Unlike the FBI directors who came before him, James Comey relishes the opportunity to share his political opinions with anyone who will listen. Fired for incompetence in May 2017, Comey has spent much of his retirement railing against the Trump administration and boasting about his own “ethical leadership.”
Lately, however, Comey can’t seem to find his words. Comey’s Twitter account has been uncharacteristically silent for the past six days as a conservative watchdog group just released emails showing how the FBI hurried to correct parts of Comey’s testimony about Hillary Clinton’s emails in 2017.
Inaccurate testimony
Obtained by Judicial Watch in response to last month’s court order by U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton, the email chain reveals how senior FBI agents were anxious to correct the record after Comey told Senate investigators that Huma Abedin, a top campaign staffer to then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, forwarded “hundreds and thousands” of Clinton’s work-related emails to her husband’s computer.
The FBI exonerated Clinton in June 2016 for sharing classified emails over an unsecured personal server, but the discovery of additional emails on Weiner’s laptop prompted the bureau to reopen its case against Clinton just days before the presidential election. Abedin’s husband, Anthony Weiner, was being separately investigated at the time for sexting with a high school student.
Comey has been widely criticized for reopening the email investigation so close to Election Day. Asked to answer questions about this decision on May 3, 2017, Comey told the Senate committee that Abedin made “a regular practice” of forwarding “hundreds and thousands” of emails from her boss to her husband’s computer.
However, federal agents familiar with the contents of Weiner’s computer were worried about the FBI director’s statements. They said that only a “small number” of the nearly 50,000 “potentially relevant” emails found on Weiner’s laptop had been manually forwarded from Abedin.
Panic at the bureau
On May 8, 2017, ProPublica was the first media outlet to report how Comey “mischaracterized” what the FBI discovered on Anthony Weiner’s laptop. “FBI officials have privately acknowledged that Comey misstated what Abedin did and what the FBI investigators found,” ProPublica reported.
In response, nearly a dozen federal agents discussed how to handle Comey’s testimony in an email thread titled, “Comey’s Testimony on Huma Abedin Forwarding Emails Was Inaccurate — ProPublica.” Comey’s chief of staff, Jim Rybicki, began circulating a draft letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee to explain his boss’s error.
“Below is a draft that has been reviewed by the Director. Please let me know your thoughts,” Rybicki wrote to his colleagues on the morning of May 9.
Later that day, the FBI sent the final draft of its letter to Congress, explaining that it was “intended to supplement” Comey’s testimony, by providing “the full context of what was reviewed and found on the laptop.”
President Donald Trump fired Comey just a few hours later, publishing a Justice Department memo which enumerated the FBI director’s “serious mistakes” in handling the Clinton email investigation.
Protecting Hillary
After Comey mentioned “hundreds and thousands” of emails in his testimony, “the FBI kind of went crazy because they didn’t like the number, they thought it might be wrong but they weren’t sure so they tried to muddy the record with Congress by sending them a letter that tried to walk it back but really didn’t,” Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton told Fox News’ Sean Hannity on Thursday night.
“It shows again how the FBI was concerned again about protecting Hillary Clinton,” Fitton said. Watch below:
Reviewed by The News on Donal Trump
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June 21, 2019
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