Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz recently summoned an FBI agent important to the probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election for an interview. His investigators wanted to know how the bureau came to surveil a former Trump campaign adviser, and in particular, the chronology of events that led them to seek a secret court order to do so.
As the Justice Department’s internal affairs cop, this is the sort of work Horowitz does: investigating the investigators. In that role, he has suddenly found himself in the political spotlight, a potentially decisive voice in the partisan controversies over the FBI’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server when she was secretary of state, and its subsequent probe of the Trump campaign and Russia.