Former FBI Director James Comey said Hillary Clinton’s tweet in response to the revelation he used a private email address to conduct FBI business shows she still doesn’t understand the bureau’s investigation into her use of a private email server.
“I don’t want to criticize her, but it shows me that even at this late date, she doesn’t understand what the investigation in her case was about,” Comey said Tuesday during an event in Berlin.
“It was not about her use of personal email system, and she didn’t get that during the investigation because she used to say, well, Colin Powell, when he was secretary of state, used AOL. That was not what it was about,” he continued. “It was about communicating about classified topics on that system when those topics have to be done on a classified system.”
A long-awaited report from the Justice Department’s Inspector General released last week revealed Comey used his personal Gmail account on several occasions to conduct official FBI business.
The report cited five examples of that use, including one instance on Nov. 8, 2016, when Comey forwarded a proposed post-election message for FBI employees from his unclassified FBI account to his personal account.
In a tweet reacting to the news involving Comey’s use of his Gmail email account, Clinton said, “But my emails.”
Comey said he understood why the inspector general included the information about his use of the private account in the report and explained why he was found to have been conducting official business through that email.
“What I would do is when I would write speeches, I would type them at home and then Gmail them into my government account, or if I still had to work on the draft, I’d sent it home and work on it on my laptop,” he said.
But unlike Clinton, Comey said he was not talking about anything classified.
“And the inspector general didn’t say that as well,” he said. “But I get why the tweet. I get why people are focused on it, but it’s a totally different thing.”
