Former FBI Director James Comey considered requesting a special counsel to investigate Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server after receiving “highly classified information” alleging “partisan bias or attempts to impede” the probe by then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch.
Comey discussed a possible special counsel with then-Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates in April 2016, just months before the email probe ended, according to a Justice Department inspector general report released Thursday.
Comey never requested a special counsel, which the attorney general has the power to appoint. But Comey said Yates “must have done something” because “the team perceived an adrenaline injection into the DOJ’s side that we had not seen before.”
The FBI’s intelligence regarding Lynch ultimately was deemed noncredible, according to the report, but Comey said he feared the result of public disclosure.
Discussion of a special counsel came as the probe was reaching its conclusion, and was motivated by an array of factors, Comey told the inspector general’s office, including his frustration at the pace of acquiring two laptops from Clinton associates.
Comey’s discussion of a possible special counsel occurred approximately three months before Lynch’s widely criticized tarmac meeting with former President Bill Clinton and months after she requested that he use the term “matter” rather than investigation.
Public perception of Lynch’s potential bias motivated Comey to unilaterally announce the FBI’s Clinton email findings in July and declare he would request no criminal charges — an alleged usurpation of Lynch’s power cited in a memo justifying his firing last year by President Trump.
The former FBI director told the inspector general’s office he floated a special counsel to Yates because he was concerned in part about “the appearance of political bias” within the Justice Department, particularly as the 2016 political party conventions neared.
Comey told the office that the FBI “obtained highly classified information in March 2016 that included allegations of partisan bias or attempts to impede the [Clinton email] investigation by Lynch.”
The report said “numerous witnesses,” including Comey, “said that the FBI assessed that these allegations were not credible based on various factors, including that some of the information was objectively false. For example, the information also suggested that Comey was attempting to influence the investigation by extending it to help Republicans win the election, which witnesses said the FBI knew was not true.”
“By mid-June 2016, the FBI had obtained no information corroborating the Lynch-related allegations. When asked about this information, Comey stated that he knew it was not credible on its face because it was not consistent with his personal experience with Lynch. Comey stated, ‘I saw no, I’ll say this again, I saw no reality of Loretta Lynch interfering in this investigation,'” the report said.
“However, Comey said that he became concerned that the information about Lynch would taint the public’s perception of the [Clinton email] investigation if it leaked, particularly after DCLeaks and Guccifer 2.0 began releasing hacked emails in mid-June 2016. Despite these concerns, Comey told the OIG that it did not occur to him to request a special counsel in late 2015, after Lynch’s instruction to use the term ‘matter’ or former President Obama’s public comments about the investigation… because Comey was satisfied with the nature and the quality of the investigation being conducted by the FBI,” the report said.
Comey previously has publicly disclosed considering a special counsel. Shortly after he was fired, Comey told lawmakers in June 2017 that “after President Clinton, former President Clinton, met on the plane with the attorney general, I considered whether I should call for the appointment of a special counsel and had decided that that would be an unfair thing to do, because I knew there was no case there.”
Yates told the inspector general’s office she was surprised by Comey’s suggestion of a possible special counsel, saying it was a “weird thing” that came “out of the blue.” Yates briefed Lynch on her meeting with Comey, but the former attorney general said she did not recall being told about his consideration of a special counsel, according to the report.
