FBI Director James Comey suggested Wednesday that the Obama administration could have gone public earlier about Russia’s interference in the U.S presidential election.
“I thought it was very important to call out what the Russians were trying to do with our election,” Comey testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee. “And I offered in August myself to be a voice for that in a public piece calling it out. The Obama administration didn’t take advantage of that in August. They did it in October. But I thought that was very important to call out.”
Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE), like other Democrats on the committee, repeatedly pressed Comey to explain why he publicly discussed the FBI’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server and not its probe into the Trump campaign’s potential ties to Russian officials, which began in July 2016.
Comey said a foreign power’s meddling in the election was a matter of “counterintelligence,” and that his announcement regarding the Clinton server probe was made without consideration of political partisanship.
The Obama administration reportedly was reluctant to respond to Russian hacking ahead of Election Day because officials feared being accused of tipping the scales for Clinton and because they believed that she would win.
In early October, the Department of Homeland Security and Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a joint statement blaming Russian leadership for orchestrating mass cyberattacks on Democratic groups and political figures.
