FBI Director James Comey should resign immediately, according to a Democratic member of the House Judiciary Committee who is outraged by the top cop’s decision to reveal the discovery of new emails “pertinent” to the Hillary Clinton email investigation just days before the presidential election.
“The fairness of our electoral system is like the fairness of a trial, and no justice official should act in such a way to potentially influence an election whether intended to or not,” Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., said Sunday evening. “At a minimum, Director Comey’s actions are, to use his own verbiage, ‘extremely careless’ this close to the election and without any substance.”
That’s a reference to Comey’s July announcement that he would not recommend the Justice Department indict Clinton, saying he believed her mishandling of classified information was “extremely careless,” but the evidence didn’t support a criminal charge.
The letter Comey sent Friday to lawmakers revived the most damaging storyline of Clinton’s presidential bid, months after Democrats thought it had been laid to rest. FBI agents said they found new emails “pertinent” to the Clinton probe, reportedly while investigating a sexting scandal involving the spouse of one of Clinton’s top aides.
But Cohen said the announcement smeared Clinton unjustly. “There is a reason that FBI investigations are not made public until they are completed,” he said. “To do so gives an impression of guilt before all the facts are determined.”
Comey believed he was required to write the letter to lawmakers, even though Justice Department officials didn’t want him to, because he had previously testified under oath that the investigation was concluded.
“At the end of the day, if you have the FBI director telling Justice that he has an obligation to tell Congress, there is no way you can direct the FBI to do otherwise,” one DOJ official told the Washington Post. “That’s too fraught. You can’t direct someone to withhold information from Congress. That’s not a prudent way to do things.”
Cohen’s statement followed Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid’s accusation that Comey was revealing information about the Clinton probe while keeping silent about investigations into GOP nominee Donald Trump’s ties to Russian interests — a “double standard” that Reid suggested amounts to a violation of the law against government officials campaigning on behalf of candidates.
“When Republicans filibustered your nomination and delayed your confirmation longer than any previous nominee to your position, I led the fight to get you confirmed because I believed you to be a principled public servant,” Reid wrote. “With the deepest regret, I now see that I was wrong.”
