Comey defends self, warns of Russia
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 might have affected the presidential-election outcome, he has no regrets.
At another point, Comey was asked what threat Russia poses 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 American vote tallies in 2016, it has tried to do so in other countries. U.S. officials should expect Russia to replicate that effort in future U.S. elections, Comey said.
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 Republican candidate Donald Trump and Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.
“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, 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.
After the hearing, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said he still thinks Comey did the wrong thing by telling Congress days before the election that he was reopening the Clinton probe to examine thousands of emails found on the laptop of a spouse of a senior Clinton aide.
“The Justice Department has a procedure,” Leahy said. “You do not release information like that just before an election.”
In defending his decisions, Comey offered some new details about what FBI agents found last fall, after they realized a laptop belonging to former New York congressman Anthony Weiner contained thousands of work emails involving Clinton. At the time, Weiner was married to Huma Abedin, who was a senior aide to Clinton. Agents were looking at Weiner’s laptop because he was under investigation for possibly inappropriate communications with a minor.
“Somehow, her emails were being forwarded to Anthony Weiner, including classified information,” Comey said, adding later, “His thenspouse Huma Abedin appears to have had a regular practice of forwarding emails to him for him to print out for her so she could deliver them to the secretary of state.”
After Comey notified Congress of the Weiner laptop issue on Oct. 28, the Justice Department got a search warrant to examine some 3,000 messages that were work-related, Comey said. Of those, agents found a dozen that contained classified information, but they were messages investigators had already seen.
Abedin and Weiner were investigated for the potential mishandling of classified material, but the FBI ultimately dropped the matter.
“Really, the central problem we had with the whole email investigation was proving people … had some sense they were doing something unlawful. That was our burden, and we were unable to meet it,” he said.
Three days before Election Day, Comey notified Congress that the emails on the laptop did not change the FBI’s view of the case.
Democrats argue that by that point, Comey had critically damaged the Clinton campaign. On Tuesday, Clinton herself said that if the election had been held the day before Comey’s first letter, she would have been elected.
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 also said he is confident in the FBI’s handling of an ongoing probe of any contacts between Russian officials and Trump associates.
The chairman of the committee, Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, opened the hearing by saying that “a cloud of doubt hangs over the FBI.”
“We need to know whether there was anything improper going on between the Trump campaign and the Russians, or if these allegations are just a partisan smear campaign that manipulated our government into chasing conspiracy theories,” said Grassley, who at one point said “ye gads” over the lack of information.
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 campaign.
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.