FBI documents: Comey began drafting statements on Clinton email months before announcement
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Senator Lindsey Graham says James Comey will testify no matter what if he has anything to do with it. Veuer’s Nick Cardona (@nickcardona93) has that story.
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WASHINGTON — Former FBI director James Comey began drafting statements related to the Hillary Clinton email server investigation about two months before his announcement recommending no criminal charges, according to documents released Monday by the FBI.
The documents are almost entirely redacted, except for a thread of three May 2016 email exchanges among Comey and top deputies, including Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and then-chief of staff James Rybicki.
The body of two of the three emails are completely redacted. A third, dated May 16, contains a single sentence from Rybicki, asking seven top officials to “send me any comments on this statement so we may roll into a master doc for discussion with the director at a future date.”
The substance of the “statement” also was redacted.
The only reference to Clinton’s emails is in the FBI’s own release, saying the documents are “drafts of Director Comey’s July 5, 2016 statement regarding email server investigation.”
Republican Sens. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina first raised the issue this summer, accusing Comey of drafting an exoneration statement before investigators had interviewed key witnesses including Clinton.Â
“Conclusion first, fact-gathering second — that’s no way to run an investigation,” Grassley and Graham said in an August letter to the FBI, requesting internal documents related to Comey’s draft statements.Â
Read more: Trump again blasts Comey for ‘rigged’ Clinton investigation
Clinton was interviewed just days before Comey announced on July 5, 2016, that the FBI was closing the investigation.
Comey briefly reopened the inquiry in October and then closed it on the eve of the election, engulfing the bureau in a political firestorm.
Clinton blames Comey’s decision to reopen the inquiry as contributing to her defeat.
Comey was abruptly fired earlier this year by President Trump, who expressed displeasure with the director’s handling of the investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. Trump also said he disagreed with the director’s handling of the Clinton matter, even though he lauded Comey’s decision to reopen the email investigation while a candidate.
Trump’s firing of Comey prompted a cascade of actions, including the appointment of former FBI director Robert Mueller to lead the ongoing Russia inquiry as special counsel for the Justice Department.Â
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