If I'd kept quiet I would have been criticized: Comey on DOJ inspector general's report

June 19, 2018June 19, 2018 WKXA

Kristoffer Tripplaar/For The Washington Post via Getty Images(WASHINGTON) — In his first remarks since the Justice Department’s inspector general’s report was released, former FBI Director Jim Comey said Tuesday he doesn’t regret the way he handled the Hillary Clinton email case – despite the report’s harsh criticism.

Comey initially responded in a New York Times op-ed last Thursday.

“I was strongly criticized in a report that came out last week – a report that I urged be done because I wasn’t certain that I was right. When you’re making hard decisions, anyone who’s certain is a lunatic. I thought we had it right but I thought other people might see it differently. And the inspector general, the watchdog for the Department of Justice, sees it differently,” Comey said while during an interview in Berlin with the German newspaper Die Zeit.

“He thinks I should’ve been quiet and I respect his work,” Comey said, referring to DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz. “I praised his work, but I still think he’s underweighting the damage to the institution and I say with a smile, I think if I had chosen that, to be quiet, he’d be writing a report about how I damaged the institution by that choice. And so I don’t agree with his weighing even though I respect the criticism because I knew reasonable people could see it differently,” he continued.

He later said he wanted to model what the rule of law looks like, despite getting what he described as “ripped” by Horowitz.

Comey was also asked if he should apologize to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton after it was revealed that he was using a Gmail account to conduct FBI business.

“Again, I don’t want to criticize her, but it shows that even at this late stage she doesn’t understand what the investigation in her case was about,” he said.

“It was not about a use of her personal email system and she didn’t get that during the investigation because she used to say, well Colin Powell, when he was secretary of state, used AOL. That was not what it was about. It was about communicating about classified topics on that system when those topics have to be done on a classified system..” Comey continued.

Comey says he used his Gmail account to send speeches back and forth from his personal account to his work account because he had to write his own. He stressed that he never talked about anything “remotely classified.”

He also touched on the texts between FBI Special Agent Peter Strozk and then-FBI lawyer Lisa Page. Comey said he had no idea they were having an affair and, that to conceal the relationship from their spouses, they used their FBI phones.

“We archive the texts, so maybe it’s a sign we don’t have the brightest people working at our organization,” he joked.

“I never saw any indication of bias and Peter Strozk did the first draft of my letter to Congress on October 28th that Hillary Clinton blames for her losing the election, so how exactly is he trying to get Donald Trump?” he said.

“I don’t see any evidence of a conspiracy, if the president and his allies want to claim a conspiracy they have to encompass all the data, I don’t see how you could approach this and conclude we were on Hillary Clinton’s side or on Donald Trump’s side and I never saw any indication from those two people,” he said.