Page:Comey-Interview-12-7-18-Redacted.pdf/73

73 had learned of the existence of emails that appeared to be pertinent to an investigation of Secretary Clinton's email server.

House Republicans promptly leaked your update, according to the media, characterizing your action as a decision by the FBI to reopen its investigation, even though the FBI had not at that time reviewed any of the emails in question and notwithstanding the fact that you advised them the FBI was not then in a position to assess whether or not this material may be significant.

For the next 8 days, a period in which millions of Americans were casting their ballots during early voting, the baseless claims of House Republicans were repeated ad nauseam by them and candidate, Mr. Trump, dominating media coverage in the final days, and did not stop even after your announcement 2 days before the election on November 5th, 2016. That upon further review, that the FBI had again found no basis to believe that Secretary Clinton had committed a crime.

Given this chronology and the benefit of hindsight, do you regret not following the Justice Department's policy and practice of refraining from taking investigatory or prosecutory actions that could affect the outcome of an election to be held within the ensuing 60 days of an election?

Mr. I don't. I regret being involved at all, but even in hindsight, I think that that was the decision I had to