Former FBI Director James Comey stands by his decisions regarding the FBI’s investigation into the unauthorized email server of 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton that she used while she was secretary of state, arguing that the case “was one where the public interest required that we speak.”
Months before the 2016 election in July, the FBI recommended no criminal charges against Clinton, even though Comey accused Clinton at the time of being “extremely careless” and said she could have faced disciplinary action if she still was working for the State Department. But the public needed to know this information to understand why the FBI wasn’t choosing to prosecute Clinton, Comey said.
“Angry voices in July 2016 said we should have said nothing,” Comey wrote in an op-ed for the Washington Post Monday. “But we were ending a criminal investigation of a candidate for president, one overseen by Justice Department political appointees from the candidate’s political party. The decision to decline prosecution would have been far less credible without those details, causing lasting damage to the department’s reservoir of trust with the American people. Democrats were wrong about transparency then.”
The investigation was reopened two weeks before the 2016 election, and Comey revealed two days before the election that the FBI determined Clinton shouldn’t be prosecuted, just as the agency had determined in July.
Comey’s comments were designed to illustrate that “providing detailed information about a completed investigation of intense public interest has long been a part of Justice Department practice,” even though such a situation is rare.
As a result, Comey claimed Republicans who have cast doubt on the transparency of special counsel Robert Mueller’s ongoing Russia investigation are wrong: Attorney General William Barr could “release far more details than many people may now realize” after Mueller shares his findings with Barr.
Mueller is reportedly closing in on finishing the roughly two-year investigation examining Russian interference in the 2016 election and whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Kremlin. Meanwhile, Trump has repeatedly railed against the investigation and claims it’s a “witch hunt.”
Barr has vowed to “provide as much transparency as I can,” and Democrats have indicated that they will push to receive the full findings, but Barr is not obligated to share the report with Congress or the public.
Still, Comey cited cases where Justice has shared extensive details with the public following an investigation, such as Clinton’s email server investigation, and argued “a straightforward report of what facts have been learned and how judgment has been exercised may be the only way to advance the public interest.
“But Republicans are wrong now when they claim Justice Department rules forbid transparency about the completed work of the special counsel,” Comey wrote. “It is hard to imagine a case of greater public interest than one focused on the efforts of a foreign adversary to damage our democracy, and in which the president of the United States is a subject.
“I don’t know all the considerations that will go into deciding precisely what to say about the completion of the special counsel’s work and when to say it,” Comey wrote. “ It’s always important to consider guidelines and routines. But don’t listen to those who tell you transparency is impossible. Every American should want a Justice Department guided first and always by the public interest. Sometimes transparency is not a hard call.”
Comey was fired by Trump in May 2017.
