COMEY COMES CLEAN
Former FBI Director James Comey on Sunday admitted that he was “wrong” for being “overconfident” in how his agency obtained warrants to wiretap a former member of then-candidate Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign.
The internal watchdog for the Justice Department, Michael Horowitz, testified last week about 17 “significant errors and omissions” made by the FBI on applications seeking to allow them to eavesdrop on Carter Page under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
“He’s right, I was wrong,” Comey told “Fox News Sunday.”
“I was overconfident in the procedures that the FBI and Justice had built over 20 years. I thought they were robust enough. It’s incredibly hard to get a FISA,” he said. “I was overconfident in those, because he’s right, there was real sloppiness.
“I’m responsible for it,” Comey conceded.
Trump, in a tweet, called for Comey to apologize following his mea culpa.
“Wow, but he’s only doing so because he got caught red handed. He was actually caught a long time ago. So what are the consequences for his unlawful conduct. Could it be years in jail?” Trump asked. “Where are the apologies to me and others, Jim?”
The questioning turned testy when host Chris Wallace asked Comey about the integral role the Steele dossier — a report compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele for the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign — played in getting the FISA warrants.
Comey downplayed its significance, saying it was “not a huge part of the presentation to the court.”
Wallace noted that Horowitz’s report concluded that the unsubstantiated information in the dossier “played a central and essential role” in getting the federal judge to sign off on the warrant — even helping push the application “over the line” to establish probable cause.
The former G-Man said he failed to “see the disconnect” between his and Horowitz’s view of the dossier — even though he admitted that Steele’s reporting “convinced the lawyers” to move forward after initially being reluctant.
“I’m not sure he and I are saying different things,” Comey said.
“What his report says is that the FBI thought it was a close call until they got the Steele report, put that additional information in and that tipped it over to be probable cause. It’s a long FISA application and includes Steele material and a lot of other things.”