FBI chief ‘nauseous’ over idea he swayed election
Comey tells Senate panel: ‘I think I’ve done the right thing’
FBI Director James Comey defends his rationale for notifying Congress about Clinton emails less than two weeks before Election Day, saying that any suggestion he affected the vote’s outcome makes him “mildly nauseous.”
WASHINGTON — FBI Director James Comey gave his most exhaustive defense yet Wednesday of his role in politically sensitive investigations, telling a Senate panel that despite feeling “mildly nauseous” at the thought his decisions about a probe into Hillary Clinton might have affected the election outcome, he had no regrets.
He also said he was confident in the FBI’s handling of an ongoing probe of any contacts between Russian officials and associates of President Donald Trump.
Through nearly four hours of sometimes combative questioning from Democrats and Republicans, Comey never wavered from his core contention — that the FBI has stayed above the political fray even as its investigators probed senior aides to both the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates.
“Lordy, has this been painful,” he said. “I’ve gotten all kinds of rocks thrown at me and this has been really hard, but I think I’ve done the right thing at each turn.”
Comey appeared to win few new converts to his way of thinking, given the intense partisanship still swirling around both the now-closed probe of Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of state, and the current investigation into whether any Trump associates may have coordinated with Russian officials to interfere with the election campaign.
Comey said he was confronted with a difficult choice to “speak or conceal” and that the first was a really bad choice, while the second was “catastrophic,” because when voters learned of the issue after the election, they would have suspected a government coverup.
He added: “It makes me mildly nauseous to think we might have had some impact on the election. But honestly it wouldn’t change the decision.”
Comey said he has been interviewed by the Justice Department’s inspector general as part of an internal investigation into how he, his top deputy and the FBI handled the Clinton case.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., asked Comey what threat Russia posed to future U.S. elections. “In my view the greatest threat of any nation on earth given their intention and their capability,” Comey answered, adding that although Russia did not alter vote tallies in 2016, it has tried to do so in other countries and U.S. officials should expect Russia to replicate that effort in future U.S. elections.
Democrats repeatedly contrasted Comey’s decision to talk about the Clinton email investigation while not disclosing that the FBI had begun secretly investigating in late July whether any Trump associates might be working with Russian officials to meddle with the presidential campaign.
“It’s still very unclear — and I hope, Director, that you will clear this up — why the FBI’s treatment of these two investigations was so dramatically different,” said the top Democrat on the committee, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Calif.
Comey said he treated both cases consistently and that the biggest difference was that one investigation was over or nearly over, and the other was just beginning.
The FBI has concluded that Russian intelligence hacked into Democratic computer systems and email accounts, stealing information that was published by WikiLeaks during the campaign.