FBI Director James Comey’s testimony that a top Hillary Clinton aide forwarded “hundreds and thousands” of emails involving her boss was inaccurate, ProPublica and the Associated Press are reporting.
Comey last week testified before a Senate committee that Huma Abedin made a “regular practice” of forwarding messages involving Clinton – some of which contained classified information – to her husband, former New York Rep. Anthony Weiner. As Comey explained, the top Clinton aide did this so Weiner could print them out. The former congressman separated last year from Abedin, the Clinton aide.
He said Abedin was in the practice of forwarding emails to the laptop to be printed out for Clinton, saying at one point that “hundreds and thousands” had been forwarded.
But a person familiar with the investigation — who spoke on condition of anonymity to the Associated Press because the person was not authorized to discuss the testimony publicly — says that was a misstatement of the number of emails involved.
Comey said that some of the emails contained classified information, but the person said Abedin never forwarded anything that was marked classified.
The FBI had no immediate comment Tuesday.
FBI officials told ProPublica that Comey misstated Abedin’s actions. Abedin forwarded only a “handful of emails” to be printed — and she did not do it regularly.
Additionally, the officials said it was likely that most of the emails ended up on Weiner’s laptop because of backups from Abedin’s Blackberry.
The FBI had intended to send a letter to Congress this week to correct the record, ProPublica reported, but that plan may now be stalled.
During the hearing, Comey also said it made him “mildly nauseous” to think his decision to announce the reopening of the probe into Hillary Clinton’s private email server, 11 days before the November election, may have impacted the results.
But he defended the decision to inform lawmakers about the investigations developments after he learned Clinton’s emails had been recovered on Weiner’s laptop, saying, “I could not see a door labeled, ‘No action needed.'”
