SEN. BURR: The decision to publically roll out with your results on the email, was your decision influenced by the Attorney General’s tarmac meeting with the former President Bill Clinton? DIR. COMEY: Yes, in a ultimately conclusive way, that was the thing that capped it for me. That I had to do something separately to protect the credibility of the investigation which meant both the FBI and Justice Department. SEN. BURR: Were there other things that contributed to that, that you can describe in an open session? DIR. COMEY: There were other things that contributed to that but one significant item I can’t, I know the committee’s been briefed on, there’s been some public accounts of it which are nonsense but I understand the committee’s been briefed on the classified facts. Probably the only other consideration that I guess I can talk about in an open setting is that at one point the Attorney General had directed me not to call it an ‘investigation’ but instead to call it a ‘matter’ which confused me and concerned me.
There’s one other very interesting thing about this exchange. Lynch’s improper behavior here was previously reported, via anonymous sources, back in April in the New York Times:
At the meeting, everyone agreed that Mr. Comey should not reveal details about the Clinton investigation. But Ms. Lynch told him to be even more circumspect: Do not even call it an investigation, she said, according to three people who attended the meeting. Call it a “matter.” Ms. Lynch reasoned that the word “investigation” would raise other questions: What charges were being investigated? Who was the target? But most important, she believed that the department should stick by its policy of not confirming investigations. It was a by-the-book decision. But Mr. Comey and other F.B.I. officials regarded it as disingenuous in an investigation that was so widely known. And Mr. Comey was concerned that a Democratic attorney general was asking him to be misleading and line up his talking points with Mrs. Clinton’s campaign, according to people who spoke with him afterward. As the meeting broke up, George Z. Toscas, a national security prosecutor, ribbed Mr. Comey. “I guess you’re the Federal Bureau of Matters now,” Mr. Toscas said, according to two people who were there.
Also note the line about the “policy of not confirming investigations.” Based on Comey’s testimony, Trump’s frustration that no one would publicly state he wasn’t personally under investigation was at a fever pitch. Perhaps this anecdote was meant as a signal to Team Trump that Comey’s refusal to publicly give Trump the all clear wasn’t personal.
The other big bombshell from the Times’ story was this:
Early last year, F.B.I. agents received a batch of hacked documents, and one caught their attention. The document, which has been described as both a memo and an email, was written by a Democratic operative who expressed confidence that Ms. Lynch would keep the Clinton investigation from going too far, according to several former officials familiar with the document. … If Ms. Lynch announced that the case was closed, and Russia leaked the document, Mr. Comey believed it would raise doubts about the independence of the investigation. … Mr. Comey’s defenders regard this as one of the untold stories of the Clinton investigation, one they say helps explain his decision-making.
If Comey wasn’t one of the anonymous sources for this New York Times story directly, whoever did supply all this information to the Times seems to have been inordinately concerned with burnishing Comey’s reputation as an impartial law man and otherwise justifying his heavily criticized handling of the Clinton email investigation last year.
