Sen. Dianne Feinstein said Wednesday she believes FBI Director James Comey’s decision to reveal the agency was re-investigating Hillary Clinton’s emails affected the outcome of the 2016 election.<\/b>
\n\u00ab\u00a0I think everybody agrees that in one way or another, it impacted the election, \u00a0\u00bb the California Democrat said on \u00ab\u00a0The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer\u00a0\u00bb Wednesday. \u00ab\u00a0Should (Comey) have done it? Probably not. But knowing him, it was on the spur of the moment and he just did it.\u00a0\u00bb
The comments came hours after Comey’s hearing, during which the official strongly defended his choice to send a letter to Congress on October 28,2016 that suggested the FBI was looking into Clinton’s email server again after new emails had been discovered on a computer shared by Anthony Weiner and top Clinton aide Huma Abedin.
\u00ab\u00a0It was a hard choice, I still believe in retrospect the right choice, \u00a0\u00bb Comey told senators at a judiciary committee hearing on oversight of his agency. \u00ab\u00a0I can’t consider for a second whose political fortunes will be affected.\u00a0\u00bb
He said the idea of impacting the election made him \u00ab\u00a0mildly nauseous.\u00a0\u00bb
Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said she \u00ab\u00a0generally\u00a0\u00bb has confidence in Comey.
\u00ab\u00a0I think overall he is a straight shooter, \u00a0\u00bb she said. \u00ab\u00a0He always has been with me. I think he’s very — he’s not influenced by much other than his purpose and his job. And I think that’s good.\u00a0\u00bb
But in this case, she said, \u00ab\u00a0something happened that I don’t know about.\u00a0\u00bb
\u00ab\u00a0‘Mildly nauseous’ doesn’t sound like he was too nauseated by it, \u00a0\u00bb Feinstein said. \u00ab\u00a0But I think it was bad thing to do, and really for me a very disappointing thing for him to do.\u00a0\u00bb
She said Comey alerting Congress of the probe 11 days before election was an \u00ab\u00a0October surprise.\u00a0\u00bb
\u00ab\u00a0One of the things he said to us, well, one of the reasons for … holding the Clinton press conference 11 days before the election, was there was such great interest in this, \u00a0\u00bb Feinstein said. \u00ab\u00a0Well, let me tell you, when Russia hacks into our election systems, there’s exceptional interest in that too. So that argument doesn’t hold up. But he is so sure that he did the right thing and maybe I would say it wasn’t the right thing if there was new information.\u00a0\u00bb
Feinstein said Comey could have instead gotten a search warrant to look through the computer and \u00ab\u00a0find there was nothing new there.\u00a0\u00bb
Democrats — most recently Clinton herself — have pointed to Comey’s probe as what cost them the White House.
\u00ab\u00a0I was on the way to winning until a combination of Jim Comey’s letter on October 28 and Russian WikiLeaks raised doubts in the minds of people who were inclined to vote for me and got scared off, \u00a0\u00bb the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee said Tuesday in an interview conducted by CNN’s Christiane Amanpour at the Women for Women International summit in New York.
President Donald Trump also criticized Comey on Tuesday.
\u00ab\u00a0FBI Director Comey was the best thing that ever happened to Hillary Clinton in that he gave her a free pass for many bad deeds!\u00a0\u00bb he tweeted. \u00ab\u00a0The phony…… Trump\/Russia story was an excuse used by the Democrats as justification for losing the election. Perhaps Trump just ran a great campaign?\u00a0\u00bb<\/p>\n

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