Comey ‘mildly nauseous’ over idea he swayed the election
WASHINGTON — James Comey, the FBI director, sharply defended his rationale for notifying Congress about new emails related to the Hillary Clinton investigation less than two weeks before Election Day, saying Wednesday any suggestion he affected the vote’s outcome made him “mildly nauseous.”
Comey’s comments at a Senate Judiciary Committee oversight hearing were his first public explanation for his actions, which roiled the presidential campaign in its final days and cast a harsh spotlight on the FBI director.
Comey said he went public on Oct. 28 because he believed the emails found by his agents might provide insight into Clinton’s reasons for using a private server as secretary of state and might change the outcome of the investigation. Failing to inform Congress, Comey said, would have a required an “act of concealment.”
“Concealment, in my view, would have been catastrophic,” he said, adding later that he knew the decision would be “disastrous for me personally.”
What Comey viewed as concealing, Justice Department officials viewed simply as following the rules. The FBI does not normally confirm ongoing investigations. Senior Justice Department officials urged him not to send a letter to Congress informing them that the bureau was examining the new emails.
Unlike a House Intelligence Committee hearing in March in which Comey took the extraordinary step of confirming the existence of an investigation into Russian meddling in the election, the hearing Wednesday was supposed to be a more routine congressional oversight proceeding. But little has been routine for the FBI over the past 10 months, as the dramatic moment from Comey showed.
The tone of the opening statements from both the top Republican and the top Democrat on the committee made clear they wanted answers from Comey on a number of issues, including Clinton’s emails, the Russia investigation, leaks to the news media and the use of wiretapping as an investigative tool.
“We need the FBI to be accountable because we need the FBI to be effective,” said Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, chairman of the committee.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, the ranking Democrat on the panel, immediately pounced on Comey, saying he took an enormous gamble in sending a letter to Congress on Oct. 28 informing them the FBI was examining new Clinton-related emails without knowing how the messages might shape the Clinton investigation.
“We need to hear how the FBI will regain that faith and trust,” Feinstein said. “We need straightforward answers to our questions and we want to hear how you’re going to lead the FBI going forward. We never, ever want anything like this to happen again.”
She demanded to know why he treated the investigations so “dramatically different.”
Comey rejected her assertion.
He said the FBI had confirmed the existence of an investigation into Clinton’s emails months after the bureau began it, and that it said no more until after it was closed. Similarly, Comey said, the FBI revealed there was an investigation into Russian efforts to influence the election months after it was opened in July, and only after it had been widely reported in the media. And as in the Clinton investigation, the FBI has refused to talk about what it has found.
“We’re not going to say another peep about it until we are done,” Comey said, acknowledging the inquiry
into Russian meddling is ongoing. “And I don’t know what will be said when we’re done, but that’s the way we handled the Clinton investigation, as well.”
Comey’s handling of the Clinton email investigation continues to shadow him. Not even President Donald Trump seems keen to forget the decisions the FBI director made during the election. On Tuesday night, the president criticized him in a Twitter post, writing that Comey was “the best thing that ever happened to Hillary Clinton in that he gave her a free pass for many bad deeds!”
Trump also played down the FBI’s investigation into Russian efforts to help his campaign.
“The phony Trump/ Russia story was an excuse used by the Democrats as justification for losing the election,” the president wrote on Twitter, apparently in reaction to Clinton’s comments Tuesday in which she heaped blame on the FBI and Russian-backed hackers for her election loss. She also said Trump was unprepared for the presidency.
Comey was also pressed
Wednesday about leaks to journalists and whether FBI agents in New York revealed information during the election to former federal law enforcement and elected officials, including Rudy Giuliani, the onetime New York City mayor. Three days before Comey’s announcement in October, Giuliani, an adviser to Trump’s campaign, said on Fox News the campaign had “a couple of surprises” in store.
After Comey’s letter was made public, putting Giuliani’s comments in a new light, a Trump campaign spokesman said the former mayor had been simply “having fun.” But Giuliani later undermined that assertion, saying he knew in advance the FBI had found new emails related to Clinton. His comments reinforced suspicions that some FBI agents were out to get her.
“If I find out that people were leaking information about our investigations, whether to reporters or private parties, there will be severe consequences,” Comey told the questioner, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.