Frankie Cordeira Jr.

Description: Classified Clinton emails forwarded to Weiner... (Committee on the Judiciary) The director of the FBI began testifying Wednesday morning before a Senate committee where lawmakers will try to pry more details from him about both his probe into Hillary Clinton during last years presidential campaign and the current intelligence investigation into whether any associates of President Trump coordinated with Russian officials in election year meddling. James B. Comey has been under intense pressure to explain his decision-making from both Republicans and Democrats and is expected to face more criticism in Wednesdays hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee. The hearing was scheduled to conduct general congressional oversight of the FBI but politically sensitive investigations are likely to be the focus of many of the lawmakers questions. On Tuesday the chairman of the committee Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) signaled his continuing displeasure with the FBI by sending a letter to the No. 2 Justice Department official urging him to more closely supervise the FBIs political investigations. Grassley has long complained that Comeys top deputy Andrew McCabe should have recused himself from the Clinton probe because McCabes wife received hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign donations from a close Clinton ally Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D). The American people need and deserve a better accounting of how investigations are conducted and whether politics have affected an inquiry Grassley wrote. Democrats are expected to question Comey again about his decision to notify Congress just days before the election that he was re-opening the probe into Clintons use of a private email server for her work as Secretary of State. Democrats are particularly upset about that decision because after the election Comey acknowledged the FBI had begun secretly investigating in July whether any Trump associates might be working with Russian officials to meddle with the presidential campaign. FBI Director James B. Comey speaks last month in Alexandria Va. (Cliff Owen/AP) The FBI has already concluded that Russian intelligence hacked into Democratic computer systems and email accounts stealing information that was published by WikiLeaks during the campaign. On Tuesday Clinton said the move by Comey on Oct. 28 to tell Congress his investigators were looking at a new batch of Clinton emails helped alter the outcome of the presidential election. If the election had been on October 27 I would be your president she said at an event in New York. Clinton said as the candidate on the ballot she took responsibility for the loss but added she was on the way to winning until a combination of Jim Comeys letter on October 28 and Russian WikiLeaks raised doubts in the minds of people who were inclined to vote for me and got scared off. On Tuesday night Trump tweeted a fresh broadside at Comey saying the FBI director was the best thing that ever happened to Hillary Clinton in that he gave her a free pass for many bad deeds. In a second tweet he added that the phony Trump/Russia story was an excuse used by the Democrats as justification for losing the election.
By Frankie Cordeira Jr.
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