FBI director James Comey stood by his October decision to inform lawmakers that his agency had discovered new emails linked to the Hillary Clinton investigation, an event that Clinton and her allies continue to charge swayed the election at the last minute. Comey testified Wednesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Less than two weeks before Election Day, Comey told lawmakers in a letter that his agency had found emails pertinent to the FBI’s then-closed investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server. The letter quickly surfaced on Twitter.
In the letter, he told Congress that the agency had learned of metadata on former Rep. Anthony Weiner’s laptop that revealed thousands of Clinton emails. Many of the emails were linked to a Verizon Blackberry domain, he said, and could have included those that went missing.
“What they could see is there were thousands of Secretary Clinton’s e-mails on that device, including what they thought might be the missing e-mails from her first three months as secretary of state,” he said. “We never found any e-mails from her first three months. She was using a Verizon Blackberry then, and that’s obviously very important because if there was evidence that she was acting with bad intent, that’s where it would be.”
The emails, which included classified information, were being forwarded to Weiner by his wife Huma Abedin, Comey said. Abedin is Clinton’s closest aide.
Comey shared his state of mind in October during his testimony, which covered the FBI’s handling of the Clinton email investigation as well as the bureau’s investigation into whether Russia interfered in the election.
“It makes me mildly nauseous to think we might have had some impact on the election,” Comey told lawmakers during a congressional oversight hearing. “But, honestly, it wouldn’t change the decision.”
“Even in hindsight, and this has been one of the world’s most painful experiences, I would make the same decision,” he continued. “I would not conceal that on October 28th from the Congress.”
Comey described the decision to tell lawmakers about the emails, after closing the investigation in July, as an agonizing one.
“I sat there that morning and I could not see a door labelled ‘no action here.’ I could see two doors, and they were both actions. One was labelled ‘speak,’ the other was labelled ‘conceal,'” he said. “Speak would be really bad. There’s an election in 11 days. Lordy that would be really bad. Concealing in my view would be catastrophic.”
Comey announced in July that the FBI had completed its investigation into Clinton. He did not recommend charges, despite “evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information.”
Clinton allies have continued to condemn Comey over the October letter, with the former secretary of state doing so as recently as Tuesday.
“I was on the way to winning until a combination of Jim Comey’s letter on October 28 and Russian WikiLeaks raised doubts in the minds of people who were inclined to vote for me, but got scared off,” she said in an interview.
Speaking of Russia, Comey has also drawn fire for waiting until March to reveal that his agency has been investigating coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia since July.
“What’s worse is that while all of this was going on in the public spotlight, while the FBI was discussing its investigation into Senator Clinton’s email server in detail,” said the committee’s top-ranking Democrat, Senator Dianne Feinstein. “I cannot help but note that it was noticeably silent about the investigation into the Trump campaign and Russian interference in the election.”
