CNN’s Toobin: FBI ‘Incompetent’ or ‘Actively Partisan,’ ‘Looks Like Wing’ of GOP

CNN's Toobin: FBI 'Incompetent' or 'Actively Partisan,' 'Looks Like Wing' of GOP (NewsBusters)

Reacting to news that the FBI had released documentation on former President Bill Clinton's controversial pardon of Marc Rich from 2001, CNN senior legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin exasperatedly declared that the agency was either being "oblivious and incompetent" or "actively partisan" in the presidential race. He later observed that the document release "makes the FBI look like a wing of the Republican party."

On Tuesday's The Situation Room, after host Wolf Blitzer read the FBI's "official statement" explaining the timing of its action on the Marc Rich documents as being in reaction to a Freedom of Information Act request, Toobin snarked: "Yeah, the official statement from me is: Give me a break. I mean, the, you know, I have made FOIA requests, and they take years. It is a very difficult process."

After CNN correspondent Dana Bash injected, "Fifteen years?" Toobin continued: "It can sometimes take 15 years. And the idea that they were obliged to do this on top of Comey's statement about Hillary Clinton last week, it just shows at least that they are oblivious and incompetent if not actively partisan in this presidential race."