Kaine: Comey letter among ‘lowest’ parts of FBI history

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) says that FBI Director James Comey’s letter to Congress about renewing its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email server ranks among the bureau’s “lowest” moments.

Comey sent his letter late in October, just before the presidential election.

“I think it will go down as probably the lowest moment in the history of the FBI, probably next to the decision of [former FBI Director] J. Edgar Hoover to wiretap Martin Luther King,” he said Friday on CNN’s “New Day.”  “It was unfortunate.” 

{mosads}Kaine, who was Clinton’s running mate during the 2016 presidential election, added that he is now focused on healthcare after the House GOP sent an ObamaCare replacement bill to the Senate.

“We’re all now in our places with jobs to do and chief among those jobs is protecting the healthcare of all Americans,” he said.

Clinton said Tuesday that Comey and WikiLeaks’ publication of hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta were partially responsible for her election loss last year.

“I was on the way to winning until the combination of Jim Comey’s letter on Oct. 28 and Russian WikiLeaks raised doubts in the minds of people who were inclined to vote for me, but got scared off,” she said.

Clinton added that she also bears some responsibility for mistakes in her campaign against now-President Trump.

“I was the candidate. I was the person who was on the ballot and I am very aware of, you know, the challenges, the problems, the shortfalls that we had,” Clinton said. 

Comey on Wednesday defended his controversial decision to announce last October that the FBI had discovered in a separate investigation new emails possibly related to its probe of Clinton’s personal email server, though that material failed to produce any new developments in the investigation.

“I sat there that morning and I could not see a door labeled ‘no action here,’” he told the Senate Judiciary Committee. “I saw two doors. One was labeled ‘speak’ and one was labeled ‘conceal.’”

Comey admitted, however, that “it makes me mildly nauseous to think we had an impact on the election.”