Acting FBI chief contradicts White House on Russia, Comey
WASHINGTON — The acting director of the FBI contradicted the White House on two major issues Thursday, the support of rank-and-file agents for the fired FBI chief James Comey and the importance of its investigation into Russian election interference.
In a striking repudiation of official White House statements, the acting director, Andrew McCabe, said the inquiry is “highly significant” and pledged during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing that the FBI would resist any attempt to influence or hobble the investigation.
“Simply put,” he said, “you cannot stop the men and women of the FBI from doing the right thing.”
That McCabe felt compelled to make those assertions was itself remarkable, a product of the unusually public effort by Trump and his aides to take public focus off the investigations into Russia’s election meddling.
The unfolding story of Trump’s dramatic firing of Comey hung over the hearing, the topic of which was the biggest threats facing the United States. The White House has offered several explanations for why Comey was dismissed, including that he poorly handled the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server and that agents had lost confidence in their leader.
The claims have been greeted with widespread skepticism in Washington, and McCabe did not hesitate to make clear where Comey stood in the eyes of FBI agents and employees.
“Director Comey enjoyed broad support within the FBI and still does to this day,” he said, adding that “the vast majority of FBI employees enjoyed a deep and positive connection to Director Comey.”
He was also adamant that the firing of Comey had not affected the Russia investigation, and he said he had not talked to anyone at the White House about the inquiry.
The top Democrat on the committee, Sen. Mark
Warner of Virginia, sought assurances from McCabe that he would sound the alarm if the White House or others tried to intervene.
“While we don’t know how long you will be acting as FBI director, my first questions for you, even in this public setting, will be for you to assure the committee that if you come under any political influence from the White House or others to squash this investigation, or impede it in any way, that you will let this committee know,” Warner said.
Warner called the firing of Comey “a shocking development.”
“It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the president’s decision to remove Director Comey was related to this investigation, and that is truly unacceptable,” he said.
“Our committee will get to the bottom of what happened in the 2016 presidential election,” said Warner, who has called the committee’s inquiry into Russian election interference “probably the most important thing I’ve done in public life.”
Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., the chairman of the committee, asked whether McCabe was aware of Comey telling the president three times that he was not under investigation, as Trump claimed. McCabe said he could not comment on any conversations that Comey might have had with the president.
McCabe also sought to sidestep delicate questions about the number of agents working on the Russia inquiry, assuring the committee that the bureau had the resources it needed. Days before he was fired, Comey had asked the Justice Department for more prosecutors to aid in the investigation.
The investigation, McCabe made clear, was a priority for the FBI. A day earlier, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, a White House spokeswoman, had said the investigation was “probably one of the smallest things that they’ve got going on their plate.”
McCabe also told the senators that the FBI had secured and preserved Comey’s files after he was fired.
In firing Comey, the Trump administration chose not to wait for the results of a review by the Justice Department’s inspector general into Comey’s actions in the Clinton email investigation. On Wednesday, Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, chairman of the Oversight Committee, asked that the inspector general’s investigation be expanded to include an examination of Comey’s dismissal.