an exert:
'Trying to do the right thing’
Comey defends his handling of the Clinton email investigation and for the first time details a private assurance he received from President Obama following Clinton’s defeat. Many Democrats blame Comey for announcing less than two weeks before the election that the FBI was examining a new trove of Clinton emails for possible classified material.
Comey writes that Obama sat alone with him in the Oval Office in late November and told him, “I picked you to be FBI director because of your integrity and your ability. I want you to know that nothing — nothing — has happened in the last year to change my view.”
On the verge of tears, Comey told Obama, “Boy, were those words I needed to hear . . . I’m just trying to do the right thing.”
“I know,” Obama said. “I know.”
Comey also writes that in a post-election briefing for senators, then-Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) confronted him about “what you did to Hillary Clinton.” Comey responded, “I did my best with the facts before me.” A teary-eyed Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) grabbed him by the hand afterward and said, “I know you. You were in an impossible position,” Comey writes.
Clinton wrote in her campaign memoir, “What Happened,” that she felt “shivved” by Comey. Two days before the election, Comey announced that the FBI had reviewed the new emails and found nothing to change its view that Clinton should not be prosecuted. But in Clinton’s assessment, the damage already had been done.
Comey, who says his wife and daughters voted for Clinton, includes a message in his book to the would-be first female president: “I have read she has felt anger toward me personally, and I’m sorry for that. I’m sorry that I couldn’t do a better job explaining to her and her supporters why I made the decisions I made.”
DO SOMETHING!
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