FBI director says he feels ‘mildly nauseous’ about possibility he affected election, but has no regrets
By Devlin Barrett and Karoun Demirjian May 3 at 5:21 PM
FBI Director James B. Comey gave his most exhaustive defense yet Wednesday of his role in politically sensitive investigations, telling a Senate panel that despite feeling “mildly nauseous’’ at the thought his decisions about a probe into Hillary Clinton might have affected the election outcome, he had no regrets.
He also said he was confident in the FBI’s handling of an ongoing probe of any contacts between Russian officials and associates of President Trump.
Through nearly four hours of sometimes combative questioning from Democrats and Republicans, Comey offered his most full-throated explanation of his actions to date, and he never wavered from his core contention — that the FBI has stayed above the political fray even as its investigators probed senior aides to both the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates.
“Lordy, has this been painful,” he said. “I’ve gotten all kinds of rocks thrown at me and this has been really hard, but I think I’ve done the right thing at each turn.”
Comey appeared to win few new converts to his way of thinking, given the intense partisanship still swirling around both the now-closed probe of Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of state, and the current investigation into whether any Trump associates may have coordinated with Russian officials to interfere with the election campaign.
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