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Comey Defends Russia Inquiry in Senate Testimony Comey Defends Russia Inquiry in Senate Testimony
(about 4 hours later)
WASHINGTON — Senate Republicans sought on Wednesday to promote their efforts to rewrite the narrative of the Trump-Russia investigation before Election Day, using a hearing with the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey to cast doubt on the entire inquiry by highlighting problems with a narrower aspect of it. WASHINGTON — The former F.B.I. director James B. Comey testified on Wednesday before a Republican-led Senate committee seeking to discredit the investigation he opened during the 2016 election into ties between Donald J. Trump’s campaign and Russia.
Led by Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee spent hours burrowing into mistakes and omissions made by the F.B.I. when it applied for court permission to wiretap the former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page in 2016 and 2017. Republicans drew on that flawed process to renew their claims that Mr. Comey and his agents had acted with political bias, ignoring an independent review that debunked the notion of a plot against President Trump. With another presidential election looming, Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee were eager to portray President Trump as a victim of a politically motivated smear by the F.B.I. that unfairly cast a shadow over his presidency. And they contended that Mr. Comey was the ringleader.
Mr. Comey, who testified by video from his home, rejected the Republicans’ conclusions and pointed to the findings of that review by the Justice Department’s inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz, who detailed the mistakes in the applications for permission to eavesdrop on Mr. Page but concluded that there was no evidence they stemmed from political bias. Mr. Comey strongly defended the F.B.I.’s handling of the investigation, including his decision to open it. But he acknowledged, as he has before, that his initial claims were wrong that a wiretap of a former Trump campaign adviser, Carter Page, was properly handled and conceded that the bureau had been sloppy on that aspect of the broader inquiry.
“In the main, it was done by the book, it was appropriate and it was essential that it be done,” Mr. Comey said of the Russia inquiry. He testified by video from his home.
But Republicans seized on dubious intelligence disclosed a day earlier by the Trump administration to accuse Mr. Comey of ignoring what they portrayed as a plot by Democrats to trick F.B.I. investigators into targeting the Trump campaign in the first place and then weaponize the inquiry on the campaign trail. Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, the Judiciary Committee chairman, renewed his criticism of the F.B.I.’s investigation of ties between Russian election interference and the Trump campaign.
“I’m beginning to understand there was a two-tiered system here,” Mr. Graham said. “When it came to Trump, there were no rules, plow ahead, ignore everything, lie if you need to, alter documents. When it came to Clinton, it seems to be a completely different standard.” The panel has for months pounded away at the inquiry, building its work on an investigation by the Justice Department’s independent inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz, that found evidence of negligence and errors in one narrow aspect of the investigation: the F.B.I.’s applications to wiretap Mr. Page. But where the inspector general concluded there was no evidence of illegal activity or a politically motivated plot by senior department officials, Mr. Graham insists there may have been.
The hearing was the latest action by Mr. Graham to undercut the Russia inquiry. Working with Attorney General William P. Barr and John Ratcliffe, the director of national intelligence, he has disclosed declassified records that cast investigators in a sinister light but that Democrats say are distorted selections. Mr. Comey signed off on some of the certifications for the warrant applications and, as director, was the top bureau official responsible for the investigation until he was fired by Mr. Trump in the spring of 2017.
Mr. Trump, who fired Mr. Comey in May 2017 after the F.B.I. director refused to say publicly that the president was not under investigation for his ties to Russia, promoted the attacks, writing on Twitter shortly after the hearing that Mr. Comey “should be arrested on the spot!” for defending the investigation. But in an opening statement, Mr. Graham more narrowly trained his focus on the secret wiretap warrants and made nary a mention of Mr. Comey.
Mr. Comey readily conceded that the applications were sloppy and testified that he would not have signed off on them knowing what he does now. “I’m saying this to my Democratic friends: If it happened to us, it could happen to you. Every American should be worried about this,” Mr. Graham said. “This is not just an abuse of power against Mr. Page and the Trump campaign. This is a system failure.”
“It’s embarrassing. It’s sloppy. I’ve run out of words,” Mr. Comey said. The committee has already publicly questioned two former deputy attorneys general, Rod J. Rosenstein and Sally Yates, who oversaw the Russia investigation and signed off on the applications for the secret wiretap warrants targeting Mr. Page. Both expressed regret for errors identified by Mr. Horowitz but dismissed assertions by Republicans on the panel that their actions were politically motivated or that Mr. Trump’s campaign need not have been investigated.
But he insisted that the wiretap of Mr. Page, a relatively junior aide who had left the campaign before the F.B.I. secured a court order to wiretap him based on suspicions about his ties to Russia, was a “slice” of the larger effort to determine whether Mr. Trump and his team were conspiring with Russia’s election interference operations. And he angered Republicans by repeatedly saying he could not remember details of the case. Democrats have opposed Mr. Graham at every turn, accusing him of abusing his Senate powers to help Mr. Trump and take attention from the continuing Russian threat. On Wednesday, they said he was unfairly trying to discredit the entire investigation based on one small aspect of it, a dossier of unverified information compiled by a British former spy, Christopher Steele, that investigators relied in part on to secure court permission for the Page wiretaps.
“Those errors were serious, but the errors and the so-called Steele dossier — and this is important — played no part in the broader Russia investigation,” said Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, the panel’s top Democrat. She noted that of the 10 people interviewed in the committee’s investigation, not one had claimed anything different.
Mr. Comey, who had not testified before Congress since Mr. Horowitz’s report was released in December, remained steadfast in his decision to open the investigation, arguing that the F.B.I. had sufficient reason to scrutinize the ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.
“In the main, it was done by the book, it was appropriate and it was essential that it be done,” Mr. Comey said under questioning by Mr. Graham. “Overall I am proud of the work, but there are parts of it we will talk about that are concerning.”
Mr. Comey described the problems with the wiretap as sloppy and problematic and pressed by Mr. Graham, said he would not have signed off on the warrant applications knowing what he does now.
“The collection of omissions, failure to consider updates, to communicate between the team trying to figure out what’s true or not true in the Steele material and the team investigating Carter Page — it’s embarrassing, it’s sloppy, I’ve run out of words,” Mr. Comey said.
“There is no indication — the inspector general would say it if he found it — that people were doing bad things on purpose,” he added, “but that doesn’t make it any less concerning or embarrassing.”
He noted earlier that the wiretap applications were a small part of the larger inquiry into links between the Trump campaign and Russia. “The overarching investigation was very important — the Page slice of it, far less given the scope,” Mr. Comey said.
Mr. Comey also decried Attorney General William P. Barr’s denunciations of the investigation, including his assertion that the F.B.I. lacked sufficient reason to open it.
“He says that a lot — I have no idea what on earth he’s talking about,” Mr. Comey said, noting that the special counsel who took over the investigation, Robert S. Mueller III, secured dozens of indictments and that a bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee inquiry found that the onetime Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort shared proprietary campaign information with a known Russian intelligence officer.
“The notion that the attorney general believes that was an illegitimate endeavor to investigate? That mystifies me,” Mr. Comey added.
Mr. Comey said that he had closely followed the Justice Department’s request in May that a federal judge throw out the case against Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser Michael T. Flynn, who had twice pleaded guilty to lying to the F.B.I. about his contacts with the Russian ambassador.
“The department’s conduct in handling it is deeply concerning,” Mr. Comey said, adding, “It’s deeply concerning because it’s this guy is getting treated in a way that nobody’s ever been treated before.”
Republicans grew increasingly frustrated when Mr. Comey repeatedly said he could not remember details surrounding the investigative process, and demurred on their questions.
“With all due respect, Mr. Comey, you don’t seem to know anything about an investigation that you ran,” said an irate Senator Mike Lee, Republican of Utah.“With all due respect, Mr. Comey, you don’t seem to know anything about an investigation that you ran,” said an irate Senator Mike Lee, Republican of Utah.
The hearing was the committee’s third in recent months to scrutinize the investigation, and Mr. Graham intends to call Mr. Comey’s former deputy, Andrew G. McCabe, to testify next week. As Mr. Comey defended the broader Russia investigation and played down concerns about the Page wiretap applications, Mr. Graham abruptly shifted focus to a different theory that he argued demonstrated the F.B.I.’s bias, muddying in the process the fact that American intelligence agencies concluded Russia interfered in 2016 to aid Mr. Trump.
Mr. Graham, who is locked in his own unexpectedly tight re-election fight, insisted that he would keep going until “one of the most corrupt investigations in modern history” was exposed and officials involved were either “fired or go to jail.” A former F.B.I. lawyer has pleaded guilty to falsifying a document used in preparations for the warrant application. He was prosecuted as part of another ongoing review of the investigation, led by John H. Durham, a federal prosecutor Mr. Barr appointed. Mr. Graham built his case around newly released unverified intelligence made public a day earlier by John Ratcliffe, the director of national intelligence, in an apparent bid to help Mr. Trump politically. The years-old intelligence, rejected by other investigators, suggested that Russian intelligence officers had acquired information that Hillary Clinton had approved a campaign plan to elevate concerns about Mr. Trump’s ties to Russia.
During the hearing, Mr. Graham released a letter from the Justice Department, stating that an unnamed low-level department lawyer who had signed the warrant application also now regretted it and claimed the F.B.I. had withheld key facts. Pressed by Mr. Graham, Mr. Comey said he was not aware of the intelligence. Mr. Graham inaccurately insisted it was part of a pattern suggesting Democrats had helped manufacture material to justify the F.B.I.’s investigation of the Trump campaign, and then exploited that investigation for political gain.
Republicans were most animated by the F.B.I.’s use in the warrant applications of a dossier of unverified information compiled by a British former spy, Christopher Steele. Mr. Steele’s work was funded, in part, by Democrats, and it drew from information provided by a Russian source who Republicans said could have been spreading misinformation. Agents relied on the dossier in part to secure court permission for the Page wiretaps, while sharing few details with the court about its provenance. “I’m beginning to understand there was a two-tiered system here,” Mr. Graham said. “When it came to Trump, there were no rules, plow ahead, ignore everything, lie if you need to, alter documents. When it came to Clinton, it seems to be a completely different standard.”
But if Republicans had hoped to use Mr. Comey to score political points, Democrats sought his help backing up their criticisms of Mr. Trump and Mr. Barr. Mr. Comey disagreed.
Mr. Comey said he had “no idea what on earth” Mr. Barr meant by saying the F.B.I. lacked sufficient reason to begin investigating the Trump campaign. He accused Mr. Barr of acting “at odds with the nature of the department” to remain outside the political fray. “I have read Mr. Ratcliffe’s letter, which frankly I have trouble understanding,” he said.
“When the attorney general starts acting like the personal lawyer for the president, it threatens that, and that is a priceless thing,” Mr. Comey said. Mr. Graham’s characterization was misleading. The F.B.I. opened its Russia investigation independently of Mr. Steele’s work, which played a role in only the Page wiretap applications, not the other parts of the sprawling inquiry, in which investigators secured more than 230 orders for communications records.
The former director also took on the most direct claim related to the investigation that Republicans have leveled against former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., the Democratic nominee for president. Former officials said the newly released unverified intelligence has little credibility and could have also been either Russian misinformation or merely Russian analysis of American politics. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, said the unverified intelligence suggested that Mrs. Clinton’s campaign was simply sounding an alarm about the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia.
Mr. Comey denounced an unfounded assertion pushed by Republicans — including Mr. Trump at the first presidential debate on Tuesday — that in an Oval Office meeting in the final days of the Obama administration, Mr. Biden came up with the legal theory for prosecuting Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser Michael T. Flynn, who twice pleaded guilty to lying to the F.B.I. about his contacts with the Russian ambassador. “It’s really hard to call a campaign’s effort to blow the whistle on the other side’s communications with Russia and Russia’s efforts to support that candidate with the actual efforts to do that,” Mr. Whitehouse said. “They are not the same thing.”
Mr. Mueller’s team and the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee had both previously rejected the intelligence, and career intelligence strenuously officials were said to oppose Mr. Ratcliffe’s disclosure of it.
“I am really concerned that we are treating this Ratcliffe letter as something at all serious or credible,” said Whitehouse.
Mr. Comey denounced an unfounded assertion pushed by Republicans — including Mr. Trump at the first presidential debate on Tuesday — that Mr. Biden came up with the legal theory for prosecuting Mr. Flynn in an Oval Office meeting in the final days of the Obama administration.
The Justice Department has released handwritten F.B.I. notes that Mr. Trump and his allies claim as supporting evidence. But former F.B.I. officials say Republicans are misrepresenting the notes and taking them out of context.The Justice Department has released handwritten F.B.I. notes that Mr. Trump and his allies claim as supporting evidence. But former F.B.I. officials say Republicans are misrepresenting the notes and taking them out of context.
Mr. Comey, who attended the meeting, said that Mr. Biden had played no role in directing the investigation. “I would remember it because it’d be highly inappropriate for a president or vice president to suggest prosecution or investigation of anyone — and it did not happen,” Mr. Comey said. Mr. Comey, who attended the meeting, said that Mr. Biden had played no role in directing the investigation and that Mr. Obama had instructed Mr. Comey to follow procedure in handling it.
Mr. Graham spent much of the hearing building his case around the unverified intelligence made public by Mr. Ratcliffe, in an apparent bid to help Mr. Trump politically. The years-old intelligence, rejected by other investigators, suggested that Russian intelligence officers had acquired information that Hillary Clinton had approved a plan for her 2016 campaign to elevate concerns about Mr. Trump’s ties to Russia. “I would remember it because it’d be highly inappropriate for a president or vice president to suggest prosecution or investigation of anyone — and it did not happen,” Mr. Comey said.
Mr. Comey said he was not aware of the intelligence. “I have read Mr. Ratcliffe’s letter, which frankly I have trouble understanding,” he said. Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, briefly steered the discussion to a recent New York Times report that found, based on years of Mr. Trump’s tax information, that the president is personally responsible for loans and debts totaling $421 million.
Mr. Comey said that such a scenario could pose a security threat to the nation because foreign adversaries can use government officials’ personal finances as leverage over them and would be the type of information that law enforcement and intelligence officials consider when deciding whether to grant officials access to sensitive or classified government information.
“A person’s financial situation could make them vulnerable to coercion to an adversary, and allow an adversary to do what we try to do to foreign government officials that we find are indebted: that is, recruit them to our side,” Mr. Comey said.
“So as a general matter, are there serious risks when someone with hundred of millions of dollars in debt, personal debt, has access, as the president does, to all of the country’s classified and sensitive information?” Mr. Durbin asked.
Mr. Comey said he could not speak to the specifics of Mr. Trump’s case, which the president has denied, but added: “It’s a serious concern when anyone seeking or with a clearance has that kind of financial vulnerability.”