IF DONALD HAD FIRED COMEY FOR IT HE'D HAVE BEEN RIGHT:

Most consequentially, though, the report made us face the irony once again that the FBI's investigation of Clinton's email was a public matter that garnered enormous attention, while the FBI investigation of the Trump campaign and Russia's interference in the campaign remained a secret. Imagine a world in which Comey never sent the ill-advised and hasty letter to Capitol Hill but had let us know that the FBI was investigating the Trump campaign's possible involvement with Russia's interference in our elections. It's a world in which Hillary Clinton is almost certainly president of the United States.

Despite the frustrations I felt in reading the Inspector General's report, there are important lessons contained within it. It's a cautionary tale of the damage that can be done when political leaders believe they can predict democratic outcomes, and then act on those false assumptions. It's clear that the underlying assumption upon which Comey and others at the FBI made decisions -- on how to handle both the Clinton/email and Trump/Russia investigations -- was that Clinton would be president.

You see the underlying assumption of a Clinton win throughout the FBI's handling of both investigations. In Comey's book, "A Higher Loyalty," he writes in detail about the painstaking process, involving hundreds of agents, the FBI went through to investigate Clinton. He notes that concern over the public and political reaction to the investigation -- as opposed to merely doing a thorough investigation -- in part drove his desire to have such an exhaustive effort. In describing the FBI's effort, Comey noted in his book that "We'd never convince Clinton haters ... [B]ut hopefully we could persuade a majority of fair and open-minded Americans" that the FBI had done a thorough investigation and made the right call. It was Comey's desire to protect the bureau's public reputation that pushed him toward a path that ended with disastrous consequences.

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