FBI director James Comey generated national headlines last week with his dramatic testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee, explaining his “incredibly painful” decision to go public about the Hillary Clinton emails found on Anthony Weiner’s laptop.
Perhaps Comey’s most surprising revelation was that Huma Abedin — Weiner’s wife and a top Clinton deputy — had made “a regular practice” of forwarding “hundreds and thousands” of Clinton messages to her husband, “some of which contain classified information.” Comey testified that Abedin had done this so that the disgraced former congressman could print them out for her boss. (Weiner’s laptop was seized after he came under criminal investigation for sex crimes, following a media report about his online relationship with a teenager.)
The New York Post plastered its story on the front page with a photo of an underwear-clad Weiner and the headline: “HARD COPY: Huma sent Weiner classified Hillary emails to print out.” The Daily News went with a similar front-page screamer: “HUMA ERROR: Sent classified emails to sext maniac Weiner.”
The problem: Much of what Comey said about this was inaccurate. Now the FBI is trying to figure out what to do about it.
FBI officials have privately acknowledged that Comey misstated what Abedin did and what the FBI investigators found. On Monday, the FBI was said to be preparing to correct the record by sending a letter to Congress later this week. But that plan now appears on hold, with the bureau undecided about what to do.
ProPublica is reporting a story on the FBI’s handling of the Clinton emails and raised questions with government officials last week about possible inaccuracies in Comey’s statements about Abedin.
It could not be learned how the mistake occurred. The FBI and Abedin declined ProPublica’s requests for comment on the director’s misstatements.
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.
It was not clear how many, if any, of the forwarded emails were among the 12 “classified” emails Comey said had been found on Weiner’s laptop. None of the messages carried classified markings at the time they were sent.
Comey’s Senate testimony about Abedin came as he offered his first public explanation for his decision to reveal the existence of the emails on Oct. 28, days ahead of the 2016 election and before FBI agents had examined them.
When agents obtained a search warrant that allowed them to read the messages, they turned out to be mostly duplicates of emails the bureau had obtained earlier in the investigation. Comey announced just before Election Day that nothing had changed in the Clinton case, which had been closed four months earlier without criminal charges.
During his testimony, Comey said that part of the reason for revealing the existence of the messages was that some appeared to fill an eight-week gap in records from early in Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State. Comey said the FBI viewed them as “the golden missing emails that would change this case” because they might provide insights into Clinton’s intent when she set up her private server.
Comey testified that investigators searching Weiner’s laptop in the days before the election also found that “somehow, her emails are being forwarded to Anthony Weiner, including classified information, by [Clinton’s] assistant, Huma Abedin.” Abedin, he later testified, “appears to have had a regular practice of forwarding emails to him, for him I think to print out for her so she could then deliver them to the Secretary of State.”
After Comey painted this troubling picture, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz demanded to know why Abedin and Weiner hadn’t been charged with mishandling classified information, calling the failure to do so “puzzling.”
“You said Ms. Abedin forwarded hundreds or thousands of classified emails to her husband on a non-government, non-classified computer,” said Cruz. “How is — how does that conduct not directly violate the statute?”
Comey offered a partial clarification, telling the Texas senator: “…if I said that, I misspoke. She forwarded hundreds and thousands of emails, some of which contain classified information.” Comey agreed both Abedin and Weiner “potentially” might have committed a crime, but said the FBI found no basis for concluding either had acted with criminal intent. Comey said the FBI had been unable to discuss the matter with Weiner “because he has pending criminal problems of other sorts.”
Abedin’s lawyer issued a statement after Comey’s Oct. 28 letter, saying Abedin had no idea how her exchanges with Clinton got on Weiner’s laptop, and no idea that they were there.
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Clinton Derangement Syndrome will puzzle medical students hundreds of years in the future. SMH.
One of the absolute “facts” that make up the alternate universe that Republicans live in, is that Hillary Clinton is an evil woman, who routinely commits crimes, and those crimes are routinely hidden by other Democrats. When you allow yourself to visit that alternate universe you sometimes get contaminated by exposure to those “facts”. Comey apparently did visit that alternate universe at some time in the past, and he is still showing the effects of being contaminated by it. Various exorcists have attempted to drive out that demonic stress, but apparently haven’t succeeded. Thus, Comey often is controlled by forces not quite under his control.
Comey still is a really wonderful man, one who is patriotic to the core, who is highly qualified and respected by all. So, the real question here, is, does anyone know a really good exorcist, who works for a reasonable fee?
Crimes. Speeches to Wall Streeters. Same difference.
And by the way, I feel sick again.
I suspect a lot of Comey’s problem is simple technical ignorance. He just doesn’t understand how email, or really any digital systems, works. In his mind, if the emails are on her husband’s computer the only way they could have gotten there is if she actively sent them to his email account. He doesn’t understand that multiple people can use the same computer under separate profiles with separate email accounts. His ignorance of technology is reflected in his statement that he didn’t think they could go through all those documents before the election. He thought someone would actually have to read each one.
This is not to exonerate his behavior, or the behavior of FBI agents. It very well may be that the agent(s) who reported the find intentionally misled him as to the seriousness of the situation and the difficulty of resolving it quickly, or he may be obfuscating now. And his July performance clearly reflects bias, conscious or unconscious. But it doesn’t necessarily reflect intentional misstatement of facts. It may reflect only his ignorance of how the technology of email, Windows or other operating systems, and computers in general work. It may only reflect the same lack of knowledge that got Hillary Clinton in so much trouble.