WASHINGTON _ The Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee said a watchdog report shows Hillary Clinton got "kid-glove" treatment from the FBI while the bureau used "brass-knuckle" tactics against Donald Trump.
"The Justice Department faces a serious credibility problem because millions of Americans suspect there is a double standard," Sen. Chuck Grassley said in opening a hearing on a 500-page report issued last week by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the committee's top Democrat, countered that Horowitz found "no evidence that the FBI or Justice Department are politicizing investigations and nothing warrants attacks that we are seeing on the FBI, the Justice Department or the special counsel's investigation."
The inspector general found that former FBI Director James Comey was "insubordinate" and made several critical mistakes in handling the probe into Clinton's use of a private email server, but concluded the FBI wasn't biased or politically motivated in deciding not to seek charges against Clinton for mishandling classified information.
Horowitz defended his report in testimony Monday as an "objective" summary of 17 months of investigation.
President Donald Trump and many Republicans have zeroed in on the inspector general's secondary findings, including that five FBI officials expressed hostility toward Trump before his election, which Grassley called "shocking news." Horowitz said their actions have been referred to the bureau for possible discipline.
If not for the inspector general's digging that uncovered the anti-Trump bias, Grassley said, "they would still be plotting how to use their official position to stop him. We just wouldn't know about it."
But Feinstein said "the report found no evidence that these personal political views tainted" investigative actions.
The president has said the evidence of anti-Trump sentiment inside the Federal Bureau of Investigation fatally taints special counsel Robert Mueller's continuing probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential campaign.
Democrats counter that the events reviewed in the report came well before Mueller was appointed and that Clinton was the only candidate hurt by Comey's actions.
Trump falsely claimed Friday that the inspector general's report proves his campaign didn't collude with Russia to interfere in the election, and proves that he didn't act to obstruct the Russia investigation.
Trump's lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, said Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union" that Mueller's investigation should now itself be the subject of a federal probe.
"I'm not really saying the special counsel; I'm saying what led up to the special counsel. I don't think Mueller and his people need to be investigated unless something comes out of that," Giuliani said. "Remember, you've got a bunch of odd things that led to the appointment of Bob."
Trump and his allies cited a freshly disclosed exchange of text messages from August 2016 in which FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page questioned whether Trump would become president. Strzok replied: "No. No he's not. We'll stop it."
Strzok was the lead FBI agent in the Clinton investigation and was involved in an early phase of the FBI's Russia investigation, although Mueller removed him from the current probe. Page at the time was an FBI lawyer but has since left the bureau. Strzok's lawyer said over the weekend that his client would welcome the opportunity to testify before Congress.
