The DOJ Inspector General’s work is never done. Just last month IG Horowitz released a report which concluded that former FBI Director James Comey violated bureau policy by treating official records as if they were his personal documents. Today, Horowitz testified before Congress and was asked by Rep. Mark Meadows about some apparent discrepancies between what Comey told the IG during that investigation and what Comey had said during congressional testimony last year. Rep. Meadows said a referral would be forthcoming and Horowitz agreed to look over the information.

“We’ve taken, now, your report and we’ve put it side by side [with] congressional testimony that James Comey made before the joint oversight and judiciary hearing and I’m finding just a number of irregularities,” Meadows said. He continued, “So would it be appropriate if ranking member Jordan and I were to refer those inconsistencies to the IG and if we did that would the IG look at those inconsistencies?”

“It’s certainly appropriate for us to get a referral about a then-employee of the department, which is I think the hearing you’re probably referencing, and then we would assess it,” Horowitz replied.

“I’ll give you one example,” Meadows said. Referring to testimony Comey gave in December of 2018, Meadows continued, “Mr. Gowdy was asking, he said ‘Did you initiate an obstruction of justice investigation based on what the president said?’ It was a very clear question. Mr. Comey said ‘I don’t think so. I don’t recall doing that so I don’t think so.’

“However, on page 13 of your IG report, it says that Comey purposefully leaked the memo so that they could have a special counsel appointed to investigate obstruction of justice. So two of those can not be true. They’re at opposite dynamics in terms of what they’re constructing. And we have dozens of examples where that has happened.”

Meadows added, “So we’ll be referring those inconsistencies to you today, Mr. Horowitz, and I think that it’s important that the American people get to look at this.”

Obviously it could be a while before we hear the IG’s reaction to that referral. In the meantime, Horowitz recently submitted a draft of his 18-month-long investigation into possible FISA Court abuse. That document will be marked for material that needs to be redacted at which point Horowitz’ office will prepare a public version of the report for release. So probably sometime next month we could have a new, probably lengthy IG report to review.

Here’s the exchange that took place today between Meadows and Horowitz: