The article claimed they were looking at it. Perhaps nothing came of it, because there was no evidence of it, because it didn't happen.
Perhaps. That's the problem with lack of information, though - and I was being honest about where information was lacking all throughout.
Again, the fact remains that the NRA was notably compromised and acted in an extremely suspicious manner. My concern here when it comes to the NRA isn't truly politics-based so much as national security and electoral integrity. It's a matter of responsibility rather than being out to get anyone.
In something related, though, concern about whether likely problems should be investigated seems to be where the actual partisan split seems to be, especially in more recent years. To poke at the FEC again, this time with an Open Secrets article -
Republican FEC commissioners let Clinton campaign off the hook for super PAC coordination
Deadlocked on a party-line vote, the Federal Election Commission has dismissed a complaint that Hillary Clinton’s campaign illegally coordinated with a super PAC during the 2016 presidential election cycle.
Continuing a recent trend with the embattled regulatory agency that is currently missing two of six commissioners, it was the Republican commissioners, not Democrats, who voted to stonewall enforcement action over the complaint.
<snip>
Republicans on the commission have repeatedly voted to dismiss complaints against committees of both parties. They often argue that Democratic-appointed commissioners overstep their bounds in enforcing campaign finance law and endanger free speech rights in the process.
“It’s yet another example of the partisan split on the commission not being partisan in the traditional sense,” Fischer said. “Here it was Democratic commissioners voting to enforce campaign finance laws against a Democratic candidate and Republican commissioners doing the opposite.”
Generally speaking, it's very likely that most of the Democrats that you might encounter will be on the side of the Democrats who were trying to uphold campaign finance law, regardless of who violates it.
When Democrats oppose investigation, it tends to be in regards to blatantly political nonsense, and by nonsense, I mean that it's based on demonstrable lies, disinformation, and the like.
They were 'looking at it'. Muller seemed to think there was something worth looking at, and news reports indicated that they would be investigating. But since then... nothing.
Yup.
If the FBI had investigated then the matter could be cleared up,
As well as finished and announced the results in whichever way, of course, which isn't guaranteed. They haven't divulged any details regarding that, however, as far as I've seen.
but if they didn't you can't justify screaming 'no evidence!' from an investigation that wasn't done.
Lack of evidence where evidence would reasonably be expected is one thing. Because of Barr, in particular, though, it's just not a case where evidence would reasonably be expected.
The important questions would then be:- Did they look the other way? Was it covered up? What does 'looking at it' mean if they can't tell us what the result of the 'looking' was? And finally, if nobody looked at it, why not? Something smells...
Something may smell, but, as it stands, we just don't have enough information to justify asking the first and second questions. The third may be a bit off - I'm not aware of any official FBI press statements about investigation into the NRA, just references to said investigation and interest into
potential problems. It's hard to fault the FBI, specifically, for not announcing what happened or is still happening with an investigation that they didn't announce in the first place.