Fired ex-FBI Director James Comey is having a difficult time keeping his facts straight. And that includes his testimony under oath of his actions before and after he cleared Hillary Clinton of a host of alleged crimes for classified email breaches.
New shocking intelligence provided by Sen. Chuck Grassley’s Judiciary Committee this week appears to show Comey had prepared a statement clearing Clinton months before the FBI interviewed her and key aides linked to the 33,000 emails Clinton lost from her home-grown, unsecured computer server. That computer was intentionally kept separate from the State Department’s secure messaging infrastructure for classified communications.
But the revelations from Grassley and his senate colleagues mean Comey likely perjured himself on several occasions, making intentionally obtuse and false statements to lawmakers since 2016 regarding his controversial handling of the Hillary Clinton email case.
Grassley said Comey decided not to pursue charges against Clinton even before the FBI interviewed her and aides Cheryl Mills, Heather Samuelson, and other “key FBI interviews had not yet occurred when Mr. Comey began drafting his exoneration statement.” Likewise, Comey’s testimony in front of Congress differed greatly from the facts uncovered by the Senate Judiciary.
According to one Justice Department official, the discrepancies in Comey’s testimony could warrant an easy perjury indictment.
One such exchange is particularly glaring and proves damning to Comey, who stated the following to Rep. John Ratcliffe from Texas in front of the House Judiciary Committee on Sept. 28, 2016.
Mr. GOODLATTE. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Texas,
Mr. Ratcliffe, for 5 minutes.Mr. RATCLIFFE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Director, did you make the decision not to recommend criminal
charges relating to classified information before or after Hillary
Clinton was interviewed by the FBI on July the 2nd?Mr. COMEY. After.
Mr. RATCLIFFE. Okay. Then I am going to need your help in trying
to understand how that is possible. I think there are a lot of
prosecutors or former prosecutors that are shaking our heads at
how that could be the case.Because if there was ever any real possibility that Hillary Clinton
might be charged for something that she admitted to on July
the 2nd, why would two of the central witnesses in a potential
prosecution against her be allowed to sit in the same room to hear
the testimony?And I have heard your earlier answers to that. You said that,
well, it was because the interview was voluntary and they were her
lawyers. But I think you are skirting the real issue there, Director.
First of all, the fact that it was voluntary, it didn’t have to be,
right? You could have empaneled an investigative grand jury, she
could have been subpoenaed. And I know you have said that you
can’t comment on that, and I don’t really care about the decision
about whether or not there should have been a grand jury here, but
since you didn’t have one, it goes to the issue at hand about whether
or not this interview should have ever taken place.With due respect to the answers that you have given, the FBI
and the Department of Justice absolutely control whether or not an
interview is going to take place with other witnesses in the room.
Because the simple truth is that under the circumstances as you
have described those interviews never take place. If there was ever
any possibility that something Hillary Clinton might have said on
July 2 could have possibly resulted in criminal charges that might
possibly have resulted in a trial against her relating to this classified
information, well, then, to use your words, Director, I don’t
think that there is any reasonable prosecutor out there who would
have allowed two immunized witnesses central to the prosecution
proving the case against her to sit in the room with the interview,
the FBI interview, of the subject of that investigation.
And if I heard you earlier today, in your long career, I heard you
say that you have never had that circumstance. Is that—did I hear
you correctly?Mr. COMEY. That is correct, but——
Mr. RATCLIFFE. Okay. And I never have either, and I have never
met a prosecutor that has ever had that.
So, to me, the only way that an interview takes place with the
two central witnesses and the subject of the investigation is if the
decision has already been made that all three people in that room
are not going to be charged.Mr. COMEY. Can I respond?
Mr. RATCLIFFE. Yes. Please.
Mr. COMEY. I know in our political lives sometimes people casually
accuse each other of being dishonest, but if colleagues of ours
believe I am lying about when I made this decision, please urge
them to contact me privately so we can have a conversation about
this.All I can do is to tell you again, the decision was made after that,
because I didn’t know what was going to happen in that interview.
She would maybe lie during the interview in a way we could
prove—let me finish.I would also urge you to tell me what tools we have as prosecutors
and investigators to kick out of an interview someone that the
subject says is their lawyer.Mr. RATCLIFFE. That is not my point. The interview never should
have taken place if you were going to allow the central witnesses
that you needed to prove the case to sit there and listen to the testimony
that the subject was going to give. It never happens. It has
never happened to you, and it has never happened to me or any
other prosecutor that I have met.And you know you have defended the people that were involved
in this of being great, but if it has never happened, I wonder why
this is a case of first precedent with respect to that practice that
you and I have never seen in our careers.Mr. COMEY. You and I don’t control the universe of what has
happened. I suspect it is very unusual.A key fact, though, that maybe is leading to some confusion here
is we had already concluded we didn’t have a prosecutable case
against Heather Samuelson or Cheryl Mills at that point. If they
were targets of our investigation, maybe we would have canceled
the interview, but, frankly, our focus was on the subject. The subject
at that point was Hillary Clinton.
Mr. RATCLIFFE. All right. Let me move on.
According to the FBI’s own documents, Paul Combetta, in his
first interview on February the 18th told FBI agents that he had
no knowledge about the preservation order for the Clinton emails,
correct?Mr. COMEY. I don’t know the dates of that, but I am sure it is
in the 302.Mr. RATCLIFFE. Okay.
But then 21⁄2 months later, on May the 3rd, his second interview,
he made a 180-degree turn, and he admitted that, in fact, he was
aware of the preservation order and he was aware of the fact that
that meant that he shouldn’t disturb the Clinton emails, correct?Mr. COMEY. Yep.
Mr. RATCLIFFE. Okay. Well, then I need your help again here, because
when I was at the Department of Justice, your reward for
lying to Federal agents was an 18 U.S.C. 1001 charge or potential
obstruction-of-justice charge; it wasn’t immunity.Mr. COMEY. Depends on where you are trying to go with the investigation.
If it is a low-level guy and you are trying move up in
the chain, you might think about it differently.Mr. RATCLIFFE. But he lied to an FBI agent. You don’t think that
is important?Mr. COMEY. Oh, it is very important. It happens all the time, unfortunately.
It is very, very important. Sometimes you prosecute
that person and end their cooperation; sometimes you try and sign
them up.Mr. RATCLIFFE. But if they lie to an FBI agent after they are
given immunity, they have violated the terms of their immunity
agreement.Mr. COMEY. Oh, sure, after, after the agreement.
Mr. RATCLIFFE. And so that is my point. He shouldn’t have immunity
anymore.Mr. COMEY. Oh, I am sorry. I may have misunderstood you. He
lied to us before he came clean under the immunity agreement and
admitted that he had deleted the emails.Mr. RATCLIFFE. No, not according to the FBI’s documents. He
had the immunity agreement in December of 2015. These interviews
took place in February and March and May of this year,
2016.Mr. COMEY. Combetta?
Mr. RATCLIFFE. Combetta.
Mr. COMEY. Okay. Then I am—then I am confused and
misremembering, but I don’t think that is right.Mr. RATCLIFFE. Okay. Well, let me—my time has expired, but I
have one last question, and I think that it is important.
At this point, based on everything, do you think that any laws
were broken by Hillary Clinton or her lawyers?Mr. COMEY. Do I think that any laws were broken?
Mr. RATCLIFFE. Yeah.
Mr. COMEY. I don’t think there is evidence to establish that.
Mr. RATCLIFFE. Okay. Well, I think you are making my point
when you say there is no evidence to establish that. Maybe not in
the way she handled classified information, but with respect to obstruction
of justice—and you have a pen here—I just want to make
the sure the record is clear about the evidence that you didn’t have,
that you can’t use to prove. So this comes from the FBI’s own report.It says that the FBI didn’t have the Clintons’ personal Apple
server used for Hillary Clinton work emails. That was never located,
so the FBI could never examine it. An Apple MacBook laptop
and thumb drive that contained Hillary Clinton’s email archives
was lost, so the FBI never examined that. Two BlackBerry devices
provided to the FBI didn’t have SIM cards or SD data cards. Thirteen
Hillary Clinton personal mobile devices were lost, discarded,
or destroyed with a hammer, so the FBI clearly didn’t examine
those. Various server backups were deleted over time, so the FBI
didn’t examine that.After the State Department and my colleague Mr. Gowdy here
notified Ms. Clinton that her records would be sought by the
Benghazi Committee, copies of her emails on the laptops of both of
her lawyers, Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson, were wiped
clean with BleachBit, so the FBI didn’t review that. After those
emails were subpoenaed, Hillary Clinton’s email archive was also
permanently deleted from the Platte River Network with
BleachBit, so the FBI didn’t review that. And also after the subpoena,
backups of the Platte River server were manually deleted.
Now, Director, hopefully that list is substantially accurate, because
it comes from your own documents. My question to you is
this: Any one of those in that very, very long list, to me, says obstruction
of justice. Collectively, they scream obstruction of justice.
And to ignore them, I think, really allows not just reasonable prosecutors
but reasonable people to believe that maybe the decision on
this was made a long time ago not to prosecute Hillary Clinton.
And, with that, I yield back.Mr. GOODLATTE. Director, do you care to respond?
Mr. COMEY. Just very briefly. To ignore that which we don’t
have—we are in a fact-based world, so we make evaluations based
on the evidence we are able to gather using the tools that we have.
So it is hard for me to react to these things that you don’t have.
So that is my—that is my reaction to it.