On the same day he was fired by President Trump, the FBI sent a letter correcting statements made by the agency’s now-former Director James Comey during his recent testimony before Congress.
Though Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein did not cite that particular instance in his memorandum to Trump regarding the former director, both Rosenstein’s memo and the FBI’s letter were sent on the same day. The FBI letter and the Rosenstein memo both raised questions about Comey’s credibility as well, though the latter did so more directly than the former.
The letter, sent to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, by Assistant Director for the FBI’s Office of Congressional Affairs Gregory Brower, sought to “supplement” Comey’s testimony before the committee last week. In effect, Brower’s supplement corrected a claim made by Comey that had serious implications regarding the breadth of Huma Abedin’s involvement in the Hillary Clinton email scandal.
Comey told Congress that Abedin had forwarded “hundreds or thousands” of emails to her husband Anthony Weiner’s laptop. In his letter to Grassley, Brower said only a “small number” of the 49,000 “potentially relevant” emails were manually forwarded by Abedin, asserting that most of the emails ended up on Weiner’s laptop as the result of automatic backups.
Brower’s letter did reiterate Comey’s testimony that 12 email chains found on the computer contained classified information, but clarified that only two were forwarded manually by Abedin.
As I wrote yesterday, this does not let Abedin off the hook. And, given the length of time he was before Congress, it’s understandable for Comey to have misspoken.
But for the FBI director to appear ignorant of one of the most basic details of one of the most important investigations of his career in sworn testimony before Congress is bizarre. Though the news cycle moved on rapidly from Brower’s letter after the story broke that Comey had been fired, it would have dealt another serious blow to Comey’s credibility.
It’s plausible that, in the case the investigation into the Trump campaign’s connections to Russia cleared the president or his allies (or both), Comey’s misstatements about Abedin could have been leveraged to undercut the credibility of those findings.
Rosenstein stopped short of recommending Trump fire Comey, but said his refusal to admit he mishandled the Clinton email investigation meant he couldn’t “be expected to make the necessary corrective actions.” In his letter notifying Comey that he had been fired, Trump cited the need to “restore public trust and confidence” in the FBI.
Emily Jashinsky is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
