FBI Director James Comey writes a letter to Congress announcing that he’s found evidence possibly related to a closed investigation of Hillary Clinton’s private email server.
In the letter, he first claims that emails discovered in a separate investigation are “pertinent” to the Clinton case. Later, he says “the FBI cannot yet assess whether or not this material may be significant.”
Many reporters (and voters) think this means the FBI reopened the Clinton investigation, but that’s not the case. The letter only asserts that the new evidence will be reviewed to determine if the case is worth re-opening.
The Justice Department strongly discouraged [a letter to Congress] and told him that he would be breaking with longstanding policy… Senior Justice Department officials did not move to stop him from sending the letter, officials said, but they did everything short of it, pointing to policies against talking about current criminal investigations or being seen as meddling in elections…
Justice Department officials were particularly puzzled about why Mr. Comey had alerted Congress — and by extension, the public — before agents even began reading the newly discovered emails to determine whether they contained classified information or added new facts to the case.
The New York Times
Donald Trump tells the press and his supporters that this news is “the biggest story since Watergate” and that it “changes everything.” He smears Clinton as an elite criminal everyday until the election.
Clinton, likely confident that she hasn’t done anything wrong and Comey is bluffing, demands that the FBI “release all the information that it has.”
The FBI has no comment.
Two days before Comey’s letter, Rudy Giuliani told Fox News that Trump has “some pretty big surprises” coming in the next few days. Today, he says on a radio show that Comey was pushed to write the letter by “the pressure of a group of FBI agents… I know that from former agents. I know that even from a few active agents.”
One of Giuliani’s sources is believed to be the former head of the New York agency, James Kallstrom. He has been on Trump’s payroll since the 1970s when he was only a junior agent. Kallstrom made TV appearances calling the Clintons a “crime family” leading up to the election.
According to agents in the New York office, the FBI was given the impression that if they didn’t reveal that they had evidence that might be harmful to the Clinton campaign, then that information would leak and backfire on the agency. However, they also have evidence against Donald Trump, and no one’s threatening leaks about him.
[Our evidence] had the potential to derail, and quite possibly, defeat Mr. Trump. But the thought of exposing that information never crossed my mind.
FBI agent Peter Strzok
Editor’s Note: Let’s be clear. James Comey wrote a public letter to Congress, which is not policy, to say the FBI might or might not have new evidence against Hillary Clinton… less than two weeks before the election. All the public understood is “the FBI is investigating Hillary Clinton.”
External Sources
New York Times 1 (Archived)
New York Times 2 (Archived)
New York Times 3 (Archived)
The New York Times 4 (Archived)
Photo: Public Domain
