Comey responds to Clinton: She still doesn’t get why she was under investigation

Former FBI Director James Comey on Tuesday pushed back against Hillary Clinton’s criticism that he used a personal email for official business while investigating her use of a private email server while secretary of State.

Speaking at an event in Berlin to promote his book, Comey said Clinton’s response to his use of private email suggests she misunderstood the root of the FBI investigation, contrasting his use of private email with hers.

{mosads}

“I don’t want to criticize her, but it shows me that even at this late stage she doesn’t understand what the investigation in her case was about,” he said at an event hosted by German publication Die Zeit.

“It was not about her use of a personal email system. It was about communicating about classified topics on that system when those topics have to be done on a classified system,” he said.

Clinton, the 2016 Democratic nominee for president, had sent a tweet last week mocking Comey by highlighting a finding from a Justice Department inspector general’s report that said Comey used a private email to conduct government business.

“But my emails,” Clinton responded.

But my emails. https://t.co/G7TIWDEG0p

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) June 14, 2018

Critics noted that Comey’s use of personal email marked an ironic breach of protocol given he oversaw the FBI’s investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server.

Comey has defended his actions, saying he did not use his personal email or laptop for sensitive or classified information. For example, he said, he would write a speech at home and email it to his government account using his personal account.

The Justice Department inspector general’s report, released last week, was critical of Comey’s judgment during the Clinton investigation. However, it concluded that there was no evidence that political bias improperly affected his decisionmaking during the probe, which found Clinton was “extremely careless” in her use of private email.