James Comey intended to damage Hillary’s candidacy when he attacked Hillary during the presidential campaign last year.
By Karoun Demirjian and Devlin Barrett
In the midst of the 2016 presidential primary season, the FBI received a purported Russian intelligence document describing a tacit understanding between the campaign of Hillary Clinton and the Justice Department over the inquiry into whether she intentionally revealed classified information through her use of a private email server.
The Russian document mentioned a supposed email describing how then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch had privately assured someone in the Clinton campaign that the email investigation would not push too deeply into the matter - a conversation that if made public would cast doubt on the inquiry's integrity.
Current and former officials have said that document played a significant role in the July decision by then-FBI Director James Comey to announce on his own, without Justice Department involvement, that the investigation was over. That public announcement - in which he criticized Clinton and made extensive comments about the evidence - set in motion a chain of other FBI moves that Democrats now say helped Trump win the presidential election.
But according to the FBI's own assessment, the document was bad intelligence - and according to people familiar with its contents, possibly even a fake sent to confuse the bureau. The Americans mentioned in the Russian document insist they do not know each other, do not speak to each other and never had any conversations remotely like the ones described in the document. Investigators have long doubted its veracity, and by August the FBI had concluded it was unreliable.
In the supposed email, Wasserman Schultz claimed Lynch had been in private communication with a senior Clinton campaign staffer named Amanda Renteria during the campaign. The document indicated Lynch had told Renteria that she would not let the FBI investigation into Clinton go too far, according to people familiar with it.
From the moment the bureau received the document from a source in early March 2016, its veracity was the subject of an internal debate at the FBI.
Yet senior officials at the bureau continued to rely on the document as part of their justification for how they handled the case before and after the election.
Wasserman Schultz and Benardo said in separate interviews with The Washington Post that they do not know each other and have never communicated.
After he read a false account the Russians planted about the Clintons, and Comey’s boss AG Loretta Lynch in July Comey apparently decided Hillary would make poor president. Comey seems to have took it apron himself to bring Hillary down by attacking her personally. Twice. An extraordinary action for any Director of the FBI to take. The second attack came one week before the presidential election when Hillary held a sizable lead in the polls. Was his letter about Hillary Comey’s Hail Mary pass?