Former FBI Director James Comey said on Thursday that Republicans have subpoenaed him to appear before a closed-door meeting of the House Judiciary Committee early next month.
In a Thanksgiving Day tweet, Comey said he would be happy to answer the House Judiciary Committee’s questions, but will “resist a ‘closed door’’ for fear that his testimony will be leaked and distorted.
“Got a subpoena from House Republicans. I’m still happy to sit in the light and answer all questions,” Comey tweeted. “But I will resist a ‘closed door’ thing because I’ve seen enough of their selective leaking and distortion. Let’s have a hearing and invite everyone to see.”
Happy Thanksgiving. Got a subpoena from House Republicans. I’m still happy to sit in the light and answer all questions. But I will resist a “closed door” thing because I’ve seen enough of their selective leaking and distortion.Let’s have a hearing and invite everyone to see.
The subpoena calls Comey to testify as part of the congressional inquiry into allegations of anti-Trump bias that led to the shutting down of the probe of Hillary Clinton’s private email server and the opening of the investigation into purported ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.
President calls the Mueller investigation a ‘total mess’ and ‘disgrace’ on social media; John Roberts reports from the White House.
Comey’s tweet partly confirms a story published in Politicothat reported that the former FBI director and former President Barack Obama’s attorney general, Loretta Lynch, had both been subpoenaed.
A source told Fox News that Lynch and Comey had indeed been subpoenaed. So far Lynch has not made any public statement on the subpoena.
The office of Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., the outgoing chair of the House Judiciary Committee, was also unavailable for comment.
Comey has been the target of attacks by both Trump and Republicans for his time at the head of the FBI, with the president labelling the investigation into allegations of collusion between his campaign and Russia – now headed by Special Counsel Robert Mueller – a “witch hunt.”
Democrats, however, argue that the GOP-led investigation in the House is itself a partisan move to undermine Mueller’s investigation and have promised to renew investigations of their own into Trump’s attacks on the FBI and Justice Department when they take the House majority in January.
In a statement sent to Fox News, Comey’s lawyer, David Kelley, said: “Mr. Comey embraces and welcomes a hearing open to the public, but the subpoena issued yesterday represents an abuse of process, a divergence from House rules and its presumption of transparency. Accordingly, Mr. Comey will resist in Court this abuse of process.”
The news of the subpoenas comes on the heels of a busy week in the Mueller investigation that saw Trump provide the special counsel with written answers to questions about his knowledge of Russian interference in the 2016 election, his lawyers said Tuesday, avoiding at least for now a potentially risky sit-down with prosecutors.
The compromise outcome, nearly a year in the making, offers some benefit to both sides. Trump at least temporarily averts the threat of an in-person interview, which his lawyers have long resisted, while Mueller secures on-the-record statements whose accuracy the president will be expected to stand by for the duration of the investigation.
The responses may also help stave off a potential subpoena fight over Trump’s testimony if Mueller deems them satisfactory. They represent the first time the president is known to have described to investigators his knowledge of key moments under scrutiny by prosecutors.
Also this week, it was revealed by the New York Times that Trump told his counsel’s office last spring that he wanted to prosecute Clinton and former FBI Comey, an idea that prompted White House lawyers to prepare a memo warning of consequences ranging up to possible impeachment.
Then-counsel Don McGahn told the president he had no authority to order such a prosecution, and he had White House lawyers prepare the memo arguing against such a move, The Associated Press confirmed with a person familiar with the matter who was not authorized to discuss the situation. McGahn said that Trump could request such a probe but that even asking could lead to accusations of abuse of power, the newspaper said.
James The Corrupt Comey and Peter S. Needs to be investigated NOW.
The FBI didn’t flag that some emails from Hillary Clinton’s private email server were marked classified with a “(C)” when they were sent — something that seemingly would have been one of the first and most obvious checks in an investigation, and one that FBI agents instantly recognized put the facts at odds with Clinton’s public statements.
The Intelligence Community Inspector General noticed it after the FBI missed it, texts between FBI agent Peter Strzok and his mistress, FBI lawyer Lisa Page, reveal. “Holy cow,” Strzok wrote, “if the FBI missed this, what else was missed?”
“Remind me to tell you to flag for Andy [redacted] emails we (actually ICIG) found that have portion marks (C) on a couple of paras. DoJ was Very Concerned about this,” he wrote.
“Found on the 30k [emails] provided to State originally. No one noticed. It cuts against ‘I never sent or received anything marked classified,’” he wrote, referring to statements by Clinton downplaying the danger of her email practices.
Much of the more in-depth investigation considered whether Clinton and her aides emailed materials that were classified but were not marked as such, a harder determination to make.
The exchange occurred on June 12, 2016. FBI Director Jim Comey disclosed the findings of marked-classified emails to the House on July 7.
On May 10, 2016, Strzok had suggested that in his mind, the investigation was closer to being finished than to just getting started — suggesting that if it weren’t for the inspector general, it might have closed down and cleared her despite missing the most obvious first step.
“I cannot overstate to you the sense of urgency about wanting to logically and effectively conclude this investigation,” he said.
The ommission allowed Clinton to repeatedly and prominently state that she had “never received nor sent any material that was marked classified” on her private email server while secretary of state.
She even said so at major debates, and because the FBI hadn’t caught the letter (C), and therefore never stated its findings, PolitiFact rated the claim “Half True.”
When the FBI belatedly noticed and relayed the truth, the fact-checking site said “Now we know it’s just plain wrong.”
Clinton decided to print out 55,000 pages instead of providing the State Department with her emails in their digital format, a technique sometimes used by lawyers to make searches harder for their opponents. A CTRL-F search for “(C)” could have missed the markings because State had to re-digitize the forms with Optical Character Recognition, which can get tripped up on symbols, perhaps interpreting it as something like “[C]” or a copyright symbol. Nonetheless, the classified marker always appears at the beginning of a paragraph and is visually distinct.
The comments come from 500 pages of texts released Wednesday by Senate investigators.
Markings denoting the different levels of classified information include (C) for confidential, (S) for secret, and (TS) for top secret.
