2015 memo went into effect.

But why should we have to guess? And why should we similarly have to speculate about what sure sounds like a potential violation of the federal narcotics laws?

The investigative summary states: “It was also alleged that one of the FBI officials provided another of the officials a package containing approximately 100 white pills to deliver to a foreign law enforcement officer.” The summary elaborates:

The OIG investigation further found that one of those officials lacked candor in a compelled interview with the OIG when the official denied observing or placing pills in a package to be delivered to a foreign law enforcement officer and that another of the officials failed to report having been provided such a package.

Come again? What kind of “white pills” are we talking about here? Were these controlled substances? Was the package exported out of the United States? Was it distributed by someone not authorized to dispense the pills in question? (To be a felony exportation or distribution under federal law, no money need be exchanged.)

Just so we’re clear, I can think of a number of (mostly) innocent explanations along the lines of a U.S. agent doing a favor for a friendly foreign agent who was lawfully entitled to get some kind of medication but was having difficulty obtaining it in his or her country for some reason. If it were my call, and the rules got bent that way, I wouldn’t treat the U.S. agent as if he were Nicky Barnes, either. But, again, why should we be left to wonder what happened here?

Sadly, the last several years have convinced the public that all is not well at the FBI and that we have a two-tiered justice system in which government insiders take care of their own while members of the public — particularly those who do not have government connections or are on the outs with the Powers That Be — get treated harshly for comparatively trifling offenses. The DOJ inspector general’s job is to provide transparency so that public suspicions about official misconduct are minimized.

Generally speaking, Michael Horowitz has an admirable record on that score. On this one, though, he owes us a better explanation of what happened.