Comey letter receives surprise criticism from GOP
FBI Director James Comey’s bombshell letter to congressional leaders informing them of newly discovered emails that might be “pertinent” to the bureau’s investigation of Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server is being criticized by a broad spectrum of politicians on Capitol Hill — including several top Republicans.
Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, the Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, sent a four-page letter to Comey on Monday asking for more details on the emails — saying the director’s “difficult decision” to disclose the discovery of the emails so close to Election Day requires more context for voters.
“Without additional context, your disclosure is not fair to Congress, the American people, or Secretary Clinton,” Grassley wrote. “In the absence of additional, authoritative information from the FBI in the wake of your vague disclosure, Congress and the American people are left to sift through anonymous leaks from Justice Department officials to the press of varying levels of detail, reliability, and consistency. The American people deserve better than that.”
Top Senate Democrats — including Patrick Leahy, Dianne Feinstein and other ranking members of national security and oversight committees — blasted Comey’s letter too.
“This letter is troubling because it is vaguely worded and leaves so many questions unanswered,” they wrote. “It is not clear whether the emails identified by the FBI are even in the custody of the FBI, whether any of the emails have already been reviewed, whether Secretary Clinton sent or received them, or whether they even have any significance to the FBI’s previous investigation.”
Related: Clinton campaign: Comey’s letter ‘strange,’ ‘deeply troubling’
“The American people deserve more disclosure without delay,” the Democrats continued. “Anything less would be irresponsible.”
Comey’s decision, they added, “breaks with the longstanding tradition of the Department of Justice and the FBI of exercising extreme caution in the days leading up to an election.”
“I think this was probably not the right thing for Comey to do — the protocol here — to come out this close to an election,” Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, Republican chairman of the staunchly conservative House Freedom Caucus, told Fox News Radio on Monday. “But this whole case has been mishandled and now it is what it is.”
Comey’s short, vague letter to Congress rocked the presidential race on Friday. The FBI director said new emails “appear to be pertinent” to the bureau’s completed probe of Clinton’s use of a private server.
The emails were reportedly discovered on the laptop of disgraced ex-Rep. Anthony Weiner, the estranged husband of top Clinton aide Huma Abedin. Weiner is the subject of an ongoing and separate FBI investigation into his alleged sexting with a 15-year-old girl.
But Yahoo News reported on Saturday that FBI agents had not been able to review any of the newly discovered material because the bureau had not yet gotten a search warrant to read them.
At the time Comey wrote the letter to Congress, “he had no idea what was in the content of the emails,” one government official told Yahoo News.
Exclusive: FBI did not have warrant to review new Abedin emails
Former Bush administration officials also criticized Comey’s move.
“There’s a longstanding policy of not doing anything that could influence an election,” George J. Terwilliger III, a deputy attorney general under President George H.W. Bush, told the New York Times. “Those guidelines exist for a reason. Sometimes, that makes for hard decisions. But bypassing them has consequences.”
Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales told MSNBC that Comey made “an error in judgment in releasing this letter which really says nothing.”
Other former federal prosecutors, including ex-Attorney General Eric Holder, penned an open letter calling Comey’s letter “unprecedented.”
“Many of us have worked with Director Comey; all of us respect him. But his unprecedented decision to publicly comment on evidence in what may be an ongoing inquiry just eleven days before a presidential election leaves us both astonished and perplexed,” their letter said. “We cannot recall a prior instance where a senior Justice Department official— Republican or Democrat — has, on the eve of a major election, issued a public statement where the mere disclosure of information may impact the election’s outcome, yet the official acknowledges the information to be examined may not be significant or new.”
“Perhaps most troubling,” they added, “is the precedent set by this departure from the Department’s widely-respected, non-partisan traditions.”
On Sunday, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., fired off a scathing letter to Comey suggesting the FBI chief’s “partisan action” may have broken a law “that bars FBI officials from using their official authority to influence an election.”
Reid also made a reference to alleged ties between Donald Trump’s Republican presidential campaign and Moscow.
“In my communications with you and other top officials in the national security community, it has become clear that you possess explosive information about close ties and coordination between Donald Trump, his top advisors, and the Russian government,” Reid wrote. “The public has a right to know this information. I wrote to you months ago calling for this information to be released. There is no danger to American interests from releasing it. And yet you continue to resist calls to inform the public of this critical information.”
On Monday, NBC News reported that the FBI has been conducting a preliminary inquiry into the foreign business connections of Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort.
Manafort responded, saying there was no such FBI investigation “that I’m aware of.”
“This is all political propaganda,” he told NBC.
The Clinton campaign is seizing on what it sees as a double standard — and calling on Comey to officially release any information the bureau has on Trump.
“Director Comey felt it was incumbent upon him to announce that the FBI had some information he’d never even looked at, but they won’t reveal connections to Russia,” Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook said on CNN Tuesday. “We just want all this information out there on both candidates.”
“The letter that he released has led to endless speculation by Republicans, which is getting reported,” Mook added. “So all that we’re asking so that reporting can be fair is that the information get released. Release whatever information they have, and then, if you’re in the business of releasing information about investigations on presidential candidates, release everything you have on Donald Trump.”
South Carolina Rep. Trey Gowdy, a Republican who serves on the House Oversight Committee, says the FBI should not be discussing the facts of an investigation until it’s complete, but doesn’t blame Comey.
“It is difficult and unusual because of decisions made by people not named Jim Comey,” Gowdy said on CNN. “Secretary Clinton is the reason you and I are having this conversation, not Jim Comey.”
