New reports suggesting that FBI Director James Comey massively overstated the volume of emails containing classified information that Huma Abedin forwarded to her husband add greater confusion to the situation.
The question, to which no obvious answer jumps out from the early reporting, is this: What exactly is the discrepancy between what Comey said in committee and what unnamed sources are telling reporters.
The Washington Post reported on Tuesday that “sources close to the investigation” regarding emails found on Anthony Weiner’s laptop in late October characterized its findings as such:
The inquiry found that Abedin did occasionally forward emails to her husband for printing, but it was a far smaller number than Comey described, and it wasn’t a “regular practice,” these people said. None of the forwarded emails were marked classified, but a small number — a handful, one person said — contained information that was later judged to contain classified information, these people said.
Here is what ProPublica reported:
According to two sources familiar with the matter — including one in law enforcement — Abedin forwarded only a handful of Clinton emails to her husband for printing — not the “hundreds and thousands” cited by Comey. It does not appear Abedin made “a regular practice” of doing so. Other officials said it was likely that most of the emails got onto the computer as a result of backups of her Blackberry.
So where, exactly, is the conflict between Comey’s testimony and the information in these new reports? It’s difficult to say without the outlets citing hard numbers from their sources. How many emails were forwarded and how many emails ended up Weiner’s laptop as the result of automatic Blackberry backups?
In an exchange with Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., during his testimony, Comey claimed 12 of 3,000 work-related emails found on Weiner’s laptop in late October were classified and came from “Blackberry backups and a bunch of other things.”
Here’s that exchange between Comey and Sen. Whitehouse from last week:
COMEY: They came to me, they briefed me on what they could see from the metadata, why it was significant. They thought they ought to seek a search warrant, wanted my approval to do that. I agreed, authorized it. So did the Department of Justice and then they reviewed — I was just making sure I get the numbers right.
During the — the following week, they reviewed 40,000 emails — I understated how many they reviewed — and found the 3,000 of them were work related and came from BlackBerry backups and a bunch of other things …
WHITEHOUSE: My question …
COMEY: And then 12 — and then 12 of them were classified, but we’d seen them all before.
Were the 3,000 “work-related” emails on Weiner’s laptop forwards from Abedin? Or the result of automatic backups? And wouldn’t the 12 classified emails Comey noted reasonably qualify as a “handful”, as the sources who spoke to the Post suggest?
To be clear, ProPublica’s “handful” is in relation to the emails that were forwarded “for printing.” The Washington Post’s “handful” references the number of forwarded emails that contained classified information.
Notably, ProPublica cited additional sources that claim “most of the emails got onto the computer as a result of backups of her Blackberry.” Comey’s exchange with Whitehouse doesn’t clash with this, and it explicitly names Blackberry backups as a source of some of the emails.
Both the Washington Post and ProPublica’s reports cite Comey’s “hundreds and thousands” statement, which sounds like “hundreds of thousands” – a number that would obviously conflict with the numbers Comey listed himself.
The conflict between Comey and these sources could lie in that phrase.
ProPublica’s sources claim Abedin forwarded only a “handful” of emails to Weiner, and that most were Blackberry backups. The Washington Post’s sources claim it was a “far smaller number than Comey described.” Both outlets’ sources pushed back on Comey’s claim that it was a “regular” practice for Abedin to forward Clinton emails to Weiner.
Neither outlet disputes Comey’s repeated claim that investigators who seized Weiner’s laptop in a separate investigation could see from the metadata that it contained thousands of emails “from the Clinton domain.” The question, it would seem, lies in how those emails got onto the laptop and how many were the result of forwarding.
Without ProPublica’s sources revealing at least what ballpark their “handful” is in, it’s possible Comey was not completely inaccurate.
The clearest apparent discrepancy is not between what ProPublica’s and the Post’s sources said, but between two different Comey comments.
Comey claimed “most of the [3,000] emails got onto the computer as a result of backups of her Blackberry,” but also that Abedin “forwarded hundreds and thousands of emails, some of which contain classified information.”
That could be contradictory.
How many of the 3,000 work-related emails were forwards and how many were backups? Possibly, Comey, when he said “she forwarded hundreds and thousands of emails,” he was including both work-related and not-work-related emails. It’s also possible Comey here spoke inaccurately and described as “forwarded” emails that really were *backed up* onto Weiner’s computer.
We can’t tell from his testimony.
Both Comey, and the sources who ran to news outlets, should clarify their numbers so we can understand the breadth of Abedin’s wrongdoing and Comey’s accuracy.
Emily Jashinsky is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
