his skin from the beginning. and it's -- you know, it was true when he was the fbi director in the administration and it has gotten worse since he yet stereo we haven't heard from him yet. when we do we will update the wall and put them up for you tomorrow. my thanks to the panel. that does it for this hour. i'm nicolle wallace. "mtp daily" starts right now. hi chuck. >> i think they would rather with you than back in their old government jobs. trust me. >> look at this wall. >> that's a great wall. >> do you want it. >> i think that should be the backdrop for the show the next couple of days. tell you this, you better make room. more is come? right? that was a point. >> yes, ma'am, i get it. >> have a good show. >> if it's thursday, the much anticipated ig report is out. but what's in it? well, that depends on who you ask.

evening i'm chuck todd here in washington. welcome to "mtp daily." we begin tonight with the breaking news this hour. folks, the reaction is coming fast and furious to this explosive report from the justice department's inspector general michael horowitz who this afternoon released this scathing 568-page report. by the way, we double sided when we printed it out here. this is the double sided version. it faults the fbi for its handling of the clinton e-mail investigation during the heat of the 2016 election. folks, this isn't just about the 2016 election. this report comes at a time when the president ratcheted up his criticisms and attacks on the fbi as he tries to undermine the russia investigation. he started tweeting about that again today. we are expecting, by the way, fbi director chris wray to hold a rare press conference in 30 minutes or so. don't go anywhere. he is going to be sponlding to the ig report, no doubt talking

about ways they may move forward. you will want to stick around for that. i will be curious to see how many questions he takes. this report ignited a firestorm here in washington. the president's allies they are saying it plofs that the fbi was byiansed against trump. democrats are saying it proves the opposite, that the fbi actually helped trump become president. what does the actual report prove? all right. strip out the partisan noise and you are left with the following portrait of an fbi that overstepped its bounds under extraordinary partisan political pressure. the ig says that james comey's decision to hold that infamous summer of 2016 press conference -- actually just sort of news event. he never took questions -- without telling justice department officials was quote extraordinary and insubordinate. the reports also say it was a serious error in judgment for comey to publicly reopen the clinton e-mail investigation just days before the election. and folks, the timing of that decision may have been impacted by the fbi assigning resources,

in some cases the same resources that were on the clinton probe to focus on the russia investigation, which was still a secret at that time. now, the white house today says the report confirms the president's suspicions about blil bias at the fbi. but actually, the report doesn't say that. in no uncertain terms it says the following, quote, we found no evidence that the conclusions by the department prosecutors were affected bye-bye yas or other improper considerations. rather, we determined that they were based on the prosecutor's assessment of the facts, the law, and past department practice. a lot of republicans aren't convinced. they are seizing on a newly revealed tex message quite a few of them. involving top fbi agent peter strok and his lover lisa page and will he look at it as something of a smoking fun. in a text message on august 8,

2016 page stated, trump's not ever going to become president right? right? and strok responded, no, no, he's not. wouldally stop it. according to the ig strok said he didn't actually take any steps to try to affect the election. but, both page and strok noted if they were being serious with those remarks they weren't have kept the russia investigation a secret, they would have leaked that out. still the ig slammed them for quote extremely poor judgment and a gross lack of professionalism. the political implications this report could be enormous. let's dive in. pete william joins us our justice department correspondent. and ben with it t identificatio.

-- how is this being received inside the justice deputy and inside the fbi. >> everybody sort of expected this. there have been leaks around. we have to remember the ig report was actually finished sometime ago and sent around in draft to the various people who are mentioned in it and thor various entities that are mentioned. so at the broad outlines we have known, that the ig would conclude there was no deep state conspiracy here to hurt either hillary clinton or donald trump. it does -- it's pretty hard on comey. comey himself has responded by saying i disagree with some of the findings but i find it reasonable. i think the most troubling part of this, both here at justice and across the street at the fbi is this new disclosure of the peter strok response. remember that the lisa page e-mail saying he's not going to get elected is he? actually came out earlier.

what is new today is the response from peter strok saying no, no we'll stop it. here's what's being said about that. number one, what the ig says here is that at the time this came out it was in august, remember a month later the anthony wiener e-mails were discovered, and more clinton e-mails were found on anthony wiener's laptop. >> right. >> so one of the questions of the report is why did it take the fbi a month to get off the dime and aggressively go after those e-mails, issue a subpoena and start getting into them? what the ig says is -- chuck i have to stop here. let me finish this one thought. the ig says several people were involved in that decision, strzok was one of them. they said we can't conclude he was free from bias. his lawyer says he was trying to decide who was more important, the russia meddling investigation or the clinton e-mail thing. that's why he did what he did.

one other point, we were interested to see whether this report would say anything about fbi agents leaking to rudy giuliani. it doesn't discuss that. it says the issue of leaks is under investigation. >> i noted that. that was a very interesting thing, as if it's now a separate investigation. i notice rudy giuliani told me he was interviewed by the ig but that interview was not noted in this report. and it made me assume oh, there may be a second report coming. is that what we assume, pete? >> well, i don't know if there is going to be a second ig report coming but the issue of leaks they say is under investigation. whether they will do a report or not, i don't know. >> pete williams at justice. i think we are going to see new that room. if christopher wray actually does take questions. thanks very much. let me bring in ben wittes and jennifer palmieri. jennifer, you first, to get your initial reaction. does this report confirm

suspicions? i assume there is a bunch of mixed emotions. have you had a chance to talk hillary clinton? >> i didn't talk to hillary but it confirmed what i believed about jim comey which was is that he wasn't rating out of a political bias but he had a dangerous corrupting belief that because he wasn't motivated bipartisanship that he could use his own judgment to decide what actions were right to take. and that led him to act well beyond his role as the fbi factor. and that he did so with devastating consequences. and there is a real hubris there to think just because you are not a political person that you can go above and beyond what your role is supposed to be. you know, i think his original sin was the press conference that he had, where he was hillary clinton's investigator and judge, jury, all at once. and you know, as he once famously said, it's right this in our name, investigations.

that's what we are supposed to do. and to act publicly as he did is not his role. i think we are living -- every day we live with the consequences. >> we are hearing from jims comey. ben, before i hear from you, let me note an excerpt from a op ed that popped in the "new york times" minutes after the ig report became public. james comey writes the following, the inspector general's team went through the fbi's work with a microscope and found no evidence that bias or improper motivation affected the investigation which i know was done competent-2ly and honestly and independently. the report also reports there was no prosecutable case against mrs. clinton as we had concluded. he is arguing that hey you can question my methods of how we produced or how we showcased our investigation, but the investigation itself was fair. what's your take? >> well, i certainly agree with that. you know, any time you take a

complicated investigation conducted over a long period of time under the most difficult of political circumstances and you write a 560-page report detailing every aspect of it, you are likely to find a bunch of things that weren't done in the best way possible or in some cases were not done well at all. and in some cases where you just disagree with the judgments that were made. so you see all of those in different aspects of this report. that said, at the end of the day, what the report does not show is that any steps should have been taken that prospect taken because of political bias or that any steps that were taken were inappropriate. it really doesn't show that the investigative conclusions were incorrect. >> jennifer palmieri, let me ask

you this, though, can you say you still have faith in the fbi -- do you believe the fbi miss -- do you believe that the fbi mishandled the clinton e-mail investigation or mishandled the closing of the e-mail investigation? and i think that's an important distincti distinction? >> it is. i aults always thought when the fbi was going through their investigation of her that it would end the way that it did. that it would conclude without them pursuing the case further and i thought that they would be fair in how they went about that important work. and that is what happened. but it does show to me that the -- you know, there is a -- there is a corrupting belief that because they are not partisan or political people like you know i was -- right? i was a political appointee. >> right. >> that they are somehow above -- not the law. but they are above reproach when it comes to taking actions that

they judge to be right even though they are not their role. what is really ironic is that the fbi was isolated, right, it was put into the department of justice, which is also somewhat isolated from the white house for the purpose of protecting it from political considerations. it was very much political considerations that led jim comey to write that letter. he wrote that letter because he thought hillary was going to win and he wants to make sure she wasn't considered -- i think he was concerned about protecting his reputation with congress. >> right. >> it proves -- in the end the report is important in that it shows you need to go back to a place where this is a institution that does not take into account political considerations. >> i am going to ask you both the same question. jennifer, why shouldn't then president trump have some suspicions about the fbi if they bungled the clinton e-mail case? >> because they did not reveal what would have been devastating news and i think would have ended his presidential campaign,

that his -- he himself -- his campaign was under investigation for cooperating with russia. i think that's all you need to -- that's all the evidence you need to point to. >> ben, why shouldn't some of trump's sporters look at this and say, they botched this. how can we trust them there? >> well, first all, they botched this to the extent that you think they botched this, the principal beneficiary of that was donald trump. and so you know, he is the big winner to the extent you object to the way they handled it. >> page and strzok did a horrible way of helping hillary clinton. if that was their intention. >> strzok and page, those teches are not appropriate. >> are they fireable offenses. i don't know the answer the that. my assumption is that -- it's not appropriate. and fbi personnel shouldn't be doing that. >> right. >> and i do think it is

perfectly reasonable for supporters of the president the hook at fbi agents who are exchanging hate texts about their guy and say i have a problem with that. and it makes me worried about the fairness of the investigation. that's why bob mueller removed peter strzok from the investigation. >> i'm curious, jennifer palmieri, this report says that james comey was insub ordinate. >> right. >> that's a word that would qualify as a fireable offense. in some ways does it justify president trump are's decision to fire comey? >> no, because we all know why the president fired jim comey. he you told us on this very network. he fired jim comey because he was being too aggressive on the russia investigation. but it is -- you know, why jim comey didn't think that lynch and yates could handle the fall ow from the -- >> right. >> from their investigation, i

think that's worthy of more consideration. >> this report, strip out the russia investigation, strip out president trump. let me go to bep on this. this report, would it lead to the firing of james comey if he were still there? >> look, i think that if a new president had come in and said, as the ig has said, that i don't like the way jim comey handled himself in this investigation and i'm going to remove him for it. >> right. >> and had done it actually for that reason in a reasonable period of time with explicit reference -- i would disagree with that judgment in a pretty profound way. but jim comey is accountable for the decisions that jim comey made. he's not pushing back against the idea. >> no, he is not. >> that he should be held accountable for it. if somebody prefoundly disagrees with those judgments that could be an outcome. that's not what happened here. >> very quickly, jennifer, are we going to hear from hillary clinton or not? >> i don't know. i can't -- i guess we will have to wait and see. >> all right.

we will all wait and see together. ben, jennifer, thank you. we are awaiting the news conference on the inspector general report from the director of the fbi. when that happens, we will bring it to you live. don't go in your opinion. plus how both sides are using the or the r report for their favor, the cherry picking and how that could do damage to the fbi and donl even though this report is trying to restore their credibility. we'll be right back. two inch b. for this new stepdad, it's promising to care for his daughter as if she's his own. every way we look out for those we love is an act of mutuality. we can help with the financial ones. learn more or find an advisor at massmutual.com we can help with the financial ones. until her laptop her sacrashed this morning.eks, having it problems? ask a business advisor how to get

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republicans are going as far as saying the findings undermine the mueller probe. i spoke with senator angus king. he threw some cold water on that idea. >> i don't think it affects the mueller probe one way or the other. the investigation was based upon a series of facts. the investigation is proceeding. there have been a number of indictments, a number of guilty pleas. it's lard for me to call something a witch-hunt that's actually having indictments and guilty pleas. it sounds to me like there is something there. >> joining me now, matt miller a former justice department spokes nanoand an msnbc contributor and tonight's panel. shane harris, daniela gibs la jay, and ramesh pannure. matt, you used to work at justice. i want to get your quick take here. there is a part of me that thinks while the inspector general report is thorough the

ability to cherry pick and actually make the bureau and justice look worse is where this is headed. what do you think? >> that's probably right. the look, the bureau and the justice department do look bad in this. i think you have to look at the inspector general report in two ways. one is about the underlying investigative and prosecutorial decision has the fbi and justice department made, and were they sound, made without bias and made with integrity. i think there is a resounding conclusion in the report that the answer to that is yes. the other thing you have to look at is the way they handled the announcement of those decisions, the way they handled communicating to congress, the way jim comey handled communicating to congress about the reopening of the investigation and was that sound. the conclusion in that regard is no. you have to take the two apart. what will happen, you will see people, especially the president try to conflate the two and argue that because the fbi made bad decisions how to talk about this case that means an entirely separate case, the investigation into him is somehow unsound.

the report doesn't back this up at all. >> i want to get into the issue of woos there political influence on james comey or not. comey himself has given two different explanations. the first one was during testimony on capitol hill. listen. >> one of my junior lawyers said, should you consider that what you are about to do may help elect donald trump president? and i said thank you for raising that. not for a moment. because down that path lies the death of the fbi as an independent institution in america. i can't consider for a second whose political fortuned will be affected in what way. we have to ask ourselves, what is the right thing to do. >> 11 months later, george stephanopoulos asks james comey a similar question. take a listen. >> at some level, wasn't the decision to reveal influenced by your assumption that hillary clinton was going to win and your concern that she wins, this comes out several weeks later, and then that's taken by her

opponents as a sign she is an illegitimate president? >> it must have been. i don't remember consciously thinking about that but it must have been because i was operating in a world where hillary clinton was going to beat donald trump. so i'm sure that it was a factor. >> i think this is the never-he ending cul-de-sac that we are in with james comey. danielle. >> yes, absolutely right. the person that looks the worst coming out of this is james comey. he is trying to have it both ways, trying to save his reputation. i think it is important and incumbent on people when they are talking about this to be clear about the facts. as matt said and others have said this has nothing to do with the special prosecutor, nothing to do with mueller. it has everything to do with how the fbi handled and how they talked about the investigations. >> i know it has nothing to do with mueller yet it has everything to do with mueller because how the public digests this, ramesh could be a clue how they accept or not accept

whatever findings mueller has. >> i think in crassly political terms this report ends up being helpful to president trump in his conflict with robert mueller. there are going to be arguments that are more in favor of the clinton side of thing that comey was unfair in criticizing her in july of 2016. that the letter to congress shouldn't have been released in october of 2016 and that hurt her. but those are just another institution making the arguments we are bakecally familiar with. the new information that jumps out here is the texts, where strzok is saying no, we are going to stop it. that's memorable, dramatic, and it is new, and it is vastly going to help this president. >> this is where the shiny metal object of our political culture now -- the way social media works, context gets lost. >> right. >> right. and those texts are going to end up in presidential tweets. i'm sort of surprised they haven't yet. >> i know, everybody -- >> everybody is waiting for the press conference with chris wray. but you are right, look, there

is plenty in this report that all sides are going to exaggerate. it is easy to pluck something out and devoid it of the conexthe. that said, the actions are really bad. egregious things, fbi agents investigating thing like possible collusion between the president and russia who by the way are the same agents also investigating on the clinton side should not be texts things like this to one another. the broader point that i think needs to come through is that the overall integrity of what the bureau was doing and the integrity of the regs and the ig finds was not influenced by bias. you have these bad actions going on in the system individually. but the system is resilient and the integrity still holds. >> matt miller, i have a question here -- i think the strzok and page texts look terrible. but what i'm trying to find out is how do you root out bias with an fbi agent? are they no longer allowed to vote. okay, take this to the logical

conclusion. how do we go back and see to everybody in the mueller investigation what makes somebody biased and what doesn't. had simply finding out who you voted for, who appointed you, does that make you biased. >> ultimately you have to look at the way they behave in their job of the it's not what they say privately. although what strzok said was appalling. fbi agents typically don't think highly of the people they are investigating even before they found something wrong. that's not much of a surprise here. they shouldn't have said it. ultimately it comes down to how they act, how they behave. that's going to be true about the end of the mueller investigation as well. the president is going to be able to tear down mueller's reputation with some percentage of the public. he has already been successful in doing that. just in these investigations ultimately it's going to be the facts that turn up. just as in the clinton investigation, it didn't that matter what the agents thought about it. it mattered only that they

followed a pair process. that's more important than who is can you going it. >> let me ask the table here. are there reforms that need to be done at judge or in the fbi or are we just in a highly polarized climate and we need to get out of that before we can decide whether we need to reform. ramesh. >> the ig report end with a series of recommendations that are strikingly small bore. let's familiarize everybody with the protocols we use to handle these situations. there i think comey does have a reasonable point of these situations? >> 500 year flood. in fairness to him, i agree. >> two parties put the fbi in a terrible position by nominating ethically compromised people with serious legal problems going forward. everyone acted badly. lynch with the tarmac meeting as did bill clinton. >> she in the interviewed a middle i let this thing go on too long. it looked bad.

>> i agree that comey seemed to give to himself the power to make she is important decisions but everybody behaved badly. >> i'm with you. is the blame on the political parties for putting the fbi in the horrible position? >> a little bit of that. and this is definitely the climate we are in. we have a president who is not going to look at the context as we mentioned before and is going the turn this and try to make it something that rallies his base, regardless of the facts. >> i think, you know, look, if you applied this level of scrutiny to any investigation, particularly one that is politically fraught as this, and this is, as they say, the 500 year flood analogy, most investigations don't have the political live wires running through them. you are you are going to find daviations from the norm of the behavior. but how do you root out the bias? we do it in journalism. you have standards of behavior you know when you see it that you are violating from it. you don't let political opinion

influence your decisions. the team investigating clinton were often advocated for some of the most aggressive measures. >> grand juries. >> that's the context that i am talking about that won't get talked about. >> tricker to impulses and actions in here that don't paint the people being biased as maybe peep are making questionable decisions at one pointed or another. >> part of what you are trying to guard this this kind of role is public confidence. so you have to avoid the appearance of impropriety. >> right. >> that means if you are joe q. public maybe you can pop off a nasty tweet about a politician you dislike. fur at the fbi and investigating that person -- >> no one is arguing that was appropriate. >> on that, it's not just bias. it's not understanding the institutional context. >> matt miller, i'm curious. one of the things that i think comey has said that why he decided to take matters into his own hands, was this fear oh, what if she's elected and they don't -- and they find out after

the fact -- congress find out after the fact that they had this information before the election, et cetera, and that it could have blown up in their face -- what do you make of that argument? s a i war game that scenario i think comey is right? >> he's right but it has something to do with what has been an asymmetric way the parties are treating the fbi and the justice department. what was going through his mind i think stretches back to the reason he had that press conference. he talked -- some of his aides in this report talk about he had the press conference because he was worried. and he said the things about hillary clinton, he called her careless because he was worried if he was into soft on her he was worried he would be criticized by republicans. you have the republicans telling the justice department lock her up. you have the democrats saying handling the investigation appropriately. after the press conference you saw months of the republican party putting pressure on him, calling him up to testify, can go asking him to turn over record. in the face of that pressure he

is not going to ask for a prosecution that's unjustified but he is going to give them something. the thing was that letter. you see them putting the same kind of pressure on the justice department right now. rod rosenstein isn't going to fire bob mueller but he see him making concessions because he is only getting pressure from one side. asymmetry produces these kind of adverse effects. >> we have a two minute warning on the press conference with christopher wray. between the five of us here we have basically come to the conclusion that our current political clilt is incapable of doing anything about this right now. it's the political climate that is putting the justice department and the fbi in an untenable position. that's not a good place for us to be, ramesh. i mean, let's just -- i mean, we are all saying, basically, our current political situation makes it where we can to the figure out if the fbi or the justice department can be perceived as fair.

>> look, if you are basically in these cases you know with trump and with clinton you are trying to hold political leaders accountable to the law. that's inherently a legal and a political process. it's going to be politically divisive. we happen to have a particularcally divisive politics right now, particularly polarized politics. >> i have to interject and say it's obviously not ooenl evenly distributed amongst the parties. democrats are not saying the same thing the republicans are saying about the justice department and the people who work at the fbi. et cetera a coming from one side. >> christopher wray. will i take questions? it will be interesting. let's take a listen. >> good morning, everybody. thanks for being here on such short notice. as you all know of course the justice department's office of the inspector general issued its report today about d.o.j. and fbi act it the in the run-up to the 2016 election. let me say up front that i appreciate the inspector general's work on this important

review. thought i would take a few minutes to talk about the report and then i'm happy to take a few questions. the fbi's mission is to protect the american people, and uphold the constitution. to carry out that mission we are entrusted with a lot of authority. so our actions are subject to close oversight from the courts, from our elected leaders, and from independent entities like the inspector general. and that's how it should be. that kind of examination, that kind of oversight, makes the fbi stronger as an organization and makes the public more safe. with that in mind, let me briefly address the findings in the inspector general's report. i take this report very seriously. and we accept its findings and recommendations. it's also important, though, to note what the inspector general did not find. this report did not find any

evidence of political bias or improper considerations actually impacting the investigation under review. the report does identify errors of judgment, violations of or even disregard for policy, and decisions that at the very least, with the benefit of hindsight were not the best choices. we have already started taking the necessary steps to address those issues. first, we are going to hold employees accountable for any potential misconduct. we have already referred conduct highlighted in the report to our disciplinary arm. opr, which is the fbi's independent offices of professor responsibility. we need to hold ourselves accountable for the choices we make and the work we do. we are doing that fairly, but without delay, in the way that

people should expect. we are going to adhere to the appropriate disciplinary process. and once that process is complete, we won't hesitate to hold people accountable for their actions. second, we are going to make sure that every fbi employee understands the lessons of this report. because change starts at the top, starts with me, we are going to require all of our senior executives from all around the world to convene for in-depth training specifically focused on learning the lessons that we should learn from this report. then we are going to train every single fbi employee, both new hires and veterans alike, on what went wrong so these mistakes will never be repeated. third, we are going to make sure that we have the policies, the procedures, and the training that are needed for everyone to

understand and remember what is expected of all of us. that includes drilling home the importance of objectivity. of avoiding even the appearance of personal conflicts or political bias in our work. ensuring that recusals are handled correctly and effectively, and communicated to all the right people. making all of our employees fully aware of our new policy on media contacts, which i issued last november, and making painfully clear that we will not tolerate non-compliance. ensuring that we follow all d.o.j. policies on public statements, about uncharged conduct, or ongoing investigations. and ensuring that our employees adhere strictly to all policies and procedures about the use of

fbi systems, networks, and devices. i've also directed our associate deputy director to lead a review of how the fbi handles sensitive investigations. and to make recommendations on how those should be staffed, structured, and supervisored in the future so that every sensitive investigation is conducted to the fbi's highest standards. we are going to continue also to work with the department to gauge our progress in each of these areas. the oig report makes clear we have got some work to do. but let's also be clear on scope of this report. it's focused on a specific set of events back in 2016 and a fall somebody of fbi employees connected to those events. nothing, nothing in this report impugns the integrity of our

work force as a whole or the fbi as an institution. as i said earlier, fair and independent scrutiny is welcome and appropriate accountability is crucial. we are going to learn from this report. and we are going to be better and stronger as a result. but i also want to be crystal clear about the fbi that i get to see. in the past ten months, i have been able to visit over 30 of our fbi field offices around the country, and a whole bunch of our l eerks ga terklegat office. in office after office, meeting after meeting i see extraordinary people doing extraordinary work. again, and again, i here remarkable stories. frankly, inspiring stories about the work, the men and women of the fbi are doing to protect the american people and uphold the constitution. just in the past several months,

we've disrupted terrorist attacks in places ranging from the fisherman's wharf in san francisco to a crowded shopping mall in miami. in march, we charged a ring of iranian state-sponsored hackers with stealing terra bytes of data from scores of american companies, universities, and government agencies. in austin, we deployed more than 600 of our people to assist in the investigation of the package bombings down there. this year alone, we have rescued 1,305 kids from child predators. some of them as young as 7-months-old. we have arrested more than 4,600 gang members, violent gang members, in just the past seven months. our fbi lab has closed thousands of cases through fingerprint analysis and dna analysis. and our hostage rescue team has

deployed something like 27 different times on missions around the country. i could go on and on. the fbi's men and women are doing all that work with the unfailing fidelity to the constitution and the laws that it demands, the bravery that it calls for, and the integrity that the american people rightly expect. as fbi director, i'm laser fo s focused on ensuring that our folks get to continue that bra work and do with it the fidelity a and integrity. i am a huge believer in the importance of process, of doing this job by the book in every respect. and i expect all our employees to do the same. i have tried to emphasize that

in every opportunity. in my view, the fbi's brand over the past 110 years is based less on all of our many, many successes than it is on the way in which we have earned those successes. following our rules, following the law, following our guidelines, staying fateful to our core values and our best traditions, trying to make sure we are doing the right thing, but doing it in the right way, treating everybody with respect, and following the facts independently and objectively no matter who likes it. that is the best say -- that in my view is the only way to maintain trust and credibility with the people we serve. i appreciate this chance to respond to the ig's report. and i would also refer you for more detail in our written response that's attached at the end of the inspector general's report. with that i'm happy to take a few questions.

>> singled out in the report has been referred to opr? what are you referring in particular? >> i can't comment on a specific personnel matter. there are a number of instances in the report where there is conduct highlighted. we have received that to our displainary arm, opr. there is a process for that. it is a tough process, it is a rigorous process. we expect that process to be followed. once that process is complete we won't hesitate to hold people accountable. >> just to follow on that, i know you can't talk about the specific conduct but here it says comey page and strzok all used personal e-mail accounts but only strzok is being referred for an investigation to see if that's in violation of policy. is that investigation ongoing? are there any individuals besides peter strzok who are being investigated internally? >> well, again, i'm not going to talk about any particular personnel matter because i don't think that would be appropriate.

as i said at the beginning i'm committed to doing the right thing in the right way and by the book. by the book does not include talking about enapproximating personnel matters with all of you much as you would like me to address that. >> you said there is nothing in the report that impugns the integrity of the fbi's work force as a whole but the report does say there is a culture of leaguing at the fbi. do you disagree with that finding in the report? what do you plan to do about it if you do agree with it. >> as i said, we accept the findings of the report and the recommendations. we are doing a number of thing on that regard. first, we issued a new media policy that's much stricter and much more clear than what had been in place before. second, we are going to be doing intensive training on exactly those issues, things like the one that you alluded to. that includes contacts with the media. third we are going to make painfully clear to everybody

that we won't non-compliance. and then last i have asked ropr to take a hard look at whether or not they think the penalties that exist right now are sufficient to deal with that kind of conduct. yeah, sir? >> cnn. i want to ask you about sort the reputation of the fbi. certainly, the fbi has taken a lot of hits from the president by his tweets, and certain thing he has said about certain investigation, members of congress have certainly hit at you guys. and now certainly this report takes some issues with the fbi the. a lot of what we've been hearing is that people are worried that the reputation of the fbi has suffered as a result of all the activity in the the last several months. i'm wondering if you think that's the case. if so what you intend to to to try to fix some of the perception perhaps that the public may have of the fbi now. >> that's a subject that's near and dear to me. i guess i would say a couple of

things. one this is no shortage of opinions about us out there. i will tell you that the opinions that i care the most about are the opinions of the people who actually really know us and know us through our work. so i am focused on what a jury is thinking when our agents take the stand. what our junes think when we give them a search warrant. i'm focus on what victims and their families think when they are asked who do you trust to get your child back? i'm focused on what do our state and local law enforcement partners think when they think who do they trust, who to prosecutors want the work with on cases. to me, it's the work that matters. i look at thing like that. i look at how our recruiting is doing. i look at how our retention is doing. recruiting, we get 12,000 plus people trying to be special agents every year. our admission rate, our selection rate, 5%. that's better than the admission rate at harvard, yale, princeton

or stanford. it is a not a fluke. we just hired a bunch of interns. the young people coming out of college who have lots of choices about what they want to do with their careers. we have had the highest number of applicants we ever had for our honors intern application. that admission rate was 5%. i look at things like that. what people think when they know us and what people think when they express our views to their actions. i look at the attribution rate. in the fbi it's 0. %. in my view, the opinions that matter are the views of the people that know us through your work. but i go around the world and i talk to your partners and the people who know us our brand is doing fine there. thank you. >> when you read this report, if you could sum up your reaction and your -- from having read it in one word, what is that word? and how would you describe your emotional reaction to it?

>> disappointed. yes. >> why disappointed? >> have you ever suesed your personal e-mail address for any fbi business? >> not that i can think of. >> some people are going the use this report to criticize the mueller investigation because strzok worked on both investigations. -- [ inaudible ] integrity and credibility, also some people are criticizing you for making mistakes by sharing documents with the congress. how do you respond to criticisms that you might be making mistakes now by sharing investigative materials with congress? >> i think on the first point -- i am not going to speak for the office of special counsel. i would note there are a number of things that we have done both in terms of referring people to opr, but also in terms of reassigning people to try to ensure that we are bringing the right kind of integrity to

staffing in all sensitive investigations. as to the congressional question, my view is we have an obligation to be responsive to legitimate congressional oversight. that's part of our job. as i said at the beginning, we are entrusted with enormous power. so we should expect we are going to get tough questions, and we need to be responsive and cooperate with that. but -- but we also have an obligation to protect sources and methods and not to compromise ongoing criminal investigations and to adhere to things like grand jury secrecy and things like that. so the challenge is how do we make sure we do both? we are committed to trying to do both. i think we have struck the right balance so far. >> cbs news. specifically about the president's criticism of the fbi, he has over the last year or so attacked the credibility of the fbi. do you think this d.o.j. ig report now val dates his criticisms? >> engo, i'm the going to comment on any other person's

opinions, no matter where they are communicated. what i am going to do is talk about the opinions that i think matter, the opinions to me that matter are the opinions of the people that are relevant to our workday in day out all across the country. we have 37,000 fbi employees, agents, analysts and staff, and scores of task force officers that work with them. and every day, every day, all around this country, around the world those people are having to make important decisions that protect lives. the opinions of the people that they have to engage with on that work, those are the opinions that matter to me. that's what i'm focused on. as far as the report goes, there are some sobering lessons in there. we are going to learn those lessons and we are going to act on those lessons and that's the way the fbi has always handled these things in the past and that's what made the fbi stronger over the last 110 years. >> do you believe the members of congress are acting in good

faith in their oversight efforts given that they have disagreed with the characterizations of the meetings? >> i think congress has a job to do. and we have a job to do. together we are trying various are presented by the tensions between congressional oversight and protection of sources, methods, ongoing investigations, and things like that. we're committed to trying to work through those thoing things with congress. >> one more question. >> us i-know you don't want to identify the people who are involved, but can you tell us how many have been referred to opr as a result of this report? >> i can't. that's not a topic i can comment on. i really want to be careful. i know why you're asking the question. and i respect that. but it's really important to me to make sure that we don't compound the mistakes that are found in this report by deviating from our process. so i think it's very important that et we respect the process

that it be done right by the book and once that process is complete, we will not hesitate to hold people accountable. >> what are the lessons? >> the lessons are the importance of trying to make sure that we avoid even the appearance of bias in all of our work. that objectivity and the appearance of objectivity matters. there's lessons in there about contacts with the media and appropriate engagement with all of you. there's lessons in there about the appropriate uses of devices. there's a numb of things in the ig has a thunderstorm of recommendations at the end and those are the lessons that we're trying to learn from this report. we take it very seriously and we accept the findings and the recommendations. >> thank you. >> you just heard there christopher ray about a 20-minute press conference

there. five-minute opening statement and took a number of questions. an moment for the fbi director there. he should have drained that room of questions and i think he did a pretty good job. ben is still with us. matt miller, former justice department spokesperson also still with us and my panel. let me get quick reactions. i'll start with ben. >> i think there are probably a lot of people in the fbi who are going to be anxious after that press conference. >> i think he used painfully clear a couple times, which sounded to us he wants that to be a fireable offense now. >> and he specifically said that after the opr process he won't hesitate to hold people accountable. and i think there are probably that noises like that tr the director in public, particularly a director who has been so

reticent is will be heard loudly around the fbi building. and i think a lot of people in that building will, you know, worry that the leadership is not standing up for the rank and file of the institution or is is not doing it as aggressively as people would like. >> matt miller, i was amused by the director saying they are going to put all these fbi agents through the new training. i'm thinking, okay, but you're in the middle of perhaps the single most important investigation in the history of the fbi right now. so you're going to build this plane as you take off? >> i don't think he has any choice. i thought he was trying to do a few things. there was admonishment to the workforce. stop texting things us yo shouldn't be texting. there was talk about bureaucratic reforms he wants to put in place. but an important moment for him for the country was the thing he

started with. the fact that really hitting home the point that the ig found no evidence of political bias. i thought he was sending a message to the american people that these arguments you hear from the president from members of congress about the fbi being biassed, they are not true. we follow the facts. we follow the law. he was really trying to defend the workforce from the attacks, but also send a message more broadly about the impact of juries. he's trying to reassure the american public that the attacks they hear aren't based in reality. >> it's clear questioners were trying to ask about the president's criticism of the fbi. twice the director said the opinion i care about the most, which led will somebody follow up about the president's opinion. >> it's a tricky situation. you can see why he doesn't want to openly say he doesn't, but the fbi is part of the executive

branch. you have the head of the executive branch constantly trashing the fbi sometimes saying the top leadership of the fbi, but still. and it's another impossible situation that the fbi is in. >> i'm amazed that nobody asked that question. >> they had never had a press conference. i'm that was a completely very unusual situation. so we can give our brethren a little break. >> it was interesting when asked by the reporters what's the one word to describe the report. disappointed was the word. there's lots of defenses of the political -- or of the investigative integrity of the bureau. but he really wanted to leave people with the understanding that this does not sit well with me and i'm not going to let this go. this is going to be a moment for the bureau. and they are going to be consequences. disappointed is an interesting word for him to choose. he didn't hesitate with it either.

>> i thought it was interest issing. you have pointed a bleaker picture of what you think the rank and file are going to think there than i would have expected. he really got into the leak issue. and the four of us around this table were talking about, okay, the fbi needs to stop leak iingo the press, but sometimes they are communicating with congress and it's members of congress that do the leaking issue that comes with fbi information. that, to me, is a part of this perception problem that i don't know how the fbi can fix. >> i agree with that. and a lot of the disclosures of investigative material don't come from the fbi. they come from individual members of congress and also defense lawyers who interact with the bureau. and i didn't mean to be too much of a debbi downer about the director's comments. i actually thought that there

were -- i thought his initial presentation in which he talked about the integrity of the underlying investigation and talked about and i agree very much with matt that his articulation of who the stake holders are, whose opinions he really cares about was thoughtful and moving. i do think any time you have a massive report like this that identifies a whole bunch of line people and some of them by name and some of them not by name and the director of the fbi stands up and says i'm referring a bunch of people to opr, that's something that sounds like a big bell in the institution. and that's a message he's trying to send to the workforce and i'm sure it was heard. >> before the press conference, i asked if we heard from hillary clinton yet. at the time, we hadn't.

but she's tweeted. let me put up her first tweet in the response to the report. she retweets kyle cheney. ig found on numerous occasions comey used a personal g mail account to conduct business and hillary clinton retweets it and comments, "but my e-mails." what do you make of that being her first response to this? >> i literally laughed out loud. >> you're supposed to say lol. >> okay. i'm sure maybe she wanted to tweet something else. >> pretty snarky. >> et she has a right to be snarky. she has a right to be angry. whatever you want to call it is astounding. that's a nice measured tweet that she said. >> how are our friends on the right going to take that?

>> it was bitterly funny, but comey misconduct does not excuse hers. it she had not done what she did, she probably would have won that election. >> she's not over it. she's not going to be over it. >> she'll never be over it. and the george mcgovern line. he says i'll let you know. >> but we're in an era of snark tweets coming from 1600 pennsylvania avenue. he's set the tone for this in many ways so we wouldn't shh surprise used. >> final question for matt miller. one of the things that the director was talking about was leaking and how they are going to stop leaks. if you chase leaks, all you do is create more leaks. >> i'll tell you he's right. the inspector general report is right. there's a deep cultural problem of leaking at the fbi. it comes from congress and defense lawyers, but it's something i struggle d with constantly at the justice department were the leaks from the building across the street. he has a big task on his hands. it is an impossible situation. the fbi is decentralized. but sending that message is one

that cannot hurt. >> the reporter in me, i'm like, good luck putting your fingers in those dikes and here's hoping you don't have enough fingers. just being honest. guys, thank you all. that's all we got for tonight. we'll be back tomorrow morning. be the "the beat" starlets right now. >> a lot to get to. our breaking story and our top story tonight is the new and horrific images emerging of what is happening thanks to trump administration policies inside a texas detention center as donald trump defend this policy of explicitly ripping migrant children away from their parents. today protests erupting across the country including house republicans facing pressure to try to stop what some call a zero tolerance policy at the border. there's a congresswoman who visited a et detentite