Senate Democratic leader-in-waiting Chuck Schumer told Bloomberg he’s lost confidence in FBI Director James Comey over his handling of the most recent disclosure in the Hillary Clinton e-mail investigation — a tough rebuke to a man Schumer has long admired.
Said Schumer: “I do not have confidence in him any longer. To restore my faith, I am going to have to sit down and talk to him and get an explanation for why he did this.”
Former DNC Chairman Ed Rendell told WPHT that Hillary Clinton’s campaign was making a mistake by attacking FBI director James Comey over how he handled recent developments into the investigation of Clinton’s private email server.
Said Rendell: “I think that’s, I wouldn’t do that. Again, you know, I’m not running the campaign by any means, but I wouldn’t do that.”
“Senior Justice Department officials warned the FBI that Director James Comey’s decision to notify Congress about renewing the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server was not consistent with long-standing practices of the department,” the Washington Post reports.
FBI Director James Comey’s decision “is a striking break with the policies of the Department of Justice, according to current and former federal legal officials. Comey, who is a Republican appointee of President Obama, has a reputation for integrity and independence, but his latest action is stirring an extraordinary level of concern among legal authorities, who see it as potentially affecting the outcome of the Presidential and congressional elections,” the New Yorker reports.
Said one former Justice Department official: “You don’t do this. It’s aberrational. It violates decades of practice.”
New York Times: “The reaction was swift and damning, with Mrs. Clinton’s supporters and even some Republicans blasting Mr. Comey. Indeed, Mr. Comey, who was attacked this summer by Democrats and Republicans for both his decision not to bring charges against Mrs. Clinton and for the way he handled it, found himself in an even stronger crossfire on Friday.”
Greg Sargent: James Comey needs to clean up his mess
In a memo to employees, FBI Director James Comey said the decision to not recommend charges against Hillary Clinton wasn’t a close call.
Said Comey: “At the end of the day, the case itself was not a cliff-hanger; despite all the chest-beating by people no longer in government, there really wasn’t a prosecutable case.”
He concluded: “Those suggesting that we are ‘political’ or part of some ‘fix’ either don’t know us, or they are full of baloney (and maybe some of both).”
Ron Fournier: “Hillary Clinton may be rising in the polls as a result, which is good news for people like me across the political spectrum who find Trump to be vacuous, soulless, and temperamentally unfit for the presidency.”
“Yet I’m not angry at Trump; I expect him to be repugnant. I am angry at Clinton, because she followed up her convention with another unnecessary lie; another excuse for people to distrust her; another thin reed upon which undecided voters could justify a belated allegiance to a man who former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg called ‘a dangerous demagogue.'”
“On Sunday, the former secretary of state told FOX News’ Chris Wallace that FBI Director James Comey cleared her of misleading the public about her rogue email server at the state department… That’s wrong and she knows it, which makes it a lie.”
Taegan Goddard
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire -- which for more than two decades has been one of the nation's most influential political news sites.
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