HUMA ERROR
Sent classified emails to sext maniac Weiner Comey defends decision to probe Hil before elex
WASHINGTON — Hillary Clinton’s top aide Huma Abedin is the person who helped torpedo her presidential campaign, FBI Director James Comey revealed Wednesday.
Abedin regularly forwarded classified government emails to her serial sexting spouse Anthony Weiner so the disgraced former pol could print them out for her, Comey testified at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing.
Weiner’s possession of the emails on his computer triggered Comey to announce just 11 days before the election that the FBI was reopening its investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server, a move that sent her campaign into a tailspin.
Clinton said on Tuesday that Comey’s revelation helped cost her the election — but the FBI boss says the Weiners put him in a no-win situation.
“This was terrible, he said. “It makes me mildly nauseous to think we may have had some impact on the election.”
But he said the discovery of new Clinton emails left him with no choice.
“Somehow, her emails were being forwarded to Anthony Weiner, including classified information,” Comey said. “She forwarded hundreds of thousands of emails, some of which contained classified information.”
The repeatedly disgraced ex-congressman is facing a separate FBI investigation into his inappropriate sexual contact with a minor, which is why the FBI was looking through his emails in the first place.
Abedin told colleagues on the Clinton campaign at the time that she had no idea how the emails wound up on Weiner’s computer and that’s why she didn’t turn the computer in to the State Department when she handed over other devices containing classified information, according to Politico and the Washington Post.
But Comey said later in his testimony that Weiner had the emails because Abedin had intentionally forwarded them to him.
“His then-spouse, Huma Abedin, appears to have a regular practice of forwarding emails to him,” he said. “My understanding was his role was to print them out as a matter of convenience.”
Comey didn’t say why Abedin was printing the emails out, but some emails that have been released publicly showed that Clinton often asked her longtime aide to print emails and articles out for her because she didn’t like reading emails onscreen.
A lawyer for Abedin did not respond to a request for comment.
Comey said the FBI’s investigation into whether Abedin and Weiner had broken the law by mishandling classified information has been closed for the same reason the rest of the Clinton email investigation didn’t lead to any charges: They couldn’t find evidence of “criminal intent” that the pair intentionally mishandled classified intelligence.
Republicans weren’t thrilled with that finding, arguing that someone should have gone to prison for Clinton and her deputies mishandling classified information.
Despite criticism from Clinton and others about his decision to notify Congress about the emails so close to the election, Comey said he still believes he did the right thing. “Even in hindsight I would have made the same decision,” he argued. “I sat there that morning and I could not see a door labeled ‘no action here.’ I could see two doors, they were both actions. One was labeled ‘speak’ and the other was labeled ‘conceal.’ ”