Thank you. Appreciate the break. Mr. Comey, are you with us . Yes, sir. Okay. Thank you very much. Was that a sufficient break for you . Youre okay . Yes, okay, thank you very much. Was that a sufficient break for you . Youre okay . Yes, thanks very much. Thank you very much. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Mr. Comey, weve heard a number of things this morning, weve heard you say a number of times that the oig found problems in fisa applications across the board, but of course, it was only this one, these involving carter page, that you signed off on, that drew an unprecedented rebuke from the court, which im sure you remember. Let me quote from the order. The frequency of the orders in a case of the sensitive area, have called into question the reliability of the information in other applications. Do you remember that order from the court . It came after i left as i recall, but i remember reading about it. Yes. Have you ever known the court to ever issue the order youre familiar with . Yes. You have known the court to issue orders for rebuking the fbi for misleading it in the past . And the court said in all other cases . I dont remember the exact words, but something similar. Across all signed off on, do you regret your role in the misleading of a fisa court . I dont regret my roll. Why not . Im sorry . Why dont you regret your roll in the unprecedented misleading . I regret that the fbi supplied information that was inaccurate, incomplete and should have been updated. Do you regret that you should have signed off on it . I regret it happened. What the fbi director does in connection with a fisa is narrow. I think people dont understand it. Ed certifications every fisa that the fbi sends over including these. Are you responsible for this misleading ining given to the f court, yes or in . Yes, in the sense of lets taurk about what personal knowledge you have. When you certified, you believed mr. Steele was working for the Democratic Party, didnt you . I dont remember whether i knew the Democratic Party. I knew that they was working for political opponents for President Trump. On december 7th, 2018, before the House Oversight committee in which you said and i quote, steele was retained by republicans for mr. Trump then his work underwritten by that by democrats opposed to trump during the general election season, end quote. Now, surely, you recognize d at the time that relying on sevely on a biased source would undermine Public Confidence in the fbistivities, didnt you . No, i did not. Department of justice. Before the first fisa application, mr. Evans raised serious concerns about the partisan nature of the information provided by mr. Steele. Did he not . I dont know. He did. The Inspector General reports it on pages 136 and 137 of this report and you knew of those concerns before you sign eed of on the application, didnt you . I dont think i knew before. I remember reading the footnote that attempted to inform the court of the potential bias. The Inspector General found and i quote, on october 12th 2016, evans concerns to steele were briefed, end quote, yet yo . I thought it was important that we were inform iing the cot of any potential bias from any source and i remember reading language in this, in that initial filing, that addressed that potential bias issue with respect to the steele reporting. So sorry, your testimony snou that you informed the court of potential problems with the sub source, political motivations, connections to Foreign Governments, the fisa court was informed about that . Sorry. I understood your question was about informing the court of skills reporting. I didnt know any information about sub sources. So, you authorized an unprecedented surveillance on an individual associated with the president ial campaign during that campaigns ongoing flawed because its made up of human beings. Im not necessarily worried about the fbi as a whole. Im worried about you and im worried about what you fi certified to a court that led the court to con cluz that it had been misled repeatedly and due to the repeated misrepresentations, it could no longer trust what the federal20 u. S. Sbel where she knoofficial to james comey regarding Hillary Clintons approval of a plan concerning court says it cant trust what the fbi says in future cases. This is an extraordinary abuse of power and its time we hold people responsible for it. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Senator blumenthal. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you for being here today. Thank you for your service to our nation. And thank you for your family as well. The pandemic continues to kill almost 1,000 americans a day due to the cruel indifference and callous neglect of this administration. People are continuing to lose jobs. Millions are unemployed and are Small Businesses are struggling and here we are relitigating. A act along with a number of my colleagues. Senators durbin, warner, cane, gillibrand and a othothers and theres a measure on the house side that would seek to address this growing, imminent threat of white supremacist, rather than telling them to stand by and i commend you and the current director, mr. Rey, for focusing on it. I want to turn to the statements that earlier you made in response to senator durbins inquiry about the 421 million in debt that has been disclose ed as owing by the president. Youve done a number of National Security background checks. Ands in course of those background checks, my understanding is that a standard question relates to debt owed by individuals. Is that correct . Yes, thats correct. And the reason for that question is to indicate and disclose whether or not that individual has concealed any of that debt. Correct . Correct. One aspect of exploring their financial situation is that. Why is it that those facts are important . Because deciding whether someone is trustworthy with National Security information involves understanding whether theyre vulnerable to exploitation by an adversary, criminal group. So if somebody owes a lot of money and is trying to hide that, that allows adversaries to gain leverage over that person and maybe force them to do something they couldnshonn to. A tool we use to try to recruit Foreign Government officials to become assets of the United States government. So adversaries do the same to us. So the president of the United States of course is not subject to any background security investigation as most high ranking officials are, but it is the concealment of that a debt, not only its gar size, but the hiding of it that potentially makes him vulnerable to blackmail or extortion or other improper influence. Correct . Right. But even if it were fully transparent, there would still be a concern about vulnerability, that the adversary could try to cut a secret deal to reduce the debt even if the public knows about the debt. So any individual in a position of responsibility who is concealing a debt as well as the debt itself makes him or her more likely to be an asset under the influence or subject to extortion by Foreign Government, correct . It creates a serious counterintelligence concern that youd want to address in deciding on a clear suitability for an employee. Thank you very much. Thank you, mr. Y. Senator tillis, just follow up on senator blumenthals questions. Would you be concerned about a counterintelligence threat or compromise if a candidates Family Member was receiving millions of dollars from a corrupt company in the ukraine, that a candidates Family Member was receiving millions of do dollars from the deputy mayor of moscow . That a candidates Family Member was getting a million and a half dollar investment portfolio from the china bank . Would that concern you . If i were still the fbi, id be concerned about any effort to exert leverage over Government Official, potential Government Official or someone close to them in an effort to influence them. Thank you very much. Chairman. If i may just clarify. The question youve just raised is a hypothetical relating to a non, current nonGovernment Official. What we have here and what the records revealed quite starkly is that a the president of the United States, our commander in chief, is vulnerable to leverage and manipulation. Even possible blackmail. I understand your point and you have aing right the make it. The point i was make iing is ve real. Not a hypothetical. These things happen. Senator tillis. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you, mr. Comey, for being here. Mr. Comey, im now going to ask some questions that have been asked by prosecutors and lawyers whose preambles and predicates you have objected, so instead of getting a non answer, i want to go more from a management perspective. We had Inspector General horowitz before this committee and he identified youre aware of the 17 errors and omissions. As i look at some of the errors and omissions, do you think, we know one that have identified as a crime. What do we do with the remainder . Do you ak cement general horowitz reports and his findings . Do you think they were valid . I do and i hope that it was followed by a root cause analysis. Ought to engage and figure out why did this happen and why should we change to make sure it doesnt happen again. Say yu came in you came in aw director of the fbi after the prior director had their organization studied. We found these errors and omissions. If it didnt rise to a level of a climb in your opinion, do you think it at least should have prompted terminations and disciplinary action on the part, these are all highly trained, highly educated, highly experienced professionals in the fbi. And by the way, the majority of them are great people, but its a big organization, but what about the remainder . Youre the new director. Youve gotten this report from the Inspector General. What do do . What is your remediation plan . Ive heard you say that you would want to streamline the s fisa process, but what would you be doing now to address the 16 other errors and omissions that occurred under prior to your watch . Id be doing two things. Looking wide and narrow. Wide to see what the systematic problems are, narrow to try and understand so when these employees made these decisions, what were they thinking . Severe misconduct turns on whether someone is intentionally engaging in wrong doing. You want to assess that with respect to everybody with personal knowledge then make your judgments based on that a. Inspector general did a look across dozens of cases just voi political bias just a paperwork error or business process that needed to be streamlined or how do you feel about the murky description that general horowitz gave to the motivations of people . Weve seen the emails and communications. How do you feel about that . Do you honestly think that this process at the Operator Level was truly devoid of any political bias . I do and im not just saying that. Im saying that because i read horowitz 400page report where i think the most important finding is the investigative decision, there was no evidence found of political bias. We dont think its go ahead. And horowitz finds something, he knows how to say it and he found the opposite. So thats why i say that. Why would horowitz, who i think very capable Inspector General, go so far as to say it was murky . You say that theres, theres no doubt, but we have him say it was murky based on same information that i read in the report. I dont know where the murky comment comes from. Im talking about the report itself, which i read very carefully a number of times and he makes that finding. We found no evidence of political bias in any phase of this investigation. Okay. Just final question, mr. Chair. I did start about 45 seconds late. I know hunter biden was appointed to barisma while you were the fbi director and Vice President biden was in office. Did you have any concerns or did you have any concerns about that or express any concerns with Vice President biden sm. I never learned anything about it. I didnt know anything about it when i was fbi director. Thank you, mr. Chair. Can i see that, please . I just want to make sure thank you, mr. Chairman. The chairman noted that he is committed to trying to save a fisa system and in fact, horowitz dug very deep into the cross wire hurricane investigation and in a 400page report as mr. Comey noted, he found no evidence of political bias, but he did not a number of changes that should be made to the fisa application process and in fact, fbi director rey is doing those changes and so if we have committed to making changes to the application process and we all share that concern, the hearing today should be focused on whether or not the fbi in fact is making those changes that inspector horowitz mapped out in his very thorough investigation. Mr. Chairman, we understand that dni radcliffe issued a statement claiming that the declassified information selected declassification, declassified information he released yesterday about hkds from russian sources, quote, is not russian information end quote, and yet, he acknowledged that the information he released may be quote, a fabrication. I find it amazing that we have dni radcliffe issuing this kind of information, practically on the eve of an election. Making an allegation, pushing out russian disinformation. I think we should have him before this committee so we can question him. The intelligesbeintelligence co mueller and Senate Intelligence communiittee all found that rus interfered in the 2016 election and we all know this. And we also know that the interference was in favor of donald trump. And clearly did not give any weight to russias effort to smear Hillary Clinton and this committee should not either. More importantly, i do associate myself with the comments made by the democrats on this committee who are wondering along with the American People, why we are going over the same thing that weve already, that weve already gone over that has to do with the premesis underlining the cross fire hurricane investigation. So we know this is being done somehow to bolster Donald Trumps reelection campaign. Through innuendo and misinformation, which even today, russia is pushing out. So we should be concerned about whats going on in the 2020 election. And i have to say thanks to President Trump and my republican colleagues who are sitting here, millions of people are without health care. Millions of people are without jobs. And rather than dealing with a very real concerns of the American People in the midst of a pandemic, we are having this hearing to go over ground weve already covered. Let me get to some questions to mr. Comey. I know that dni radcliffe released an allegation he obtained from russian sources which he himself admitted as much not reliable. Mr. Comey, as the fomer fbi director, do you think it is appropriate for him to release this information right before the election . Its hard for me to comment because i dont fully understand what hes doing there. The goal of the Intelligence Community which includes the fbi, should be to stay out of influencing elections except to discharge our duty to protect our democracy and ensure that foreign adversaries arent operating in the United States. Mr. Comey, you know that what russia is doing right now to use this kind of disinformation to interfere with our elections so theyre engaging in maligned foreign influence as described by director rey and id say putting out this kind of information that makes a certain kind of allegation about Hillary Clinton is the kind of disinformation that russia is engaging in right now. I know youre aware that russia is very good at using social media. They use proxies. State media. Online journals, et cetera. Theyre really focused on those kinds of interferences at this moment. So the kind of information that dni radcliffe released, would that be consistent with russias disinformation efforts, mr. Comey . I dont know enough to say, senator. Id say we can draw our own conclusions. Earlier this month, one of the top prosecutors working on u. S. Attorney john durhams investigation on russias probe resign ed. Reportedly, he left out of concern that the team was pressured for political reasons to issue a report before completing its work and just last week, we saw attorney general barr disclose previously classified evidence relating to mr. Durhams ongoing ve investigation into the origins of the russia probe. Are these designed to bolster President Trumps reelection chances. We also saw the Justice Department coordinate with the white house on multiple press releases about a just open investigation into allegedly discarded pal l eed ballots in pennsylvania. You testified just now that these kinds of actions raise concerns about bias, appearance of bias and here, we have the attorney general making these kinds of disclosures. Do you think these actions reflect a bias or appearance of bias on the part of attorney general barr . Its difficult for me to say about the particulars that i dont know well enough, but i can say generally, attorney general barr has embraced a concept for his role that i believe is at odds with the nature of that department. It needs to be by all americans. There have been all kinds of articles about barrs policization of the Attorney Generals Office and do you think that that is a concern for all of us . And why . It ought to be a concern for all of us because we need that institution and we need t