The ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee challenged the FBI director’s claim Wednesday that announcing a development in the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s email within days of the 2016 election was necessary.
The real choice FBI Director James Comey faced, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) wrote on Twitter, wasn’t whether to “conceal or speak” about the development, but rather whether or not to stick to the Justice Department’s policy against actions that could affect candidates close to an election.
Real choice was not conceal or speak. Comey spoke about Clinton & concealed Trump invest. Real choice was to abide by DOJ policy or violate.
— Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) May 3, 2017
During an oversight hearing in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, Comey explained his decision to announce the development — which yielded no new relevant information, but which Clinton has cited in part as the reason she lost the 2016 election.
“I stared at ‘speak’ and ‘conceal,’ and ‘speak’ would be really bad,” Comey said, referring to his decision to tell congressional leaders about the ultimately insignificant development in what had been a closed investigation. “There’s an election days away—Lordy, that would be really bad. Concealing in my view would be catastrophic, not just to the FBI but well beyond. And honestly as between really bad and catastrophic, I said to my team we’ve got to walk into the world of really bad.”
“Anybody who disagrees with me with me has to come back to Oct. 28 with me and stare at this and tell me what you would do,” Comey added. Would you speak or would you conceal?” he asked separately. “I could be wrong, but we honestly made the decision in those two choices and even in hindsight, and this has been one of the most painful decisions, I would make the same decision. I would not conceal that to Congress.”
Schiff later released an emailed statement on Comey’s reasoning:
Director Comey testified that his choice was to ‘conceal or speak’ about the Clinton investigation in the latter two weeks of the campaign. This highly-loaded description meant to justify the decision he made in the waning days of the presidential campaign is a poor characterization of the choice he faced. After all, and by this measure, the FBI Director chose to conceal the Trump investigation and reveal the Clinton investigation.
Nor does the distinction he has sought to make between the ‘open’ Trump investigation and the ‘closed’ Clinton investigation hold up to scrutiny. During the last weeks of the campaign, the Director reopened the Clinton investigation and it was then in precisely the same posture as the Trump investigation. The real choice the Director faced was between abiding by DOJ policy against discussing investigatory matters around an election or ignoring that policy, between consistency in his handling of the two investigations or inconsistency. Regrettably, for the Bureau, Department and the public interest, the Director chose to violate sound policy, taking the path of unjustifiable inconsistency.”
This post has been updated.
