Transcripts For CSPAN FBI Director Defends Decision To Reveal Clinton Email Probe Before Election 20170507

You as director of the federal bureau of investigation. Once again, thank you for being here today and we look forward to your testimony and answer to our questions. You may begin. Chairman. Ou, mr. Senator feinstein, members of the committee, thank you for having this annual oversight hearing about the fbi. I know that sound a little bit like someone saying theyre looking forward to going to the dentist, but i really do mean t mean it. I think oversight of the fbi of all parts of government, but especially the one im lucky enough to lead is essential i think it was john adams when wrote to Thomas Jefferson that power always thinks it has a great soul. The way you guard against that is having people ask hard questions. Ask good questions and demand straightforward answers and i , promise you ill do my absolute best to give you that kind of answer today. I also appreciate the conversation i know were going to have today, and over the next few months about reauthorizing , section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that you mentioned, mr. Chairman. This is a tool that is essential to the safety of this country i did not say the same thing about the collection of telephone dialing information by the the nsa, i think thats a useful tool. 702 is an essential tool and if it goes away, well be less safe as a country. And i mean that and would be happy to talk more about that thank you for engaging on that so we can tell the American People why this matters so much and why we cannot make it go away. As you know, the magic of the fbi that you oversee is its people. And we talk as we should a lot about our counterterrorism work, about our counterintelligence work and im sure well talk about that today. I thought i would give you some idea of the work thats being done by those people all over the country, all over the world, every day, every night, all the time. And i pulled three cases that happened and were finished in the last month just to illustrate it. The first was something i know that you followed closely, the plague of threats against Jewish Community centers this country experienced in the first few months of this year. Children frightened, old people frightened, terrifying threat of bombs at jewish institutions, especially the Jewish Community centers. The entire fbi surged in response to that threat, working across all programs, all divisions, our technical wizards, using our vital International Presence and using our partnerships, especially with the Israeli National police. We made that case and the , israelis locked up the person behind those threats and stopped that terrifying plague against the Jewish Community centers. Second case i wanted to mention is all of you know what a bot net is, these are the zombie armies of computers that have been taken over by criminals lashed together in order to do tremendous harm to innocent people. Last month, the fbi working with our partners with the Spanish National police, took down a bot net and locked up the russian hacker behind that bot net that made a mistake that russian criminals sometimes make of leaving russia and visiting barcelona. He is now in jail in spain. The good peoples computers that had been lashed to that zombie army are now freed and no longer part of a criminal enterprise. This week for the First Time Since Congress Passed the statute making it a crime in the United States to engage in female gentle mutilation, to muteulate little girls, its been a felony in the United States since we made the 1996, first case last week against doctors in michigan for doing this terrifying thing to young girls all across the country with our partners in the department of Homeland Security we brought a case against two doctors for doing this to children. This is a among the most important work we do, protecting kids especially, and it was done by great work that you dont hear about a lot all across the country by the fbi. It is the honor of my life i know you look at me like im crazy for saying this about this job i love this work, i love this job. And i love it because of the mission and people i get to work with. Some work i illustrated by pulling those three cases from last month, but it goes on all the time, all around the country , and we are safer for it. I love representing these people, speaking on their behalf and i look forward to your , questions today. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you for your opening statement. Im going to start out probably with a couple subjects you wish i didnt bring up, and a that i third one think Everybody Needs to hear your opinion on, a policy issue. It is frustrating when the fbi refuses to answer this committees questions. , but leaks relevant information to the media. In other words they dont talk , to us, but someone talks to the media. Director comey have you ever , been an anonymous source about news relating to the trump investigation or the clinton investigation . Never. Question 2 on relatively related, have you ever authorized someone else at the fbi to be an anonymous source in news reports about the trump investigation or clinton investigation . No. Has any classified information relating to President Trump or his associates been declassified and shared with the media . Not to my knowledge. You testified before the House Intelligence Committee that a lot of classified matters have ended up in the media recently. Without getting into any particular article, i want to emphasize that, without getting into any reticular article, are there any leaks of classified information relating to mr. Trump or his associates . I dont want to answer that question, senator, for reasons i think you know. There have been a variety of leaks leaks are always a problem, but especially in the last three to six months. And where there is a leak of classified information, the fbi, if its our information, make as makes a referral to the department of justice or if its another agencys information, they do the same and then doj authorizes the opening of an investigation. I dont want to confirm in an open setting whether there are any investigations open. I want to challenge you on that, because the government regularly acknowledged when its investigating classified leaks. You did that in the valerie plain case. Whats the difference here . The most important difference is i dont have authorization from the department to confirm any of the investigations they have authorized. And it may be that we can get that at some point, but im not going to do it sitting here in an open setting without having talked to them. I can you can expect me to follow up on that offer. Sure. There are several senior fbi officials who would have had access to the classified information that was leaked, including yourself and the Deputy Director so how can the , Justice Department guarantee the integrity of the investigations without designating an agency other than the fbi to gather the facts and eliminate senior fbi officials as suspects . Well, im not going to answer about any particular investigations, but i know of situations in the past where if you think the fbi or its leadership are suspects, you have another Investigative Agency support the investigation about federal prosecutors. It can be done and has been done in the past. Ok moving on to another subject, the New York Times recently reported that the fbi had found a troubling email among the ones the russians hacked from democrat operatives. The email reportedly provided assurances that attorney general lynch would protect secretary clinton by making sure the fbi investigation didnt go too far. How and when did you first learn of this document . Also who sent it and who , received it . That is not a question i can answer in this forum, mr. Chairman because it would call , for a clarify classified response. I have briefed leadership of the Intelligence Committees on that particular issue, that i cannot talk about it here. You can expect me to follow up with you on that issue. Sure. What steps did the fbi take to determine whether attorney general lynch had actually given assurances that the Political Fix was in no matter what, did the fbi interview the person who wrote the email . If not, why not . I have to give you the same answer, i cant talk about that in an unclassified setting. Ok you can expect me to , follow up on that. I asked the fbi to provide this email to the committee before todays hearing. Why havent you done so and will you provide it by the end of this week . Again, to react to that i have to give a classified answer and i cant give it sitting here. So that means you cannot give me the email . Im not confirming there was an gmail. The subject is classified and in , an appropriate forum id be happy to brief you on it, but i cannot do it in an open hearing. I assume other members of the committee could have access to data briefing if they want it . I want to talk about going dark,. Irector comey a few years ago, you testified before the committee about the going dark problem and the inability of Law Enforcement to access encrypted data despite the existence of a court order. You continue to raise this issue in public speeches. Most recently at boston college. Mentioned at the beginning of your testimony briefly, but can you provide the committee with a more detailed update on the status of going dark problem , and how it affected the fbis ability to access in crib to data. Access encrypted any progressn to overcome problems . You said you did not think legislation was necessary at that time. Is that still your revieview . Thank you, mr. Chairman. The shadow created by the problem we call going dark continues to fall across more and more of our work. Take devices, for example. The ubiquitous default on devices is affecting about half of our work. First six months of this fiscal year, fbi examiners were presented with over 6,000 devices, for which we had lawful authority, search warrant or court order to open. 46 of those cases we could not open those devices with any technique. That means half of the devices we encounter in terrorism cases, in counterintelligence cases, in gang cases, in child pornography cases, cannot be opened with any technique. That is a big problem. And so the shadow continues to fall. Determined today to continue to make sure the American People and Congress Know about it. I know this is important to the president and new attorney general. Its something we have to talk about. Like you, i care a lot about privacy, i also care an awful a lot about Public Safety. There continues to be a huge collision between those two things we care about. I look forward to continuing that conversation, mr. Chairman. You didnt respond to the part about do you still have the view that legislation is not needed. I dont know the answer yet. I hope i said the last time we talked about this it might require legislation solutions at some the Obama Administration point. Was not in a position to tackle this. Its premature for me to say. Senator feinstein. Director, i have one question regarding my opening comment, and i view it as a most important question, and i hope you will answer it. Why was it necessary to announce 11 days before a president ial election that you were opening an investigation on a new computer without any knowledge of what was in that computer . Why didnt you just do the investigation as you would normally with no public announcement . Senator. Question, thank you. October 27, the Investigative Team that had finished the investigation in july focused on secretary clintons emails asked to meet with me. I met with them that morning in my conference room. They laid out for me what they could see from the meta data on anthony wieners laptop. What they could see is there were thousands of secretary clintons emails on that device, including what they thought might be the missing emails from her first three months as secretary of state. We never found any emails from her first three months. She was using a verizon blackberry then. Thats obviously very important if there was evidence she was acting with bad intent thats where it would be. But they werent there. Can i finish my answer, senator . So they came in and said we can see thousands of emails from the clinton email domain, including many, many from the verizon blackberry domain. We think we got to get a search warrants to go get these. I agreed. The department of justice agreed we had to get a search warrant. I authorized them to seek a search warrant. I have lived my career by the tradition if you can possibly avoid it, you avoid any action in the run up to an election that might have an impact. But i sat there that morning and i could not see a door labelled no action. I could see 2 doors, and they were both actions. One was labeled speak, the other was labeled concealed. Heres how i thought about it im not trying to talk you into this but i want you to know my thinking. Having repeatedly told this congress were done and theres nothing there, no case there, no case there. To restart in a hugely significant way, potentially finding the emails that would reflect on her intent from the beginning and not speak about it would require an act of concealment, in my view. So i stared at speak and conceal. Speak would be really bad. There is an election in 11 days lordy that would be really bad. Concealing in my view would be catastrophic. Not just to the fbi, but well beyond. And honestly, as between really bad and catastrophic, i said to my team weve got to walk into the world of really bad. Ive got to Tell Congress were restarting this. Not in some frivolous way in a hugely significant way. The team also told me we cannot finish this work before the election then they worked night. After night and found thousands of new emails, they found classified information on anthony wiener. Somehow her emails are being forwarded to anthony wiener, including classified information by her assistant huma abedin. They found thousands of new emails and called me the saturday night before the election and said weve only had to personally read 6,000. We think we can finish tomorrow morning, sunday. And so i met with them. And they said we found a lot of new stuff we did not find anything that changes our view of her intent. So were in the same place we were in july, it hasnt changed our view. I asked them lots of questions i said okay if thats where you are, then i also have to Tell Congress were done. This was terrible. It makes me mildly nauseous to think we might have had impact on the election. But, honestly, it wouldnt change of the decision. Everybody who disagrees with me has to come back to october 28th with me and stare at this and tell me what you would do . Would you speak, or would you conceal . And i could be wrong, but we honestly made a decision between those two choices that even in hindsight. This has been one of the worlds most painful experiences, i make the same decision. I would not conceal that on october 28th from the congress i spent a later by Congress People forget this, i didnt make a public announcement. I sent a private letter to the members of the Oversight Committees. It was very important that i tell them instead of concealing and reasonable people can disagree. Thats the reason i made that choice. And it was a hard choice, i still believe in retrospect the right choice, as painful as it has been. Im sorry for the long answer. Let me respond. On the letter it was just a , matter of minutes before the world knew about it. Secondly, my understanding and staff has just said to me, that you didnt get a search warrant before making the announcement. I think thats right. I authorized and the department of justice agreed we were going to seek a search warrant. I actually dont see it as a meaningful distinction. Well, its very hard, it would have been you took an enormous gamble. The gamble was that there was something there that would invalidate her candidacy. And there wasnt. So one has to look at that action and say, did it affect the campaign . And i think most people who have looked at this say yes, it did affect the campaign. Why would he do it . And was there any conflict among your staff, people saying do it dont do it, as has been reported . No, there was a great debate, i have a fabulous staff at all levels. One of my junior lawyers said should you consider what youre about to do may help election help elect donald trump president. And i said thank you for raising that. Not for a moment. Because down that path lies the death of the fbi as an independent institution in america. I cant consider for a second whose political fortunes will be affected in what way. We have to ask ourselves what is the right thing to do, and then do that thing. Im very proud of the way we debated it. At the end of the day, everyone on my team agreed we have to Tell Congress that were restarting this in a hugely significant way. Well, theres a way to do that, i dont know whether it would work or not, but certainly in a classified way, carrying out your tradition of not announcing investigations. And, you know, i look at this exactly the opposite way you do everybody knew it would influence the investigation before. That there was a very large percentage of chance that it would. And, yet, that percentage of chance was taken. Was no information. And the election was lost. It seems to me that before your department does Something Like this, you really ought to because senator leahy began to talk about other investigations and i think this theory does not , hold up when you look at other investigations. But let me go on to 702. Because you began your comments saying how important it is, and yes, it is important. Weve got, i think, a problem. And the issue that were going to need to address is the fbis practice of searching 702 data using u. S. Person identifiers as query terms. And some have called this an in unconstitutional back door search. Others say search queries are essential to insuring potential terrorists dont slip through the cracks as they did before. Could you give us your views on that and how it might be handled , to avoid the charge which may bring down 702 . Thank you, senator, its a really important issue. The way 702 works is under that provision of the statute, the fisa court, federal judges, authorized us as u. S. Agencies to collect the communications of nonus people that we believe to be overseas, if theyre using american infrastructure. The criticism the fbi has gotten and the feed back weve gotten consistently since 9 11 is you have to make sure youre in a position to connect the dot. You cant have stove piped information. So weve responded to that over the last 10 years mostly to the , greatwork of my predecessor, and we have confederated data bases. So if we collect information, under 702, it doesnt sit in a separate stovepipe. It sits in a single cloud type environment, so that if im opening an investigation in the United States in a terrorism matter, intelligence matter, or criminal matter and i have a , name of the suspect and their telephone number and their email addresses, i search the fbis databases. That search necessarily will also touch the information that was collected under 702 so we dot, but nobody gets access to the information that sits in the 702 data base unless theyve been trained correctly. If there is lets imagine that terrorists overseas were talking about a suspect in the United States, or someones email address in the United States was in touch with that terrorist. And that information sits in the 702 database. We open the case in the United States, and put in that name and that email address, it will touch that data and tell us theres information in the 702 database thats relevant. If the agent doing the query is properly trained on how to handle that, he or she will be able to see that information. If they are not properly trained, they will be alerted there is information. Then they have to get the appropriate training and oversight to be able to see it. But to do it otherwise is to risk us where it matters most, in the United States, failing to connect dots. So my view is, the information that is in the 702 database has been lawfully collected, carefully overseen and checked, and our use of it is properly carefully overseen and checked. [inaudible] im not sure what that means in our context. We combine information collected from any lawful source in a single fbi database so we dont miss a dot when were conducting investigations in the United States. What we make sure is, nobody gets to see fisa information of any kind unless they have had the appropriate training and appropriate oversight. My time is up. Thank you. Senator hatch. Thank you, senator. Director comey, in january i introduced an s139 rapid dna act despite partisan co feinstein, coons, flake, and many more. Mr. Chairman i want to thank you , for putting this bill on the agenda for tomorrows business meeting. This is the same bill that the Senate Unanimously passed last year. This Technology Allows developing a dna profile and performing database comparisons in less than two hours. Following standards and procedures approved by the fbi would allow Law Enforcement to solve crimes and innocent advocates to exonerate the wrongfully accused. Mr. Director you came before the , committee in december of 2015 2015, and i asked you about this legislation, and you said it would help us change the world in an exciting way. Is that still your review, and you think congress should still act without being tangled up in other issues . The rapid dna will advance safety of the American People. If a Police Officer has in his her cussed at a someone is a rapist, before letting them go on a lesser offense they will be able to check the database and get a hit. That will save lives and protect people from pain. I think it is a great thing. With the fbi is doing, protect children from predators. Employees coaches, often work with unsupervised youth unsupervised. That magnifies the need for thorough vetting at such time for joining organizations. Along with senators franken and cobichar, i introduced the improvement act to give youth serving organizations greater access to the nationwide fbi fingerprint background check system. Do you believe that providing organizations like the ymca and the girl scouts of america greater access to fbi fingerprint background checks is an important step in keeping child predators and violent criminals away from our children . I do, senator. I dont know enough about the legislation to react but i think , the more information you can put in the hands of the people who are vetting, people who are going to be near children, the better. We have an exciting new feature of the fbis fingerprint system called wrap back. Once you check someone, if they have no record, if they later develop one, you can be alerted to it if it happens thereafter , which, i think, makes a big difference. Thank you. I spoke about the socalled Going Dark Program whereby , strong encryption enters the ability of Law Enforcement to Access Communication and other personal data on smartphones and similar devices. Your prepared testimony for todays hearing addresses this issue as well. I have expressed significant concern about the proposals that would require device or Software Manufacturers to build a back door into their programming to allow Law Enforcement to access encrypted data in the course of investigations. I remain convinced that such back doors can be created without seriously compromising the security of encrypted devices. I believe this is an issue where Law Enforcement and stakeholders need to Work Together to find Solutions Rather than coming to congress with one size fits all legislative fixes. Now what are you doing to engage with stakeholders on this issue . And what kind of progress are you making, if you can tell us . Thank you, senator. I think there is good news on that front. We have had very good open and productive conversations with the private sector about this issue. Because everybody realizes we care about the same things. We all love privacy. We all care about Public Safety. None of the people i hang around with want back doors. We dont want access to devices built in in some way. What we want to work with manufacturers on is to figure out how to accommodate both interests in some way, how can we optimize the privacy, security features of the security devices and allow court orders to be complied with . We conversation. D i dont know where they are going to end up, frankly. I cant imagine a world that ends up with legislation to say we are going to make devices in the United States, you figure out how to comply with court orders, or maybe we dont go there. But we are having productive conversations right now, i think the Amendment Act is up for reauthorization this year we have almost a decade of experience using this statute. So we have much more to go on than simply speculation or theory. Now the intelligence value of section 702 is well documented , and it has never been intentionally misused or abused. Every federal court, including the fisa court that has , addressed the issue has concluded that section 702 is lawful. Administrations of both parties have both strongly supported it. Describe for us the targeting and minimization procedures this includes within the executive branch. Thank you, senator. As i said in my opening, 702 is a critical tool to protect this country. And the way it works is, we are allowed to conduct surveillance again under the supervision of the Foreign Surveillance court, on nonus persons who are outside the United States if they are using american infrastructure. And email system in the United States, a phone system in the United States. So, it doesnt involve u. S. Persons and it doesnt involve , activity in the United States. And then each agency as you said has detailed procedures to how we will handle this information, that are proved by the fisa court and will become court orders that govern us. But not only are we overseen by the fisa court but the , inspectors general and congress checking on our work. And youre exactly correct, there have been no abuses. Every court that has looked at this says this is appropriate under the fourth amendment. This is appropriate under the statute. It was an act passed by a democraticallycontrolled congress for republican president and then renewed by a Republicancontrolled Congress for democratic president and upheld by every court that has looked at it. And im telling you what the rest of the Intelligence Committee said, we need this to protect the country. This should be an easy conversation to have but often , people get confused about the details and mix it up with other things. So it is our job to explain it clearly. Thank you. My time is up. Senator leahy, over to you. Comey. Back, director you mentioned that you liked this of course, last year we didnt have an annual meeting. Last year, it has been, i think, last year is the first time in 15 years that the fbi did not testify before this committee. But a lot has happened in the last year and a half, as noted. Senator feinstein noted that americans across the country have been confused and disappointed by your judgment in handling the investigation into secretary clintons emails. On a number of occasions, you chose to comment directly and extensively on that investigation. You even released internal fbi memos and interview notes. I may have missed this, but in my 42 years here, i have never seen anything like that. But you said actually nothing in regard to the investigation into the Trump Campaigns connections to russias illegal efforts to help elect donald trump. Was it appropriate for you to comment on one investigation repeatedly, not say anything about the other . I think so. Can i explain, senator . I only have so much time. I will be quick. The department, i think, tweeted treated both consistently under the same pentacles. Same principles. People forget, we would not confirm the email investigation into Hillary Clintons emails until three months after and the candidate herself talked about it. In october of 2015, we confirmed it existed and said not another word, not a peep about it until we were finished. That was the most critical time possible, a couple weeks before the election. And i think there are other involved in that collection, i will grant that, but theres no question that d a great effect. Historians can debate what kind of effect it was, but you did to it. In october, the fbi was investigating the Trump Campaigns connection to russia. You sent a letter to the senate house that you were reviewing additional emails that could be relevant to this, but both the investigations were open, but you still only commented on one. I commented as i explained earlier on october 28th in a letter i sent to the chair and rankings in the Oversight Committees that we were taking additional steps in the clinton email investigation, because i had testified under oath repeatedly that we were done. That we were finished. With respect to the russia investigation, we treated it like we did with the clinton investigation. We didnt say a word about it until months into it and then , the only thing we have confirmed so far about this is the same thing with the clinton investigation, that we are investigating. And i would expect were not going to say another peep about it until we are done. And i dont know what will be said when were done, but thats the way we handled the clinton investigation as well. Let me ask you this, during your investigation into Hillary Clintons emails, a number of surrogates like Rudy Giuliani claimed to have a pipeline to the fbi. He bolstered that, and i quote, numerous agents talk to him all the time in regard to the investigation. He even said he had advanced warning about the emails described in your october letter. Former fbi agent jim costrum made similar claims. Either theyre lying or theres a serious problem within the bureau. Anybody in the fbi during this 2016 campaign have contact with Rudy Giuliani about the clinton investigation . I dont know yet, but if i find out that people were leaking information about our investigations, whether to reporters or to private parties, there will be severe consequences. Did you know of anything from jim costrum . Same answer. I dont know i dont know yet. But its a matter that im very, very interested in. Senator leahy but you are looking into it. James comey correct. Senator leahy and once you have found that answer, will you provide it to us . James comey committee in some ill provide it to the committee in some form. I dont know whether i would say it publicly, but i would find some way to let you know. Senator leahy now, the reports are that a number of senior officials in the Trump Campaign and administration are connected to the russian investigation. In fact, the attorney general was forced to recuse himself. Many members of this committee have urged the Deputy Attorney general, and he has that authority, to appoint a special council to protect the independence of the investigation. I recall that i was here in december 2003, shortly after you were confirmed as Deputy Attorney general, thenattorney general ashcroft recused himself into the investigation of the valerie plane link. What led you to that decision . James comey in that particular investigation, my judgment was that that the appearance of fairness and independence required that it be removed from the political chain of command within the department of justice because as you recall it seems like a lifetime ago, but that also involved the conduct of people who were senior level people in the white house, and my judgment was that even i, as an independentminded person, was a political appointee, and so i ought to give it to a careered person like pat fitzgerald. Senator leahy what about the Deputy Attorney general . I voted for his confirmation, but shouldnt he be not the one to be investigating the Campaign Contacts when his boss, the attorney general, was a central figure in that campaign . James comey thats a judgment hell have to make. He is, as i hoped i was as a temp 80 attorney Deputy Attorney general a very , independentminded careeroriented person. But it would be premature for me. Senator leahy last week President Trump said the hacking on the dnc and other efforts would influence the election could have been china, could have been a lot of different groups. That contrary to what the Intelligence Community has said . James comey if the Intelligence Community with high confidence concluded it was russia, in my many circumstances it is hard to do attribution of a hack. But sometimes the intelligence is there. We have high confidence that the North Koreans hacked sony. We have high confidence that the russians did the hacking of the dnc and the other organizations. Senator leahy i have a lot of other questions that ill submit, but before it sounds totally negative, i want to praise the response of the fbi in south burlington, vermont. We have had anonymous emails threatening serious action against students in a high school. Escalating Cyber Threats including detailed death threats, multiple lockdowns, and all. The fbi worked closely with the school and set up an investigation which you visited a couple years ago. It was a textbook collaboration between state, local, and federal authorities. And i want to thank all of those. Turned out to be a very disturbed young man who was doing it. But you dont have to turn on to see how in different parts of the country it is to figure out what is going on. I want to thank the fbi for that. Thank you, senator. Senator graham would be next, but well go to senator horner. Director comey, im disappointed to see that former secretary of state Hillary Clinton was in the news yesterday, essentially blaming you and blaming everything other than herself for her loss on find it ironic because youre for her loss on november the eighth. I find it ironic because youre not the one who made the decision to handle classified information on a private email server. Youre not the one who decided to have a private meeting with secretary clintons husband in the middle of the Justice Departments Ongoing Investigation into secretary clintons server. I use the word investigation here because according to a recent piece in the New York Times, you were forbidden from using the word investigation and were instead told to refer to the investigation, which it was, as a matter. Of course, it was the former attorney general Loretta Lynch who, up until that meeting with president clinton, was the person responsible for making the decision whether to convene a grand jury involving the allegations against secretary clinton, and it was former attorney general Loretta Lynch who apparently forbade you from using the word investigation. Indeed, the New York Times story if its true, a democratic operative expressed confidence that the former attorney general would keep that investigation from going very far. I think you were given an impossible choice to make, and you did the best you could if light of the situation you were presented with. And it strikes me as somewhat sad for people here and elsewhere to condemn you for notifying congress before the related to the investigation and emails. Secretary clinton had made the decision to use a private you melt server. I think it is important to remind folks you are not the one who decided to do business this emails on a server of someone suspected of child pornography. Again, i believe you were placed in an incredibly difficult position and did the best you could. You may recall i was one of those who felt like given the nature of the investigation and the concerns that a special counsel should have been appointed to conduct the investigation, but of course attorney general lynch and the Obama Administration opposed that effort. So i just want to express to you my disappointment that this continued seeking of a reason, any reason other than the flawed campaign and the candidate herself for secretary clinton losing the president ial election if i can turn to a couple of other substantive items here, you have mentioned 702, a fisa and the reauthorization, and i believe you referred to this as the crown jewels of the fbi and of Counter Terrorism investigations. Could you explain why this provides such a unique tool, and widely regard it why you regard it as literally the crown jewels of the fbi . James comey thank you, senator. Every time i talk about this publicly, i wince a little bit because i dont want bad people around the world to focus on this too much, but really around the world because of the genius of American Innovation use our , products and infrastructure for their emails, for their communications. And what 702 allows us to do is quickly target terrorists, weapons of mass destruction, proliferaters spies, who are using our , infrastructure to communicate to collect information on them. And it is vital to all parts of the Intelligence Community because of its agility, its speed, and its effectiveness. And again, in an open setting, we can explain what you already know from classified briefings about what a difference this makes, but again, because america is the mother of all this innovation, they use a lot of our equipment, a lot of our networks to communicate with each other. If we were ever acquired to required to establish the normal warrant process for these nonamericans who arent in our country, just because the photons they are using to plan attacks cross our land, we would be tying ourselves in knots for reasons that make no sense at all and the courts say are unnecessary under the fourth amendment. This is a tool. We talked about the telephony database. I think thats a useful tool. It does not compare in importance to 702. We cant lose 702. Senator horner well i agree. , and it is a little bit difficult to talk about thing s that do involve classified matters in public, but i think the public needs to know there are multiple oversight layers including the fisa court, congressional oversight, internal oversight within the fbi and Intelligence Community that protects americans from and under their privacy rights while targeting terrorists of people who are trying to kill us. Thent to talk about transaction records, something we have discussed as well. The fbi can use National Security letters to get Financial Information and in thene numbers now conduct of a terrorist investigation, but because of a typo in the law, the fbi has not been allowed access to the data. To the extent that it is necessary. Can you talk to us about the importance of that particular Electronics Records fix . James comey thank you so much on senator. This seems like a boring deal, this makes a big impact on our work, and heres why. In our Counter Terrorism cases and our counterintelligence cases, we can issue with all kinds of layers of approval in the fbi a National Security letter to find out the subscriber to a particular telephone number and to find out what numbers that telephone number was in contact with, not the content of the communications but the connection. Because of what i believe is a typo in the law, and congress will tell me, the companies that provide the same services but on the internet resist and say we dont have the Statutory Authority to find out the subscriber email handle or what addresses were in contact. I dont think congress distinguishes, but in our most important investigations, if we want to find out the subscriber, the particular email handle, to go get an order from a federal judge in a fisa court is a incredibly long and difficult process. And im worried about that slowing us down, but also worried about it becoming a disincentive for our investigators to do it at all. Because if youre working a case in san antonio or seattle, youre moving very quickly. And if i have to go to get subscriber information for heavens sakes on an email address to a federal court in washington, im probably going to try to find some other way around it. If thats what congress wants, sure, well follow the law. I dont think that was ever intended. And so i would hope that congress will fix what i believe is a typo. Senator horner thank you, mr. Director. I have other questions for the record. Thank you. We are going over to vote now. I would also like to have both democrats and republicans notify me if they want a second round, so i can get an inventory of that. Senator klobuchar. Senator klobuchar thank you, and welcome back, director comey. As you are well aware, russia is actively working to undermine our democracy and hurt american businesses at the same time. Now, more than ever, americans are looking to congress for leadership, and we must be a united front. And i have appreciated some of the members of this committee on the republican side who have spoken out about this. We must be united as we seek information from the administration. Last month during a hearing at the House Intelligence Committee, you confirmed that the fbi is investigating the russian governments efforts to interfere in the 2016 president ial election including , any links between the Trump Campaign and the russian government. I know that you cannot discuss that Ongoing Investigation. But just one question to clarify, will you commit to ensuring that the relevant congressional committees receive a full and timing briefing on that investigations findings . James comey in general, i can senator. I need department of , justice approval to brief on particular people were investigating. We have briefed the chairs in the rankings including this committee on who we have cases open on and exactly what were doing and how were using various sources of information. I dont know whether the department will approve that for the entire Intelligence Committees, but ill lean as far forward as i can. Senator klobuchar and then because attorney general sessions is recused from that, and now Rod Rosenstein is approved, do you go to him then to get that approval . James comey yes, i have already briefed him, i think his first day in office, i briefed him on where we are. So he would be the person to make that decision. Senator klobuchar thank you. In your testimony, you note that the Justice Department brought charges against russian spies and criminal hackers in connection with a 2014 yahoo cyber attack in february, an example of a cyber attack on our economy. In december of 2016, the fbi and the department of Homeland Security released a 13page report providing Technical Details about how federal investigators linked russia to the hacks against u. S. Political organizations. Does russia use the same military and civilian tools it used to hack our political organizations in order to do things like hack into u. S. Companies, steal identities, and sell the credit card information of americans on the black market . And how is the fbi working to fight against hackers supported by foreign governments like russia . James comey the answer is yes, both their government organizations and then they have a relationship that is often difficult to define with criminals. And that the yahoo hack is an example of that. You had some of russias greatest criminal hackers and Intelligence Agency hackers working together. So the answer is yes. And what were doing is trying to see if we can improse costs on that behavior in a lot of different ways, but including one i mentioned in my opening, which is locking up people. If we can get them outside of russia, russia is not too great about cooperating with us with their criminals inside their borders. But all of them like to travel. So if they travel grabbing them and locking and putting handcuffs on them to send the message that that is not a freebie. Senator klobuchar in your net testimony, you also discussed the threat of National Organized Crime and the safety it poses to National Security. This it increases instability around the world. I heard these concerns when senator graham, mccain, and i were in the baltics, ukraine, and georgia. There have been recent concerns that organized criminals including russians are using the Luxury Real Estate market to launder money. The Treasury Department has noted a significant rise in the use of Shell Companies in real estate transactions because foreign buyers use them as a way to hide their identity and find a safehaven for their money in the u. S. In fact, nearly half of all homes in the u. S. Worth at least 5 million are purchased using Shell Companies. Does the anonymity associated with the use of Shell Companies to buy real estate hurt the fbis ability to trace the flow of illicit money and fight organized crime . And do you support efforts by the Treasury Department to use its existing authority to require more transparency in these transactions . James comey yes and yes. Senator klobuchar ok. Very good. Because i think this is a huge problem. When you hear that over 5 million homes, half of them purchased by Shell Companies, thats a major problem. In march this committee, subcommittee on crime and terrorism, held its first hearing. I think senator graham and thank senator graham and senator whitehouse or that. I raised the issue of protecting the infrastructure with the former Bush Department of justice official ken wanestein, and he agreed that this is an important issue. As the Ranking Member of rules particularlyam committed to making sure our elections are safe from foreign interference. I lead 26 senators call for the full account in the assistance efforts to address Cyber Security threats in the 2016 election. Im also working on legislation in this area. Can you discuss how the fbi has coordinated with the Election Assistance Commission, department of Homeland Security, and state and local Election Officials to help protect the integrity of our election process . James comey thank you senator. , in short, what we have done with dhs is share the tools, tactics, and techniques we see hackers, especially from the 2016 election season, using to attack voter really registration databases and try and engage in other hacks. We have pushed that out to all the states and Election Assistance Commission so they can harden their networks. One of the things we can do is equip them with information to make their systems tighter. Senator klobuchar very good. As you know, we have different equipment all over this country. There is some advantage to that, i think. I think it is good when we have paper ballot backups of course, but we have to be prepared for this. And this certainly isnt about one Political Party or one candidate. The last time you came before the committee in december 2015, just one week after the San Bernardino attacks, since then, as was noted by the chair, we have seen other attacks in our country. We had a tragedy in a Shopping Mall in st. Cloud, minnesota, at a Shopping Mall. Thankfully, a brave offduty cop was there to stop further damage from being done. And i would also like to thank you and the fbi for your investigation, having talked to the chief up there, senator franken and i were briefed by him as well as congressman em congressman ever right after this attack. The local Police Department is a midsized department, and they had to do a lot with working of the community. They have a significant Somalian Community there that is a big part of their community they are proud to have there. So they are working with them and the community. They are helping, but the fbi really stood in and did the investigation. And i guess i want to thank you for that and end with one question. Since its reported that isis has encouraged lone wolf attacks like we saw in orlando, it is murkier than back in st. Cloud. What challenges does this prevent and what is the fbi doing to prevent these kind of tragedies . James comey thank you, senator. The central challenge is not just finding needles in a nationwide haystack, but trying to figure out which pieces of hay might become a needle. And that is, which of the troubled young people or sometimes older people are consuming poisonous propaganda. Some isis, some anwar ma lamaliki. Some other sources. And a huge part of it is building relationships with the communities you mentioned. Because those folks do not want anyone committing violence, committing violence in the name of their faith. And so they have the same incentives we do and making sure they see us that way. And we see them that way is at the heart of hours spots because , we are not going to see a troubled kid going sideways and thinking he should stab people. Anywhere around i can are people who will see it. So getting them in a position where they feel comfortable telling us or telling local Law Enforcement is at the heart of our ability to find the needles, evaluate those pieces of hay, and stop this. Senator klobuchar appreciate it. Thank you. Senator graham. Senator graham thank you. director comey, could you pass onto your agents and support personnel how much we appreciate their efforts to defend the country . We will set off a record for questions asked in six minutes and 54 minutes, if i can. Do you agree with me if sequestration goes back into effect next year it will be devastating to the fbi in . James comey yes. Senator graham and it is due to happen unless Congress Changes it . James comey ive been told that. Senator graham do you agree with me that isil losing caliphate, these people go out throughout the world and become terrorist agents and the threat of terrorism to the homeland is going to get greater over time, not smaller . James comey yes. It will diminish in that their power to put out their media to the troubled people in the country will decrease, but the hardened killer flowing out of the caliphate will be a big problem. Senator graham so from a funding point of view, terrorism is not going to get better, its probably going to get worse. James comey i think thats fair to say. Senator graham did you ever talk to sally yates about her concerns with general flynn being compromised . James comey i did. I dont know whether i can talk about it in this forum, but yet, the answer is yes. Senator graham but she had concerns about general flynn and she expressed those concerns to you . James comey correct. Senator graham ok. Well talk about that later. Do you stand by your house testimony in march 20th that there was no surveillance of the trim campaign that you are Trump Campaign that you are aware of . James comey correct. Senator graham you would know about it if there was, correct . James comey i would think. Senator Graham Carter page. Is there an issue regarding carter pages interactions with the russians . James comey i cant answer that here. Senator graham did you consider carter page an agent of the campaign . James comey same answer. I cant answer that here. Senator graham ok. Do you stand by your testimony there is an active investigation, counterintelligence investigation, regarding Trump Campaign individuals and the russian government as to whether or not they collaborate . You said that in march james comey to see if there was any collaboration between the russian effort and senator graham is that still going on . James comey yes. Senator graham nothing has changed, you stand by the two statements. James comey correct. Senator graham but you wont tell me about carter page. James comey correct. Senator graham are you familiar with fusion . James comey i know the name. Senator graham ok. Are they part of the russian intelligence apparatus . James comey i cant say. Senator graham ok. Do you agree with me that a fusion was involved in preparing a dossier by donald trump in the elections . James comey i dont want to say. Senator graham do you agree with me that Anthony Weiner of 2016 should not have access to classified information . James comey yes, thats a fair statement. Senator graham would you agree with me that that is not illegal, we have got really bad laws . He got it somehow. James comey it would be illegal if he didnt have appropriate clearance. Senator graham do you agree with me he did have appropriate clearance . He did have appropriate clearance, that would even be worse. James comey i dont believe at the time we found that on his laptop he had clearance. Senator graham i agree. So for him to get it should be a crime. Somebody should be prosecuting for letting Anthony Weiner have access to classified information. Does that make general sense . James comey it could be a crime. It would depend upon what the people senator graham would you agree it should be that anybody that lets Anthony Weiner to have information should be prosecuted . If our laws dont cover that, they probably should. James comey theres no Anthony Weiner statute. Senator graham there should be one. James comey there is already a statute. Senator graham i wonder how he got classified information and its not a crime by somebody. Unmasking, are you familiar with that . James comey im familiar with that term. Senator graham ok. Has the bureau required unmasking of an american citizen caught up in incidental collection . James comey oh, yes. Yeah. In fact, i did it this week in connection with an intelligence report. Senator graham all right. Before i authorize, reauthorize 702, and im a pretty hawkish guy, i want to know how unmasking works are. Are you aware of any requests by the white house . Anybody in the Obama Administration, to unmask american citizens caught up in incidental surveillances in 2015 or 2016 . James comey im not. Im not aware of any request to the fbi. Senator graham would you know . Who would they make the request to . James comey they can make it to anyone in the fbi senator graham what about the nsa . Would he make it to the nsa . James comey sure, if it was an nsa report. I read in the media and heard about nsa report, but i dont know senator graham who do you ask, do you go to the nsa to ask somebody be unmasked . James comey for example i got a , report this week that said, u. S. Company number one had been removed. I said, i believe i need to know the name of the company. Senator graham who do you ask . James comey i ask my intelligence staffer and say, i would like to know that. She asks the owner of the information. Senator graham which would be the nsa . James comey in this case i was i think it was cia information. Senator graham does the owner of the information record, request for unmasking . James comey i believe the nsa does. I dont know about csa. Nsa definitely does. Senator graham but there should be a record somewhere in our government for a request to unmask regardless of who made the request . James comey i think that is right. Senator graham is it fair to say that very few people can make requests from masking . Four unmasking . I cant go and make that request as a senator, can i . James comey sure. Its a fairly small group of consumers, which i am, of that small set of senator graham its a National Security council within that group that can make this request or do you know . James comey i think the National Security adviser certainly can. Senator graham ok. When it comes to russia, is it fair to say that the government of russia actively provides safehaven to cyber criminals . James comey yes. Senator graham is it fair to say that the russian government is still involved in american politics . James comey yes. Senator graham is it fair to say we need to stop them from doing this . James comey yes. Fair to say. Senator graham do you agree with me the only way they are going to stop is for them to pay a price for interfering in our political process . James comey i think that is a fair statement. Senator graham yeah, ok. So what were doing today is not working. They are still doing it. They are doing it all over the world, arent they . James comey yes. Senator graham so what kind of threat do you believe russia presents to our democratic process given which you know , about russias behavior of late . James comey well, certainly, in my view, the greatest threat of any nation on earth, given their intention and their capability. Senator graham do you agree that they did not change the vote tally, but one day they might . James comey i agree that very much we found no indication of any change in vote tallies. There was efforts aimed at Voter Registration systems, but i suppose in theory, part of the United States, the beauty of our system is it is a bit of a hairball. And all different kinds of systems and elderly senator graham have they done this in other countries where they actually tampered with the vote . James comey my understanding is they have attempted in other countries. Senator graham and theres no reason they wont attempt here if we dont stop them over time. James comey i think that is fair. Senator graham thank you. Thank you, chairman. Welcome back, director comey. What is the policy of the department and the bureau regarding the release of derogatory investigative information about an uncharged subject . James comey the general practice is we dont talk about completed investigations that didnt result in charges. As a general matter. Senator whitehouse and what is the policy regarding the release of derogatory information about charged subjects beyond the derogatory investigative information disclosed in the charging document or in further Court Proceedings . James comey i think you summarized it. The gist of the policy is you dont do anything outside the charging documents of the Public Record that might prejudice the trial proceeding. Senator whitehouse and one of the reasons you do that is if you had a police chief say, we have investigated the contract between the mayor and the contractor, and we have decided there were no misdeeds. But we found out that the mayor was sleeping with her driver, just wanted to let you know that. That would be kind of a blow to the integrity of the prosecutor function and would probably tend to diminish support for the prosecutor function if it were played by those rules, correct . James comey i think that is fair. Thats why the policy exists. Senator whitehouse yep. With respect to oversight questions, lets hypothesize that an investigation exists and the public knows about it, which could happen for a great number of legitimate reasons. What questions are appropriate for senators to ask about that investigation in their oversight capacity . James comey they can ask anything they want. Senator whitehouse but what questions are appropriate for you to answer . James comey very few while a matter is pending. Senator whitehouse while we know it is pending is it , appropriate for you to tell us whether it is adequately resourced and ask questions about, for instance, are there actually agents assigned to this or has it been put in somebodys bottom drawer . James comey sure, potentially, right. Who is working on it, that sort of thing. Senator whitehouse are there benchmarks in certain cases where Department Approvals are are there benchmarks or the involvement of certain officials , have stepped actually been taken . Im not sure i am following the question. Lets say you have a we go investigation. None of those have ever been invoked or implicated, that would send a signal that not much effort has been dedicated. Aain, you have to know it is rico investigation. With those staging elements as investigation or, it would be appropriate for us to ask about. Crankset is a harder question. I dont know i can answer because it would give away what were looking at. Would it be appropriate to ask whether any witnesses have been interviewed or whether any documents have been pursuant to the investigation. Crankset is a harder one. I would be reluctant to answer questions like that because it is a slippery slope. If we are concerned the investigation gets put on the shelves and not taken seriously, the fact that no witnesses have been called and no documents have been sought would be pretty relevant and reveal anything other than a lack of attention by the bureau, correct . We are careful about how we use a grand jury. That is a harder call. We will pursue it. What is the bureaus policy regarding witnesses who are cooperating in an investigation who have form of ongoing compliance problem . That say they have not paid their taxes for the last year. The bureauolicy of that they will get those witnesses to clean up their act so that their noncompliance is not become an issue later on the i dont know of it is a written policy. With our tax returns useful . If someone hide something that taxld otherwise be on the if it is criminal activity. Uncommon to seek and use tax returns of a criminal investigation question mark especially in complex financial cases it is a common tool. The hearing that senator graham and i held in regards to russias infiltration and influence in the last election, raised the issue of russia intervening with Business Leaders in a country engaging them in bribery or other highly favorable business deals with a view to either recruiting them as somebody who has been bribed or being able to threaten them by disclosing the elicit relationship, they are happy to blow up their own cutout but blows up the individual. Have you seen any indication that those are russian strategies in their election influence tool box . In my understanding, those are tools the russians have used over many decades. And lastly, the European Union is moving towards requiring transparency of incorporations so that shell corporations are harder to create. That risks leaving the United States as the last big haven for shell corporations. Is it true that shell corporations are often used as a device for criminal Money Laundering . Yes. Is it true that shell corporations are often used as a device for the concealment of criminally garnered funds . Yes. And to avoid legitimate taxation . Yes. What do you think the hazards are for the United States with respect to election interference of continuing to maintain a system in which shell corporations that you never know who is really behind them are common place . It makes it easier for elicit money to make its way into a political environment. And that is not a good thing . I dont think it is. Yeah, me neither. Ok. Thank you very much. Fbis expertise how , likely do you think i. T. Services have been thwarted by other services . I would estimate its a certainty. Inside the ic, who would talk about that problem and who at the senate would they inform . Well, i dont want to talk about particular matters, but it often is the fbi alerting a u. S. Government institution or private sector, dhs might come across it, or other parts of the Intelligence Community, especially nsa. When we talk about things like cyber investigations right now, so often on cable tv it becomes a shirts and skins exercise. So without asking you to comment on anything retrospective about 2016, do you think it is likely in 2018 and beyond youll see more targeting of u. S. Public discourse in elections . I do. I think one of the lessons the russians may have drawn from this is this works. I do expect them to be back in 2018 and especially 2020. You regularly testify and correct me if ive misheard you, but you regularly testified that you dont think the bureau is short of resources. You dont come before us and make big appropriations requests. But those of us very concerned about cyber look at the u. S. Government writ large and say we are not prepared for the future. What is the fbi doing to prepare for the 2018 and 2020 circumstance you envision . Without giving too much detail, we have an enormous part of the fbi and our Counter Intelligence division and Cyber Division that focuses on just that threat in making sure we do everything we can to understand how the bad guys might come at us. And as i talked about earlier, to equip the civilian agencies that are responsible for hardening our infrastructure with all the information we have about how they are going to come at us. And if you had, in your National Security domain, increased resources, how would you spend another marginal dollar beyond what you expect to receive now . I would probably have a tie between investing more and upgrading our systems to make sure were keeping pace with the par of excellence and probably to hire additional cyber analysts and agents. And if you had your brothers, druthers what kind of increased funding would you make . I wouldnt make any sitting here. I would like to talk about wikileaks. In january the fbi contributed to an isc assessment that says wikileaks is a known assessment. Do you stand by that . Yes. Do you believe wikileaks released classified information . Yes. Do you believe any of wikileaks disclosures have put at risk american interests or lives . I believe both have resulted in some of their releases. Can you help me understand why Julian Assange has not been charged with a crime . I dont want to comment on the particular case because i dont want to confirm whether or not there are charges pending. He hasnt been apprehended inside the Ecuadoran Embassy in london. I sent a letter to the attorney general a number of weeks ago asking questions about the status of the investigation. And it seemed pretty clear, though individuals were polite and kind and responsive to our requests, it seemed there was not much deliberation about wikileaks and Julian Assange. Is the fbi participating in any inner Agency Dialogue in whether or not assange committed crimes . I dont know where you got that impression that wikileaks is an important focus of our attention. I intentionally left the almost half of my time for you to sort of wax broadly for a minute. There is room for reasonable people to disagree about at what point an allegedly journalistic organization crosses a line to become some sort of a tool of foreign intelligence. There are americans, wellmeaning, thoughtful people, who think wikileaks may be a journalistic outfit. Can you explain why that is not your view . Yeah, and again, i want to be careful that i dont prejudice any future proceeding. Its an important question, because all of us care deeply about the First Amendment and the ability of a free press to get information about our work and publish it. To my mind, it crosses a line when it moves from being ability about trying to educate a public and becoming about intelligence porn without methods in regard to interest without regard to the First Amendment values that normally underlie press reporting and simply becomes a conduit for the Russian Intelligence Services and adversaries to push out information to damage the United States. I realize reasonable People Struggle to find a line, but surely theres conduct that so far to the side of the line that we can all agree is nothing that even smells journalist about some of this conduct. So if you could map that continuum, there are members of the ioc that leaked classified information. That is an illegal act, correct . Correct. When american journalists court and solicit that information, have they violated any law by asking people in the ic to potentially leak information that is potentially classified . That conduct is not treated by the u. S. Government as criminal conduct. Ive been asked in other context, isnt it true that the espionage statute has no carveout for journalists, thats true. At least in my lifetime, the department of justices view is newsgathering is not going to be investigated or processed as a criminal act. Thats how it is thought of. So Investigative Reporter taking advantage of and celebrating the liberties we amendment,the first trying to talk to people and get the maximum amount of information they possibly can out of them to in the public. It is not the burden on an american journalist to did certain whether or not the member of the ioc is leaking information that could be classified. The journalists can legitimately seek information, and it is not their job to police it. The number of the u. S. I. C. That has sought the information has broken the law. Right. The clear legal obligation is on the people who are in the government in illegal possession of classified information. It is not the journalists burden. Our focus should be on the leakers, not those obtaining this as part of a news gathering. I know that the chairman indulged me. Im at and past time, but the american journalist who is seeking this information differs from assange and wikileaks how . In that there is at least a portion, and people can argue that maybe this conduct wikileaks is engaged on in the past that is closer to regular news gathering, but in my view, a huge portion of wikileaks activities has nothing to do with legitimate news gathering, informing the public, commenting on important controversies but releasing classified information to damage the United States of america. And people start to get cynical about journalists but american journalists do not do that. They almost always call us before they publish classified information to say, is there anything that will jeopardize government people, or innocent civilians anywhere in the world and work with us to try to accomplish their important firstamendment goals by safeguarding the interests. This activity, im talking about wikileaks, involves so much no such considerations whatsoever. It is intelligence porn, push it out in order to damage. Thank you. Thank you, senator. Senator franken. Thank you, senator feinstein. Good to see you, mr. Director. I am going to kind of pick up where i think sheldon, senator whitehouse was going. Are you familiar with a report called the kremlin playbook . No. Ok. This is an expert report that exhaustively documents russias past effort to undermine the european democracies. According to the report, russia is known to cultivate close ties with business and political leaders and target countries. This is stuff that you acknowledged. The report explains russia has cultivated an opaque network of patronage across the region that uses this to influence and direct decision making. In other words, russia has a strategy of creating the conditions that give rise to corruption, then exploiting that corruption to its own benefit. In the intelligence communities, unclassified assessment of the Russian Campaign to influence the american election, our nations Intelligence Agency is right, and quote, putin has had many positive experiences working with western political leaders whose business interests made them more disposed to deal with russia. That seems to jive with your understanding of what russia has done. Correct. In that same assessment, the fbi, the cia and nsa all concluded that russia did, in fact, interfere in the 2016 election in order to, quote, help President Trumps election chances possible by discrediting secretary clinton. And they concluded that the russians had a clear preference for President Trump. What is your assessment of why the russian government had a clear preference for President Trump . The Intelligence Community assessment had a couple parts with respect to that. One, he wasnt Hillary Clinton, who putin hated and wanted to harm in any possible way. So he was her opponent, so necessarily they supported him. Then also the second notion that the Intelligence Community assessed that putin believed he would be more able to make deals reach agreements with someone with a business background than with someone who had grown up in more of a government environment. Ok. Well, im curious about just how closely russia followed the kremlin playbook when it meddled in our democracy, specifically whether the russians had a preference for President Trump because he had already been ensnared in their web of patronage, to quote the report. Is it possible that in the russians view, trumps business interests would make him more amenable to cooperating with them, quote, more disposed to deal with russia as the ic report says . That was not the basis for the ics assessment. Ok. Well, i just said, is it possible . I see. You dont want to speculate. Possible questions are hard for me to answer. Well, in order for us to know for certain whether President Trump would be vulnerable to that type of exploitation, we would have to understand his financial situation. We have to know whether or not he has money tied up in russia or obligations to russian entities. Do you agree . That you would need to understand that to evaluate that question . I dont know. Well, it seems to me if theres reason to believe that such connections exist, for example, the president s son, donald trump jr. , told Real Estate Developers in 2008 that, quote, russians make up a pretty disproportionate crosssection of a lot of our assets. He said, quote, we see a lot of money pouring in from russia. This is a report on the family business. In 2013, President Trump held a Miss Universe pageant in moscow and the pageant was financing by a russian billionaire who is close to putin. And President Trump sold a palm beach mansion to a Russian Oligarch for 95 million in 2008. That is 54 million more than he paid for it just four years prior. Those are three financial ties that we know of and they are big ones. Director comey the russians have a history of using financial investments. To gain leverage over influential people and then later calling in favors. We know that. We know that the russians inferred in our election and they did it to benefit President Trump. The intelligence agencies confirmed that. But what i want to know is why they favored President Trump and it seems to me in order to answer that question, any investigation into whether the Trump Campaign or trump operation colluded with russian operatives would require a full appreciation of the president s financial dealings. Director comey, would President Trumps tax returns be material to such an investigation . Thats not something, senator, im going to answer. Does the investigation have access to President Trumps tax returns . I have to give you the same answer. Again, i hope people dont over overinterpret my answers but i dont want to Start Talking about anything of what were looking at and how to and how. Director comey we learn about the president s campaign and current senior members of his administration, jeff sessions, attorney general, and former Campaign Adviser carter page and Paul Manafort. Former Campaign Manager Paul Manafort and chief strategist. Rex tillerson, secretary of state and roger stone, political mentor and former Campaign Adviser. Michael flynn former National Security adviser. Jared kushner white house senior , adviser and soninlaw. We dont know if this list is exhaustive but i think you might see where im going these connections appear against a backdrop of proven russian interference in the election and interference that the Intelligence Community has concluded that was designed to favor President Trump. I know im hitting my time but one last question. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Is the sheer number of of investigations unusual or connections unusual or significant . What about each individuals proximity to the president . Is it unusual for individuals in these important roles to have so many unexpected and often undisclosed ties to a foreign power . I have to give you the same answer. Its not something i can comment on. Ok. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you, director comey with regard to the 702 reauthorization. In 2014 the privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board recommended that agencies develop mechanisms to limit the potential scope of incidental collection. Under your leadership what has the bureau done to comply with these recommendations . What we have done is make sure that we have tightened up our training and our and making sure that nobody with unauthorized access gets to see the content of a 702 collection and that is probably a good way of summarizing and a lot more beneath it but that is gist of it. To make it sure we are collected under 702 and nobody has hasnt had access to need to know and train fisa information. Can you brief describe the process for incidental collection . Incidental collection is the name given to if youre targeting a terrorist, lets say, who is in yemen and he happens to be using an american email provider to communicate, so under 702, the u. S. Intelligence community can collect that terrorist communications. He is outside of the United States and he is not an american. If an american contacts that terrorist, send him an email at lets imagine its a gmail account, his gmail is incidental incidentally collected. That american who sent the email is not the target but because he or she communicated with the terrorist is collected as part of that lawful collection and what incidental collection means. If the fbi is doing that 702 collection, those communications from the terrorist and to the terrorist would sit in our database. If we open an investigation on that person who happened to be the communicant and research our systems we hit on the 702 collection and the investigating agency will know, holy cow, an american was in touch with that terrorist in yemen. If the agent has been trained and has access to the information they will be able to know it and that is how our system is designed. The same review was conducted in 2014 and points out the value of the program. I certainly think and i think most of us do here see the incredible value of 702 and need for reauthorization there. Polygraph testing as you are , any applicant for a federal position is required to undergo a polygraph. It is worth noting that cpb experiences significantly higher failure rates around 65 than any other federal Law Enforcement agency. The fbi does pretty well with this. Has the bureau ever conducted any benchmarking with other federal agencies as to the process where you require polygraph or for employment . It seems that i mean, given fbi success with this instrument, that you could inform some of the other agencies who are having difficulties . I dont know whether we have, senator, but ill find out. All right. I think we have with other members of the Intelligence Community but i dont know if we have talked to cbp about our program. It would be helpful if you could look into that. We appreciate it. Following on what senator sasse was asking given the amount of Sensitive Data held by the fbi, what are you doing to protect your own systems . Well, a whole lot and i dont want to talk too much in an open forum but it is a constant worry of all of us. Under since ive been director, we have stood up something called the Insider Threat center and ive put a senior fbi executive in charge of it because i want somebody waking up every morning worrying about how might we lose data and somebody penetrating us. A ton of work has gone into protecting our systems. But the weakest link is always the people. Because youre going to have the greatest firewalls and greatest intrusion detection system but if your people are engaging in negligent misconduct we have to have a rich picture of our people that is constant and doesnt compensated on five year best depend on fiveyear polygraph investigations but shows us flag of a troubled employee in realtime. That is hard to do and build. Technically and as a matter of law and policy, but we are working very hard on it. In your opinion, is congress doing enough to protect itself and our systems from outside outside threats . I dont mean this as a wise guy answer. Surely not, because none of us can be doing enough, frankly. Again, its not just about the perimeter we build. Its about the security culture. Inside our organizations and, look. Im part of the fbi and i still dont think ours is good enough. Im sure congress is not good enough. Do you know the freedom of afgs income allows access, can you talk about how the bureau promptly and fully responds to a request at the same time you level or maintain some level of security over sensitive and classified data . We have an enormous foya operation as you might imagine i think is working 24 hours a day outside of washington, d. C. Great people who this is their life. They know the regulations. They know the security sensitive sensitivities and work as hard as we can to imply with the foya deadlines. It is its a huge pain. But its an essential part of being a public institution. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you mr. Grassley for your return in front of the Senate Judiciary committee. I want to ask about a letter and mr. Chairman, i will submit this for the record if i might. Senator whitehouse and i in early august last year sent a letter to our colleague senator ted cruz who then served as the Oversight Committee chairman expressing our grave concern about the potential for foreign interference in our upcoming president ial election. We asked for an oversight hearing to consider whether existing federal criminal statutes and Court Jurisdiction were sufficient to address conduct related to foreign entities pose ago threat to our election. We didnt have that hearing but id like to ask you that same question now. Are existing federal criminal statutes sufficient to prosecute conduct related to foreign entities that seek to undermine our elections . I think so is my answer. But someone smarter than i may have spotted something where there is a gap but my reaction is we have the statutory tools. Its a question of gathering the evidence and applying it under the statutory tools. In response to a question asked earlier you stated you fully expect russia to continue to be engaged in efforts to influence our elections and expect them to be back in 2018 and 2020. What more should we be doing to defend our election infrastructure and our future elections against continuing russian interferences and what more are you or the agency doing to help our allies in france and germany that have Upcoming Elections where there is every reason to believe the russians are interfering there as well . Thank you, senator. I think two things we can do and are doing both in the United States and with our allies is telling the people responsible for protecting the election infrastructure in the United States everything we know about how the russians and others try to attack those systems. How they might come at it, what ip addresses they might use, what phishing techniques they might use and we have shared the same thing with our allies. One. Two, to equip our American People and allies to understand this is going on. A big part of what the russians did was pushing out false information, echoing it with the troll farms that they use, and i think one of the most worthy things we can do is tell the American Voter this is going on. You should be skeptical, you should ask questions and you should understand the nature of the news youre giving and we have delivered that same message to our european colleagues and interesting thing is happening. The marketplace of ideas is responding to this because its not a role for government. People are out there using the power of social media to push back against this kind of things in france and netherlands and germany and hope in the United States where they will see this bogus stuff going on and push back and have good troll armies pushing back the other way so the marketplace of information is better educated, frankly. It is an optimistic vision and i appreciate it and the work that the fbi continues to do to push back and strengthen our defenses but i think there is more to do. You certainly, as youve testified before, made a great deal of news just before our own election. Im struck that you chose to make Public Statements about one investigation and not another. The investigation we now know that was ongoing in into the Trump Campaign and the investigation ongoing into secretary clinton. Im concerned about what the future practice will be. How has the approach taken with regard to the clinton investigation been memorialized and have you modified in any way fbi or Department Procedures im concerned about what the future practice will be. How has the approach taken with regard to the clinton investigation been memorialized and have you modified in any way fbi or Department Procedures regarding disclosure of information concerning investigation particularly close to an election . Dir. Comey we have not. And the reason for that that we did that i did was in my view consistent with department of justice policy. That is, we dont confirm the existence of investigation except under unusual circumstances. We dont talk about investigations that dont result in criminal charges unless there is a compelling public interest. And so those principles should still govern. We also, whenever humanly possible, avoid any action that might have an impact on an election. I still believe that to be true and incredibly important guiding principle is one that i labored and under here. Frankly as i said earlier, didnt think i had a choice because i could only have two actions. Before me i couldnt find a door labeled no action so the principles still exist and incredibly important. The current investigation with respect to russia, we have confirmed it. The department of justice authorized me to confirm it and exists and not say another word about it until we are done. Then i hope in league with the department of justice will figure out if it doesnt result in charge what, if anything, with lwe will we say about it and. Sen. Coons you i think there was a door open to you late in the election to confirm the existence of an Ongoing Investigation about the Trump Campaign. Which i think was of compelling interest and was an unusual circumstance. An activity by a known adversary to interfere in our election. Had there been Public Notice there was renewed investigation into both campaigns, i think the impact would have been different. Do you agree . Dir. Comey no. I thought a lot about this. And my judgment was a counterintelligence we have to separate two things. I thought it was very important to call out what the russians were trying to do with our elections and offered in august myself to be a voice for that in public piece calling it out. The Obama Administration didnt va tang of that in august but in october. I thought important to call out and separate question do you confirm the existence of classified investigation that has just started to try to figure out are there any connections between that russian activity and u. S. Persons . That started in late july. Remember, the Hillary Clinton investigation we didnt confirm it existed until three months after it started and it started publicly. So i thought the consistent principle would be we dont confirm the existence of certainly any investigation that involves a u. S. Person but a classified investigation in its early stage. We dont know what we have and what is there. So my judgment was consistent with the principles ive always operated under. That was the right thing to do. Separately i thought it was very important to call out and tell the American People the russians are trying to mess with your election. Sen. Coons i hope that in the future that attempt to draw attention to russian interference in an election you and expect to be effective will continue. A lot of ways the fbi help state and local Law Enforcement. One ive been grateful would was the network through which the fbi provided muchneeded assistance to wilmington Police Department, my hometown, where we have had a dramatic spike in violence. Id be interested in hearing how you imagine or you intend that the fbi will continue to assist local Law Enforcement in combating unprecedented spikes in Violent Crime in a few of our communities such as wilmington where they have happened . Dir. Comey thank you for that, senator. The vrm was pilot in wilmington and a small number of other places and we believe it works the fbi brings a state and local fight, our technology, our intelligence speaker tes figure figuring how to connect dots and which of the bat guys to focus on and our Law Enforcements and agencies to make communications. We try to do in wilmington in cities around the country the cities seeing spike in violence and the depressing fact is about half of americas biggest cities saw another rise in violence. The first quart of this year. So we are trying to lean forward and do what we have done in wilmington in those places as well. Sen. Coons we appreciate your effort to support local Law Enforcement. Thank you. Senator kennedy. Senator kennedy the morning, mr. Directing mr. Director. This afternoon now. Ill assume for a second that im not a United States senator and that i dont have security clearance to look at classified information. If someone sends me classified information and i know or should know its classified information, and i read it, have i committed a crime . Dir. Comey potentially. Senator kennedy has the person who sent me the information committed a crime . Dir. Comey potentially. If they knew you didnt have a appropriate clearance and a need to know. Senator kennedy was there classified information on former congressman weiners computer . Dir. Comey yes. Senator kennedy who sent it to him . Dir. Comey his then spouse huma abedin had emails to forward to him to print out for her so she could deliver them to the secretary of state. Dir. Comey senator kennedy did former congressman weiner read the classified material . Dir. Comey i dont think so. I think i dont think we have been able to interview him because he has pending criminal problems of other sorts. But my understanding is that his role would be to print them out as a matter of convenience. Sen. Kennedy if he did read them, would he have committed a crime . Dir. Comey potentially. Sen. Kennedy would his spouse have committed a crime . Dir. Comey again, potentially. It would depend upon a number of things. Sen. Kennedy is there an investigation with respect to the two of them . Dir. Comey there was. It is we completed it. Sen. Kennedy why did you conclude neither of them committed a crime . Dir. Comey because with respect to miss abe abedin in particular we didnt have any indication she had had a sense what she was doing was in violation of the law. Couldnt prove any sort of criminal intent. Really, the central problem we have with the whole email investigation was proving that people knew the secretary and others knew they that they were communicating about classified information in a way that they shouldnt be and proving that they had some sense that they were doing something unlawful. That was our burden. And we werent able to meet it. Sen. Kennedy so she thought it was ok to send her husband the information . Dir. Comey well, i think i dont want to get too much into what she thought. We could not prove that the people sending the information, either in that case or in the other case with the secretary were acting with any kind of criminal intent. Sen. Kennedy assume for a second again, im not a United States senator im working for a president ial campaign. And im contacted by a russian agent. And he just wants to look talk about the campaign in general and strategy. Am i committing a crime . Dir. Comey harder to answer. One, i probably dont want to answer any given in a hypothetical given the work we are doing. Sen. Kennedy let me try it this way. Lets assume im not a United States senator, im working for a president ial campaign. And im contacted by a russian agent who says ive got some hacked emails here and i want to visit with you about them. Am i committing a crime . Dir. Comey also, senator, i think i should resist answering that hypothetical. Sen. Kennedy ok. Can you explain to me, not the law, but just in your personal opinion, when interrogation techniques become torture . Dir. Comey you mean not the law . Sen. Kennedy thats right. Dir. Comey there is a statute that defines torture in the United States and so that, as a lawyer, and as a member of Law Enforcement organization, that is where i would start that the definition of torture is laid out in american statutes. Im not sure i understand what you mean beyond that. Sen. Kennedy im just asking your personal opinion about what you think constitutes torture, where you personally would draw the line, drawing on your substantial experience. General,y id say, in any contact that involves the intentional infliction of physical paint or discomfort in order to obtain information is , in the colloquial sense, torture. May not be torture under the statute, which congress chose to define at a fairly high level but as a human being and fbi director i think the physical pain and discomfort to be colloquially torture. Sen. Kennedy any discomfort . Suppose you just served someone bad food. Dir. Comey again, tricky for us because the fbi is very careful never to inflict intentionally inflict physical pain or discomfort of any sort to try to question somebody. Sen. Kennedy i understand. Dir. Comey so id say, yeah, that is conduct you should say way clear of. It is also ineffective, frankly. But that is a whole other deal. Sure. Ennedy do you think it is possible from a Law Enforcement perspective to properly vet a nonamerican, noncitizen, i should say, coming to the United States from a conflict area, such as syria . Dir. Comey its difficult to do it perfectly. And i have concerns about the ability to vet people coming from areas where we have no relationship on the ground with the government there, and so i suppose it is possible to do it reasonably. I suppose there are a number of tools you could bring to bear but there are always risks associated with that. Sen. Kennedy how do you do it . You cant call the chamber of commerce in syria. How do you do it . Dir. Comey well, you we do it now. We query the holdings of the entire american Intelligence Community to see if any what we call selectors, phone mails, emails addresses associated with that person ever showed in the world in our holding is a good way to do it. Getting into the persons social media to see what they have there. That is another pretty good way of doing it. The host government will have a whole lot of information about them. In iraq, we collected a whole lot of biometrics to see if fingerprints ever showed up. Im sorry. . En. Kennedy how about yemen dir. Comey similar. Sen. Kennedy i yield back my three second, mr. Chairman. Thank you. Youve been getting a lot of questions surrounding your decision to make certain statements about the investigation into secretary clintons emails. And to many of us, you treated the investigation of the clinton email investigation or matter. Whatever you want to call it, differently than how you treated the Ongoing Investigation of the Trump Campaign and the russian attempts to interfere with their elections. Can youou if i fell freely to speak about the clinton investigation because it had been completed when you had your press conference in july . Dir. Comey correct. You do confirm that there is still an Ongoing Investigation of the Trump Campaign and their conduct with regard to russian efforts to undermine our elections . Dir. Comey we are conducting an investigation to understand whether there was any coordination between the russian efforts and anybody associated with the Trump Campaign. Dir. Comey sen. Hirono so since youve already confirmed that such an investigation is ongoing, can you tell us more about what constitutes that investigation . Dir. Comey no. Sen. Hirono in july of 2016 when you announced that you were not going to be bringing criminal charges against secretary clinton because you did need to show intent and there was no intent discovered, you you spoke for 15 minutes, not only did you say that you were not going to bring criminal charges against her, by the way, which you said at the end of your 15 minutes, but you went on to chastise her, saying that she had been extremely careless. You raised questions about her judgment. You contradicted statements you had made about her email practices. And said that possibly that hostile Foreign Agents or governments had gained access to her server and had she still been employed by the government, she could have faced disciplinary action for what she did. I just wanted to know whether , when you made all of those Public Statements chastising her, and i wont editorialize your decision to bring about charges, it had to occur to you that this public chastisement put secretary clinton in a negative light. So did you consider whether this public chastisement might affect her campaign . Dir. Comey i have to respectfully disagree with your characteristics of my intention as chastising. My role is to determine what is true. What did we do . What did we find and what do we think about it. I tried to be as complete and fair as i could be and tell the truth about what we found and what we think about it and what we are recommending. Sen. Hirono so when you had said that she was behaving in an extremely careless manner, can you cite me to other examples where you made some of those kind of comments . That elaborated on an fbis decision not to bring about criminal charges . Dir. Comey i cant as director. I know the department has in the irs email investigation. They wrote a report after they were done chastising lois lerner. For her behavior in a similar way. It happens its very unusual but it happens. Sen. Hirono but we know that you were very concerned about what might happen if it came to light that you had possibly gone easy on mrs. Clinton and, therefore, that you were concerned about the political ramifications of your decisions and, yet dir. Comey i was not. Sen. Hirono so you did not consider that your statements about a person who is running for president would not have a negative effect on her . Dir. Comey i tried very hard not to consider what effect it might have politically. I tried very hard to credibly complete an investigation that had gotten extraordinary public attention and my judgment and people can disagree about this, was that offering as much transparency as possible by what we did, what we found we think of it was the best way to credibly complete the investigation. I wasnt thinking about what effect it might have on a political campaign. Sen. Hirono i find that very hard to to really you know, i find that hard to believe that you did not contemplate that there would be political ramifications to your comments. Dir. Comey i knew there would be i knew there would be ramifications. I just tried not to care about them. I knew there would be a huge storm that would come, but i tried to say what is the right thing to do in this case . Sen. Hirono the right thing would have been that you did not have enough evidence to bring about criminal charges and that should have been the end of it, i would think. I dont know why you went toward with all kinds of characterizations about her actions, and i find it hard to believe that you may not have considered it, but the thought should have occurred to you, and that i would think that you would have bent over backward not to say anything that would have an impact on the campaign. Or on the election because you seemed to do that. That that was a concern for you. Let me turn to the Trump Administrations vetting and security clearances and that process. In recent days, there have been numerous reports of Trump Administration officials failing to disclose foreign contacts and cash in their security clearance forms. What is the role of the fbi in vetting the security clearances of white house personnel . If any . Dir. Comey well, sometimes the fbi is assigned to do the background checks on people who are coming into government in the executive office of the president. Other times, not. A lot of times there are people who are arriving with clearances that already exist. Sen. Hirono so in the case of the Trump Administration officials and there have been a number of them was the fbi asked to participate in the vetting process . Dir. Comey the fbi has done i some for some appointments. I dont know them for sure. I shouldnt talk about individuals in an open forum, at least without thinking about it better. Sen. Hirono what would be the consequences for a white staffer or personnel who fails to disclose their foreign contacts on a security clearance form . Dir. Comey hard to say, it could include losing your clearances if conduct is intentional. It could subject someone to criminal reliability. Sen. Hirono with the department of justice pursue that . Dir. Comey potentially. I think it would depend upon who owned the clearance as well in the first instance it might be another part of the Intelligence Community. Sen. Hirono since there have been concerned raise about clearance is not being appropriately vetted, is there an ongoing fbi investigation into what happened with the vetting process and whether crimes may have been committed . Dir. Comey it is not something i can comment on sitting here. Sen. Hirono sankey. Senator cruz thank you, mr. Chairman. Youre to say that i found answer to senator kennedy a few minutes ago puzzling. Reason you described the why the case was closed against , you could not determine she was aware her conduct was unlawful. The reason that is puzzling is that you are an accomplished lawyer. As you are well aware, every earns r law student learns in law that ignorance of the law is no excuse and mens rea does not require that knowledge is unlawful. The governing statute ss have no requirement of acknowledge. 798a provides whoever transmits or otherwise makes available to an unauthorized person, classified information shall be this title or imprisoned for 10 years. Under the terms of that statute the fact pattern you describe in this hearing seems to fit that statute directly in that, if i understand you correctly, you said she forwarded hundreds or thousands of classified emails to her husband on a nongovernment, nonclassified computer. How is how does that conduct not directly violate that statute . Dir. Comey first, senator, if i said that, i misspoke. She forwarded hundreds of emails, some of which contained classified information. For generations i think is a fair way to say it the department of justice understood that statute to require in practice and in law to require general sense of criminal intent. That is not a specific intent, but a general intent, a sense, a knowledge that what you are doing is unlawful, not filing your particular statute. I cant find a case brought in the last 50 years based on negligence without some showing of intent. Sen. Cruz you and i have both worked in a number of jobs that require dealing with classified information. And on its face, anyone dealing with classified information should know that that conduct is impermissible. Let me ask you, how would you handle an fbi agent who forwarded thousands of classified emails to his or her spouse on a nongovernment computer . Dir. Comey there would be significant administrative discipline. Im highly confident they would be prosecuted, i am also highly confident there would be discipline. Sen. Cruz lets shift to another topic. In the previous congress, i shared a hearing i chaired a hearing on willful blindness on the Obama Administration to radical islamic terrorism. We heard testimony that described a purge dhs had under gone of editing or deleting over 800 records at dhs to remove references of radical islam or to the muslim brotherhood. Purge was the word used by the white house that directed dhs to conduct that purge. We obviously have a new administration now, a new white house, a new attorney general. Has the approach of the fbi to radical islamic terrorism changed in any respect with the new administration . Dir. Comey not that i am aware of, no. Sen. Cruz let me ask you about one specific terror attack which is on may 15 in may of 2015 the terrorist attack in garland, texas where two terrorists opened fire on a peaceful gathering. And thankfully, no innocent people were killed thanks to the heroic action of garland Police Officer greg stevens. Who fatally shot the two terrorists. But a Security Officer was shot in the leg and it could have been much, much worse. At the time of the incident, you stated publicly that the fbi did not know the terrorists were on their way to the event or that they planned on attacking the event. Recently, there have been media reports suggesting otherwise. Specifically, media reports that have stated an under cover fbi agent was in close communication with the two terrorists in the weeks leading up to the attack, explicitly discussed plans for the attack and was in a car directly behind the two terrorists outside the event and took photos of the terrorists moments before the attack, but then left the scene when the shooting began and that that agent was detained by the garland police. Are those media reports correct . Dir. Comey no. I stand by what i said originally. I cant go into the details of it here because they are classified. The fair thing to say is the media reports are highly misleading. In a classified setting, i could explain to you how. Sen. Cruz i would appreciate you or your designee sharing those in a classified setting so that i can learn more of what occurred. This committee has had substantial focus, also, on the practice of the previous irs of targeting citizens and citizen groups based on their political speech, political views and perceived political opposition to president obama. And the Previous Department of justice both attorneys general holder and lynch in my view stonewalled that investigation. Is the fbi currently investigating the fbis rather the irss unlawful targeting of citizens for exercising political speech . Dir. Comey i think you are referring to the original investigation focusing on groups allegedly associated with tea party . We completed that investigation and department declined prosecution. We worked hard on it but a lot of people on it couldnt make what we thought was a case. To my knowledge, it has not been reopened. Sen. Cruz so did the fbi recommend prosecution . You said it couldnt make the case. Dir. Comey we couldnt prove that anybody was targeting these folks because they were conservatives or associated with the tea party. We worked hard to see if we could make that case but couldnt get there. Thank you. Senator blumenthal. Senator blumenthal thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you, director comey for being here. Thank you to you and the men and women who work with you at the fbi for their Extraordinary Service to our country, much of it unappreciated as you are so powerfully in your opening statement. You have confirmed, i believe, that the fbi is investigating potential ties between Trump Associates and the russian interference in the 2016 campaign, correct . Dir. Comey yes. Sen. Blumenthal and you have not, to my knowledge, ruled out anyone in the Trump Campaign as potentially a target of that criminal investigation, correct . Dir. Comey i havent said anything publically about who we have opened investigations on. I briefed the chair in ranking the chair and ranking on who the people are. I cant go beyond that in this setting. Sen. Blumenthal have you ruled out anyone in the campaign that you can disclose . Dir. Comey i dont feel comfortable answering that, senator, because i think it puts me on a slope to talk about who we are investigating. Sen. Blumenthal have you ruled out the president of the United States . Dir. Comey i want peoplet to overinterpret this answer. I will not comment on anyone in particular because that puts me down a slope. If i say no to that then i have to answer succeeding questions. We briefed chair and ranking on who u. S. Persons are that we have opened investigations on. That is as far as we are going to go at this point. Sen. Blumenthal but as a former prosecutor you know that when there is an investigation into several potentially culpable individuals the evidence from those individuals and the investigation can lead to others, correct . Dir. Comey correct. We are always open minded and follow the evidence wherever it takes us. Sen. Blumenthal so potentially, the president of the United States could be a target of your Ongoing Investigation into involvement with russian interference in our election. Dir. Comey i just i dont want to answer that because that seems to be unfair speculation. We will follow the evidence he will try to follow the evidence where it wherever it leads. Sen. Blumenthal wouldnt this situation be ideal for the appointment of a special prosecutor, an independent counsel, in light of the fact that the attorney general has recused himself and so far as your answers indicate today no one has been ruled out publically in your Ongoing Investigation. I understand the reasons that you want to avoid ruling out anyone publicly, but for exactly that reason, because of the appearance of a potential conflict of interest, isnt this situation absolutely crying out for a special prosecutor . Dir. Comey thats a judgment for the Deputy Attorney general the acting attorney general on this matter, and not something i should comment on. Sen. Blumenthal you had some experience in this kind of decision. In 2003, you admirably appointed a special prosecutor, patrick fitzgerald, when the attorney general then John Ashcroft recused himself from involvement in the investigation concerning whether the bush Administration Officials illegally disclosed the identity of an undercover cia official. Are there any differences materially between that situation and this one, so far as the reasons to appoint a special counsel . Dir. Comey well, i think both situations, as with all investigations that touch on people who have been actors in a the credibility of the investigation into the leak of identity woulds be best served by not having it myself because i was appointee. L i was investigation, the Ongoing Investigation into rump associates and their potential collusion with the russians in the election, will providing any updates to the American People . Certainly not before the atter is concluded and depending on how its concluded and some matters are concluded charges, other matters as was the case with the email investigation end with no but a statement of some sort. Others end with no statement. I dont know yet. To do ly i would want that in close coordination with the department. Recommendations to presumably it would be the Deputy Attorney general or the one is prosecutor if appointed as to whether criminal charges should be brought . In this case in particular but in general we almost always do especially the matters. Rofile but you cannot yourself pursue criminal charges; correct . Correct. I think thats importanted for the american important for the American People to it bears on cause the question of whether a special prosecutor should be appointed. Fbi may inspire great credibility and trust but the charges. Ot bring neither can the intelligence an ittee do so nor can independent commission. Only the Deputy Attorney general r a special prosecutor designated by him. Correct . Correct. We need to close because i am running out of time. Been questioned at all by the Inspector General in inquiry thatth the i understand is ongoing into a number of the topics that weve discussing here . Yes. Ive been interviewed. The Inspector General is looking looking at my conduct in the course of the email investigation which sounds crazy say but i encourage that. I want that inspection. Want my story told because some of it is classified and also if i did something wrong, i want to hear that. I did. Think ive been interviewed and im sure ill be interviewed again. Or o you have any regrets anything you would do in connection with either the comments you made at closed the investigation or when you then you ated to congress that were in effect reopening it. Yeah. The honest answer is no. Asked myself that a million times. Is maybething i regret answering the phone when i was living happily in connecticut be fbi asked me to director. But i cant. ve gotten all kinds of rocks thrown at me and this has been really hard but i think ive one the right thing at each turn. Im not on anybodys side. So hard for people to see that. Times. Ked that a million should you have done this or i t and the honest answer, dont mean to be arrogant, i wouldnt have done it any differently. Somehow i would have wished or away. It wished i was on the shores of he connecticut sound but failing that, i dont have any regrets. I want to ask one last this on unrelated to topic. On the issue of gun violence. Agree that universal background checks would help in the enforcement prevention of gun violence. The more able we can keep the out of the hands of criminals and spouse abusers, the better. Ill take that as a yes. Thank you. Tillis. Tor i think we have one member if for re going to come back first round we have a few who want a second round. So i hope that people get back know exactly how many people we have out of courtesy director comey. Forirector comey, thank you being here. Im always impressed with your preparation your and i want to get to a couple of other things. Maybe first. Time, come back to what the hearing has been predominantly about. You briefed us last year, i think that you said that there some that there were Ongoing Investigations on security potential terrorists either home grown or inspired investigations in every state. Is that still the case . Yes. Do you have roughly can roughly an idea of the number of investigations that is . Just north of a thousand. North of a thousand. Yeah. That case load has stayed about since we last talked about it. Some have closed. Some have opened. Home grown thousand violence extremist investigations in the United States. Also asked e time i the question about to what in nt that you can discuss this setting were people who are the target of this persons who came in through various programs vetting stions about have been raised about whether or not they were accurate. At the time i think there were half. A dozen and a do you have any rough numbers about that . Do. Ome grown violent extremist we have no indication theyre in touch with terrorists. People whor drupe of we see contact request foreign terrorists. Take that 2,000 plus people, about 300 of them came the states as refugees. Okay. And to what extent in investigations you mentioned earlier that there are probably about half of the devices that ing youve accessed that you cant get into with any technology i assume bi has which is some of the most advanced available. Extent is the access to that information relevant in investigations, potential homeland threats . I would say its a feature of work but especially concerning here because were trying law lawful process to consuming are they this poison on the internet and are they in touch with anybody in terrorism cases, about half the devices we cant open. Percent of our subjects are using at least one encrypted app. Of the base of information you cant get to. 702, how much more of ha emaining half would be harmed . Addresses a 702 different challenge. It would be a disaster. In these elevant investigations. It is. So half of the physical assets you cant already get to. Ss theres the metadata and all the nformation that would be instructive to this investigation. So by going dark is that 100 . Headed towards 100 . 02 is the window of the bad guys overseas. I dont know why we would close that window. We have thousands of of potential Homeland Security threats evenly people who have been selfradicalize, some some in the refugee program. I want to create the context to when the investigation first began. It was already a part of media attention. On june 27th, the then ttorney general met with the spouse of someone whos subject to an active investigation which is at. At least an unusual encounter which also spun up the edia and i think it was july 5th that you made the statement that i think a few of youve said that i guess based on the evidence you were gathering, one component like removing a frame from a jigsaw puzzle and dumping the pieces on the floor. Hen you said theres evidence of potential violations of statutes regarding the handling f classified information and you went on to say under similar circumstances a person engaged these activities would likely or ubject to security administrative sanctions. But you went on to say that you a nt believe reasonableminded prosecutor would bring a case even though potential vidence of violations, and that you were expressing your view that the ustice department should not proceed. Is that typical for you to go to a point and say ive gathered there may be on, evidence of violations, but we any reasonable prosecutor in the doj would pursue it so were going to pursuing it. Is that common . For an fbi director to do that . Yeah. Never heard of it. Never imagined it ever until this circumstance. Some logic in e that at the time that you were making that decision based on he information you were provided, was there the same sort of thought process youre going through there to have it that then ledevel to your october 28th notification of congress that you had to look at other that had been weiners d on anthony pc . What im trying to do is say it ooks like you were trying to provide as much transparency and had ime information as you and then on november 6th, the fbi apparently moved heaven and got something done in a matter of days that they thought was going to take beyond the election. Pressure re in that cooker. I just wanted to give you an opportunity to glue together i your the decision for actions on july 5th and how i think theres parallels between ultimately didou on october 28th and then and ill yield back my time for the answer. Ive lived my whole life caring about the credibility and criminal ity of the justice process. That the American People believe t to behr and that it be in fact fair, independent, and honest. O what i struggled with in the spring of last year was how do we credibly complete the hillary tion of clintons emails if we conclude theres no case there. The normal way to do it would be the department of justice announce it and i struggled as we got closer to the end of it a number of things had gone on, some of which i cant talk worry et that made me that the Department Leadership could not credibly complete the and decline prosecution without grievous damage to the American Peoples justice e in the system. And the capper was and not attorney general, Loretta Lynch, who i like very but her meeting with Hillary Clinton on that airplane was the capper for me. Know what, the department cannot be itself credibly end this. Chance we have is to step away and tell the American People, heres what the fbi did, heres what we found, heres what we think. And that that offered us the best chance of the american believing in the system that it was done in a credible way. That was a hard call for me to make to call the attorney that morning and say im about to do a press conference and im not telling you what im going to say. Said to her i hope you feel i nd one day why i have to do this. I knew this would be a disaster but i felt nally this is the best way to protect about titutions we care so much. So this was one in a credible way. Weiner thing ny landed on me on october 27th, a huge new step to be taken, we may be finding the golden missing emails that case if i wereis not to speak about that it would catastrophic us, concealment. It was incredibly painful choice actually not that hard between very bad and catastrophic. That we Tell Congress decisional these steps. Two actions, speak or conceal. I dont think many reasonable do it different than what i did no matter what they say today. That . You really conceal so i spoke. Gain, the design was to act credibly, independently, and honestly, so the American People rigged inystem is not any way and thats why i felt transparency was the best path july and i wasnt seeking transparency in october. Sent that letter only to the chairs and rankings. Announcement at that point. And my amazing people moved heaven and earth to do what was to get through those emails by working 24 hours a found tons of new stuff. View. T change our they said we dont believe hillary case against prior to the bureau watching the investigation into the alleged ties between the Trump Campaign and russia, did anyone have any interactions with mr. Steele about the issue. It is not a question i can answer in this forum. I have briefed you privately on this, and if there is more than necessary then i would be happy to do that privately. Have you ever represented to a judge that the fbi had interaction with mr. Steele, whether by name or not about alleged ties between the Trump Campaign and russia prior to the bureau launching its investigation into the matter. I have to give you the same answer, mr. Chairman. This one, i expect an answer on. Policies allow it to cap to pay in outside do fbior to pay policies allow it to pay an outside investigator for work that another source is also paying that investigator for . I do not know for sure sitting here. Possibly. I will look into it for you, and i will get you the best answer i can. In writing. Sure. Did the fbi provide any information to mr. Steele about the investigation on from associates . I cannot answer in this forum. Was the fbi aware that mr. Steele reportedly paid his sources who in turn paid their sub sources to make the claim in the dossier . Same answer, sir. Behe was one you ought to able to answer. Whether or to know not sources have been paid in order to evaluate the credibility . Doesnthave been paid, that information need to be disclosed if you are relying on that information in seeking approval for Investigative Authority . In general, yes, i think it is vital to know. The fbi and the Justice Department had provided material and inconsistent answers in close settings about its reported relationship with mr. Steele. Will you commit to fully answering the questions from my mark six and april 28 march six and april 28 letters so that we can resolve those inconsistencies even if a closed session is necessary . Because i do not know all the answers questions in the i cannot the moment, answer that question, but i will give you a later answer in writing. I do not think there is any inconsistency. However, in a classified setting i will give you what you need. I hope to show you those inconsistencies. I think i know where the confusion is, but in a classified session weekends we can straighten it out. According to a complaint filed with the Justice Department, a company that oversaw dossier creation was also working with a former russian intelligence operative on a prorussian lobbying campaign at the same time that was allegedly failed to register as a Foreign Agent for work done under a law that allows before i sent you a letter about this, where you aware of the the individualst acting as a unregistered agent for russian interest . That is not a question i can answer in this forum. You cannot answer that . No, i cannot. I will go on to something else. Last week, the fbi filed a declaration in Court Pursuant to freedom of information act litigation. The fbi said that a grand jury issued subpoenas for secretary clintons emails, and yet you refuse to tell this committee whether the fbi saw it or had been denied access to the grand jury process from the Justice Department. I think a simple question why does the fbi give more information to someone who files a lawsuit then to an Oversight Committee in the congress . That has happened to me several times. I am not sure, senator, that is what happened here. You are right. I refused to confirm in our hearings what as to whether we used a grand jury and how. I think that is the right position, because i do not know it well enough. I do not think i can distinguish the statements made in that case as i sit here. Just as a matter of proposition then if i as a private citizen file a freedom of information act, and you give me more information than you will to a senator how do you justify that . That is a good question. What you mean it is a good question . How do you justify it . I cant as i sit here. Clinton investigation nicknamed operation midyear because it needed to be finished before the Democratic National convention . If so, why the artificial deadline . If not, why was that the name . Certainly not. There is an art in a science to how we come up with codenames for cases. They assure me it is assigned randomly, but sometimes i see one that makes me smile. Midyear exam was the name of the case. I can assure you that it was not chosen based off of any nefarious purpose for timing on the investigation. When was a grand jury convened . Was it before your first Public Statement opposing the case . Im still not in a position comfortable confirming where or when we where or whether we used a supreme jury. A grand jury. I have to be very triple in talking about grand jury matters. Im not going to answer that, sir. Think you, mr. Chairman. Mr. Director, thank you and your fortitude in going through this. In your testimony, you noted that in the first half of the fiscal year, the fbi was unable to access content of more than 3000 mobile devices even though the fbi had the Legal Authority to do so. Im familiar with one of those and that is the Southern California terrorist attack 14 people were killed in San Bernardino. Of those 3000 devices you are not able to access, can you say how many of them were related to a counterterrorism event . I do not know as i sit here, that we can get you that information. I would very much appreciate that. That legislation legislation that would take into consideration events of National Security and therehat devices must be some way of going before a judge and getting a court order to be able to open a device. Do you think that would work . That would be a better place in my mind for us to be from a Public Safety perspective, we are not there now. This week, the British Parliament selects committee the British Parliament Home Affairs Select committee released a report saying that social media platforms failed to remove extremist material posted by banned jihadist and neonazi groups even after that material was reported. The Committee Urged Tech Companies to pay for and publicized online content monitoring activities, and called on the British Government to strengthen laws related to the publication of such material. Threeear, i worked with senators to introduce a bill to require Tech Companies to report terrorist activity on their platforms to Law Enforcement. What the ui guys what do you advise the provision we modeled after another law which required companies to notify authorities about cases of child pornography, but it does not require companies to mock turn to monitor any particular customer or subscriber. I plan to introduce the bill in separate legislation, so with the fbi benefit from knowing when Technology Companies see terrorist plotting and other illegal activity online . Yes. With the fbi be willing to work with the judiciary Committee Going forward on this committee on this bill Going Forward . Yes, senator. Struck when San Bernardino happened. You made overtures to allow that device to be opened. 9,000 d to spend 900,000 to have that device hacked open. As i learned some of the reasons for it, i learned there were good reasons to get into that device. , oncencern i have is that people have been killed in a terrorist attack in that there may be other dna and messages that lead and Investigative Agency to believe there are others out there, isnt it to the protection of the public that one would be able to see if a device could be opened . I have had a very hard time i have gone out and tried to talk with the Tech Companies in my state. Good in was very understanding the problem, but most do not. Has the fbi ever talked with the Tech Companies about this need in particular . Yes, senator. We have had a lot of conversations. As i said earlier, in my sense, they are getting more productive , because i think the Tech Companies have come to see the darkness a little bit more. Important, but they did not seem to see the Public Safety cost. I think they are starting to see that better. No one wants to see something terrible happened in the United States and it be connected to our inability to access information with lawful authority. That we half that we ought to have access to the information before it happens. I think the Tech Companies have started to get that more and more over the last year and a half. We were picking on apple in that San Bernardino case. There were real reasons we had to get into that device. In case after case, so we have to figure out a way to optimize those two things privacy and Public Safety. My understanding about some of this was that the European Community had special concerns about privacy. That some of the companies in our country were concerned that they would lose business. That european concern is changing. I think what i read about the u. K. And what i stand what i understand is happening in france and germany, the increased sharing of intelligence. The realization that they have very dangerous people in large numbers possibly plotting at any given time to carry out an attack. It has had some effect on them. There may be a change in viewpoint. It would be very helpful if our Law Enforcement immunity could help us Law Enforcement community could help us. It is not to monitor. It is something that is very basic. If there is a piece of evidence that says there may be another individual out there and you have a chance of getting into that piece of evidence to see if it is true. With a judges permission. With a judges permission that is correct. I thank you for that. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Senator lee. Go to thank you, mr. Chairman. And thank you director call me for being here today and for your service to this country. I want to talk about Electronic Communications transactions records. Would it be fair to say that electronic medication transaction records include such electronic communication transaction records include such things as browsing history . Yes. Would it be safe to say that what pages one views might in some way be indicative of what someone is reading . Potentially. Even if you do not see where they went on the page if they went to espn or fishing magazine , it does give them some indication of their interests. You can find out a fair amount about a person if you can review what they have been reading for a certain period of time. It, whatrstand we can get is the website visited, and not necessarily where they went with a click on at the page. However, it does give some indication of their interest along with who they called gives you some kind of indication of their interest. If you could get that information about that subpart that they went to espn and read that or this article my understanding is that under the statute we cannot get that sub content. We can get the website visited, but we cannot get that sub content. Within the within the existing context of the law . Correct. Clerks to change the law, with that allow you to get the more granular information . As we understand it, the way it was intended to be used, our msl authority under hector is what we thought it was, what it is limited to that top level website address. Even if it changes, we will not be able to get any deeper into what you looked at on the page. We can see what Sporting Goods store you called, that we cannot tell from the call record you asked about. We can see what sporting page you visited, what we cannot see where you went within that. It is not my recognition based off the legislation i have reviewed, it is not my recollection that that is the case. Is that inconsistent with your understanding . It is. My understanding is that we are not looking for that authority. You do not want that authority . Yes, what we want is the functional equivalent of the dialing information. To, but notyou went where you went within it. Even if you look at it at the broad level of abstraction, just broad level of a domain if you follow someones browsing oftory over a long period time, you could still find out a lot about a person, is that correct . Yes. Just as you could from the telephone dialing history. Must talk about section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. It often authorizes the use of u. S. Signals surveillance equipment to obtain foreign intelligence information. The declaration includes information that is directly related to National Security, but it also includes the permission that is relevant to the Foreign Affairs of the United States regardless of it that Foreign Affairs related information is relevant to a National Security threat. To your knowledge, has the attorney general or the dni ever used section 702 to target individuals abroad in a situation unrelated to a National Security threat . Not that i am aware of. I believe it is confined to espionage,orism, counter proliferation, and those are the buckets. That is where they typically use those things. Knowledge, it does not currently used section 702 to target people abroad in instances unrelated to National Security threats . I do not think so. Like a diplomat to find how they feel about particular foreign policy, i do not believe so. If section 702 were narrowed to exclude such information that is relevant to Foreign Affairs but not to a National Security threat, would that mean that the government would be able to obtain the information it needs in order to protect National Security . It would seem so, logically. To me, the value of 702 is exactly that. Where the rubber hits the road in the counterterrorism context within counterterrorism and counter proliferation. When section 72 is used, what we are talking about is not metadata. It is not that this call was made from this number to this number, but it is content. If we were talking about two , if imerican citizens were calling you, it is not something section 702 would typically use to collect. But if it is someone that im calling, someone else who is not a u. S. Citizen, who is an agent of a foreign government, that might be attached to a National Security investigation and that medication could be intercepted communication could be intercepted. Not just the call but the content of the call. Yes, that is what we call incidental collection. And that incidental collection is aggregated into databases. So, there have been people out there who have had it calls recorded in a database. Can you search that database for communications involving specific u. S. Persons without getting a warrant . Yes. The fact that these medications were intercepted without any showing of wrongdoing on the part of the u. S. Percent or showing that the u. S. Person had anything to do with the National Security investigation at issue, does that cause you concern that could involve almost a backdoor way of going after two indications by u. S. Persons in which they have a reasonable expectation of privacy . It does not call me concerned, but it could be because of where i can see of what i can see from where i am. I can see the concern, but if we are covering a particular embassy of a foreign power and americans call in to speak with them, we do require that, because we are authorized to collect communication in and out of that and the sea. We store all of that in the database. We have lawfully elected does. Call a2, if you terrorist or someone we are targeting overseas and if you have a conversation it will be collected and stored in a database. What matters is how we treat that data. That we do not use it willynilly. That we protected in important ways. It is true of 702 or collected domestically. I do not know how we would operate otherwise. The American People want us to do is to make sure we hold it so we can connect the dots. U. S. Till treated like the personal information that it is, protected and make sure it is handled in a responsible way. Thank you. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Director, let me tell you a story. About 100 years ago, mike italian grandparents my italian grandparents and my irish grandparents faced discrimination because of their religion. That discrimination was not violence, it was economic which is not unusual of this country at that time. I like to think it is now gone. I like to think that my italian and irish grandparents, the discrimination they face because of their race and religion, is not here. But now, we see an alarming crime of hate crimes against minority communities. We heard some important testimony from the department of justice the other day about our nations largest civil rights that lawion enforcement and political a messagee sending that toxic, hateful rhetoric will not be tolerated. Taught a child, i was that we are never to discriminate against anybody because of their race or religion. Now, what bothers me let me show you this. On the campaign trail, President Trump promised his supporters a muslim been ban. A Campaign Press release sading, Donald J Trump statement on preventing muslim immigration. Website today. That goes beyond being stupid. Do you agree with me that messages like that can cast suspicion on our muslim neighbors . That it can perpetuate division and hatred . If it does, does that make america less safe . Senator, thank you. I will not comment on the particular statement, but i agree that a perception or reality of hostility against any community, in this case the Muslim American trinity, makes our jobs harder. In response to an earlier question, those good people do not want people engaging in acts of violence in the name of their faith or in their neighborhood. Aligned,nterests are but if anything happens against them than it chills their openness to work with us and it makes it harder for us to find those threats. You are right about the increase in hate crimes. We have seen those numbers starting to go up in 2014 and have been climbing since then. We have been tried to redouble our efforts to get into those immunities and to show them our hearts and what we are like. We want to encourage people to not fear contact with us. I do not ask this to make a political point. I ask this as a United States senator. I believe the United States senate candy and sometimes has been the conscience of the nation. We are a nation that adheres to the First Amendment, because we believe that you can practice any religion that you want or none if you want. That people should not incondemned for believing their religion because of the actions of a few. I worry very much that the actions in the hatred can bring about things actions and the hatred can bring about things that neither you or i want to see in this country. I do not care who they are against. Fbi, anye head of the of us who have been prosecutors, we have poor all hate crimes abhore all hate crimes. Is that correct . Yes. Would citizen status alone i think of the Oklahoma City bombing. One of the greatest acts of terrorism in our country. It was done by an american believe,ho served, i honorably in our military. Thatould you agree citizenship alone is not a reliable indicator of a terrorist threat posed by an individual to the United States . Correct. Most of the people i talked about who we have open cases on our american citizens. Thank you. We have heard from the department of Homeland Security, and they have an assessment with the department of analysis that states citizenship is unlikely to be a indicator of potential terrorist activity. Do you agree with that . Yes. Another matter that chairman grassley and i have worked on to address concerns related to the. Bi analysis testimony the investigation began in 2012 after three members were exonerated here in washington, d. C. In order to review more than 3000 cases, the fbi has reached to prosecute these cases, and i appreciate that. Thesein concerned that cases will remain closed if you do not find the transcript right away. I have asked you this question in writing. Is there any case where there is a missing transcript that you would commit to having the fbi conduct a in person visit to determine if there was information used to alter analysis by the fbi done by the private citizen . Im sorry, and in person visit . Office. E prosecutors to the person involved. And in person visit to see what the records show. Did you use analysis that may be faulty to have brought about the conviction . I do not know enough about that too act or commit on that now. Can i follow up on that to see how we are thinking on that . You may follow up. Thank you. Senator leahy. Thank you. A quick matter for starters did you give Hillary Clinton a free pass for any bad deeds . There was a tweet to that effect from the president. That was not my intention, certainly. Did you give her a free pass regardless of what your intentions did where . Regardless of what your intentions were . We conducted an open and honest investigation, and i stand by what i said that there is not a case there. Is the question of the consequences of the disclosure, i. E. The harm from the written release or the actual secrecy of the material considered in a prosecutive decision . Is, yes. Experience, it there is a great deal of material that is widely known to the public, and because overclassification is a significant problem in the executive branch, correct . Correct. And that would have been evaluated also in looking at secretary clintons males . Emails . Yes. So although they were classified, they may not have done any harm to who saw them . Specifically, there were enough that were classified that would cause no harm if they were disclosed . Yes, i believe that is the case. It was disclosed that there was a two day interval between the fbi interview of Michael Flynn related to his conversations with ambassador chesley with the Russian Ambassador and then reports to the white house counselor about those calls. Did you participate in conversations during that two day interval . What can you tell us about why that interval took two days . Was there some standard operating receipt of that need to be vindicated . You think that would have been flipped over to the white house a good deal quicker once the agents report came back from the interview. I do not know if todays is right. I could be wrong. It couldve been a day or two days, and i did participate in conversations about that matter. I will stop there, because i do not know the departments position about commuting on those matters. As you sit here, you have no hesitation about that delay or it representing any mischievous contact conduct . No. The agent conducts the interview, they get back and write up a 302, they show it to their partner, they make sure they get it right, and then they release the 32. It sometimes might be until the next day when they get it finished. So, the deputy would have seen the 302, and that process would have taken place by the time she went up to see the white house counselor. I believe that is correct. On to the Anthony Weiner laptop. It, you werend informed right agents in the fbi youthat there was in theformed by agents fbi office that there was information on the laptop. On that information, you sent a letter to the members of congress to whom you had committed to answering if there were any changes to the status of things. You also then authorized the agents to pursue a search warrant which then gave them access to the content which allowed them to do the search that you then said came up with nothing. You then had to undo the letter and said there was nothing there. Do i have the order correct . Yes, they came to me and saw in me on what they the metadata and why they thought it was significant. They wanted a search warrant to do that. I agreed and authorized it and so did the department of justice. They reviewed during the following week, they reviewed 40,000 females. Emails. 0 they found that for a thousand them were workrelated 40,000 were workrelated, that 12 were classified, but we had seen them the four. So, they finished network, and they said did any of those funerals create National Security damage . That is a hard one to answer. By definition, it is defined by National Security damage. Classified is defined by National Security damage. I am not aware of any enough during this investigation the got into the hands of people that were able to exploit them to damage our National Security. Let me offer you this hypothetical. They come to you and they say that the metadata has shown that we have potential information here that could be relevant and could cause us to reopen the information. It would seem to me to be sensible at that motion at that moment to ask how quickly you can get a search warrant and an answer to that question, because i made a promise to people in congress that it would get back to them with this information. If there is anything real here, you need to so that the search warrant precedes the letter rather than the letter preceding the search warrant. Particularly in light of the policy of the to department not to disclose ongoing investigative materials. Andy truly exceptional nature of disclosures. Find out the search warrant first . I found credible the responses there was no way, no way they could review the volume of information they saw on the laptop in the time remaining. Except that they did. They did, and because our wizards came up with a way to see them electronically that involved writing a Custom Software programs that will help us in lots of other areas. We cannotaid, sir, finish this before the election. In my