Deep State

by James B. Stewart

  But Toscas’s reasoning didn’t reach Comey, and even if it had, it’s unlikely it would have tipped the scale between “really bad” and “catastrophic.” What really struck Comey was that no one at Justice was telling him not to do it, or even reaching out to engage on the issue. Department officials could oppose his decision but bear no responsibility for the consequences, which Comey thought was a “cowardly way out.” As in July, he realized, “it became my responsibility to take the hit.”

  Comey’s letter reached Congress just before noon on October 28:

  In previous congressional testimony, I referred to the fact that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had completed its investigation of former Secretary Clinton’s personal email server. Due to recent developments, I am writing to supplement my previous testimony. In connection with an unrelated case, the FBI has learned of the existence of emails that appear to be pertinent to the investigation. I am writing to inform you that the investigative team briefed me on this yesterday, and I agreed that the FBI should take appropriate investigative steps designed to allow investigators to review these emails to determine whether they contain classified information, as well as to assess their importance to our investigation. Although the FBI cannot yet assess whether or not this material may be significant, and I cannot predict how long it will take us to complete this additional work, I believe it is important to update your Committees about our efforts in light of my previous testimony.

  Unlike in July, there would be no press conference and no further public statement, because the investigation was ongoing.

  Seven minutes later, the news broke. The Utah Republican Jason Chaffetz tweeted, “FBI Dir just informed me, ‘The FBI has learned of the existence of emails that appear to be pertinent to the investigation.’ Case reopened.” Within fifteen minutes, Fox reported “breaking news.” The story immediately dominated the airwaves and internet.

  So confident was Hillary Clinton of victory that at 12:37 p.m., even as the news was breaking, her campaign announced that during the final days of the campaign she’d be traveling to a traditional Republican stronghold, Arizona, and would be pouring money into another, Texas. National polls showed her rising on the trustworthiness scale and pulling even further ahead of Trump.

  Clinton herself, and Democrats generally, seemed somewhat bewildered by the laptop discovery, not knowing what if anything was in the emails. Clinton didn’t respond at all until that night. “We are 11 days out from perhaps the most important national election of our lifetimes,” she said in Des Moines. “The American people deserve to get the full and complete facts immediately.”

  In a perceptive assessment, the former Democratic congressman Barney Frank told the Times, “It sounds like Comey is being supercareful and superthorough. He wanted to alert Congress quickly because he is being careful that nothing about these new emails would otherwise leak out. He usually wouldn’t talk about things so early, but he wants to be careful.”

  Frank’s main point—that no actual facts had emerged to change the outcome of the investigation—was lost in the furor that the case had been reopened, which many people assumed meant something damaging to Clinton had been discovered.

  Trump, of course, pounced on the revelation, making no effort to conceal his glee. When he opened a rally that day in New Hampshire with an announcement that he had “breaking news,” raucous cheers and chants of “Lock her up!” all but drowned him out. Once the crowd had quieted slightly, he continued, “Hillary Clinton’s corruption is on a scale we have never seen before. We must not let her take her criminal scheme into the Oval Office.” More cheers erupted. Then Trump softened his tone on the FBI and an investigation he had repeatedly insisted was “rigged.”

  “I have great respect for the fact that the FBI and the Department of Justice are now willing to have the courage to right the horrible mistake that they made,” Trump said. “This was a grave miscarriage of justice that the American people fully understood.”

  Comey’s letter and the resurrected email scandal were the lead news story for six out of the crucial seven days between October 29 (when the Times’s lead headline was “New Emails Jolt Clinton Campaign in Race’s Last Days”) and November 4, the Friday before the election, according to the media analysis website Memeorandum.

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  OVER THE WEEKEND, anonymous Justice Department sources vented their frustrations with Comey to The Washington Post in unusually blunt terms, with one saying, “Comey made an independent decision to alert the Hill. He is operating independently of the Justice Department. And he knows it.”

  In the article, Matt Miller, a former Justice Department spokesman, said, “Jim Comey forgets that he works for the attorney general. I think he has a lot of regard for his own integrity. And he lets that regard cross lines into self-righteousness. He has come to believe that his own ethics are so superior to anyone else’s that his judgment can replace existing rules and regulations. That is a dangerous belief for an FBI director to have.”

  This line of criticism really got under Comey’s skin, because it transformed what he considered two important virtues—being truthful and transparent—into moral failings, being “in love with my own righteousness.” While he did worry about his ego, he was also proud he tried to do the right thing.

  A colleague sent a copy of the article to Page, with the notation, “This is all Axelrod.”

  “Yeah. I saw it,” Page replied. “Makes me feel WAY less bad about throwing him under the bus in the forthcoming CF article,” referring to Barrett’s forthcoming Wall Street Journal article on McCabe and the Clinton Foundation.

  “FBI in Internal Feud over Hillary Clinton Probe” was the headline on the Wall Street Journal website on October 30. It was hardly what Page was hoping for, especially after she’d spent so much time with Barrett. Her efforts hadn’t persuaded the reporter to leave out the allegations about McCabe, although he included what she told him about Axelrod, who wasn’t named in the story: “The Justice Department official [Axelrod] was ‘very pissed off,’ according to one person close to Mr. McCabe, and pressed him to explain why the FBI was still chasing a matter the department considered dormant. Others said the Justice Department was simply trying to make sure FBI agents were following longstanding policy not to make overt investigative moves that could be seen as trying to influence an election.” But, the article continued, agents had been told to “stand down” on the Clinton Foundation investigation and “were told the order had come from the deputy director—Mr. McCabe.”

  The article hit a raw nerve with Comey. Reporting on the conversation with Axelrod, which cast Axelrod in an especially unflattering light, would only exacerbate tensions with the Justice Department. Moreover, no one had publicly confirmed the existence of a Clinton Foundation investigation; Comey himself had refused to do so in Congress. And who was the “source close to” McCabe? Obviously, there was another leak, already one of Comey’s major worries. He suspected—but didn’t know—it was Page.

  Comey brought up the article at Monday morning’s staff meeting. Page was taking notes. “Need to figure out how to get our folks to understand why leaks hurt our organization,” she wrote. Afterward, he discussed the Journal article with McCabe. “Can you believe this crap? How does this stuff get out?” he said, or words to that effect, in Comey’s recollection.

  At that moment, McCabe could have clarified that Page was indeed the source “close” to McCabe, and he’d authorized her to speak to rebut the flagrantly false claim that McCabe had tried to suppress the foundation case. Doing so, of course, might have risked Comey’s ire and, even worse, disappointment. McCabe hesitated, and then the moment passed.

  A few days later, Comey asked McCabe to recuse himself from the email case and anything else having to do with Clinton, “in light of the controversy” over McAuliffe’s donations to his wife’s campaign. Although McCabe
strenuously disagreed, he agreed to step aside.

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  NOT ALL THE media coverage of Comey’s letter to Congress was critical. William Barr, a former attorney general under George H. W. Bush and a Trump supporter, wrote a spirited defense of Comey in The Washington Post, “James Comey Did the Right Thing.” “Comey had no choice but to issue the statement he did,” Barr wrote. “Indeed, it would have violated policy had he not done so.”

  Trump himself softened his tone on Comey. “I have to tell you, I respect the fact that Director Comey was able to come back after what he did,” he said at a rally in Phoenix. “I respect that very much.”

  But all that week, Comey felt like a pariah, at least in Democratic precincts. In the House, Nancy Pelosi compared his letter to a “Molotov cocktail” and said Comey had become “the leading Republican political operative in the country—wittingly or unwittingly.” At Comey’s next meeting in the White House Situation Room, everyone avoided eye contact with him (except his friends John Brennan, CIA director, and James Clapper, director of national security).

  So when Loretta Lynch asked Comey to stay behind for a private meeting after their weekly intelligence briefing, he wondered, how angry was she? Was she going to yell at him? Threaten him?

  Lynch had indeed been angry. But she’d softened that morning when she saw him. Lynch thought Comey looked terrible, like he’d been run over by a truck.

  Once they were alone, she asked, “How are you?”

  “Well . . .” he began, his voice trailing off.

  Lynch went to him and put her arms around him. “I thought you needed a hug.”

  “You knew I didn’t want you to send that letter,” Lynch said when they resumed their conversation.

  Comey murmured his assent.

  “Well, it’s done now,” she said. “The question is, how do we go forward?”

  “I don’t know,” Comey said.

  “Just tell me what was going on with you,” Lynch said. “What were you thinking?”

  Comey said it had been a “nightmare” and reviewed the unpalatable choice he faced between “really bad” and “catastrophic.”

  “Would they feel better if it leaked on November 4?” she asked.

  “Exactly,” Comey said. “I feel a little bit better. You’re one of the few people who get it.”

  “I get it but I don’t agree with it,” Lynch replied.

  “It’s clear to me that there is a cadre of senior people in New York who have a deep and visceral hatred of Secretary Clinton,” Comey said. And, “It is deep.”

  “I’m aware of that,” Lynch said. “I wasn’t aware it was to this level and this depth that you’re talking about, but I’m sad to say that that does not surprise me. I am just troubled that this issue has put us where we are today with respect to this laptop.”

  “I hear you,” Comey answered.

  Lynch was sad Comey felt he had to shoulder the burden of the decision alone. She would gladly have taken some of the heat. They’d been friends for over twenty years.

  As they left, Lynch smiled and said, “Try to look beat up.”

  It was the last time they spoke.

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  AS THE PRESIDENTIAL election neared, Christopher Steele, apparently frustrated by the FBI’s inaction on his dossier, spoke to a reporter from Mother Jones, the progressive San Francisco–based magazine. On October 31, the Washington bureau chief and investigative reporter David Corn reported that “a former senior intelligence officer for a Western country who specialized in Russian counterintelligence tells Mother Jones that in recent months he provided the bureau with memos, based on his recent interactions with Russian sources, contending the Russian government has for years tried to co-opt and assist Trump—and that the FBI requested more information from him.”

  The former intelligence officer was obviously Steele, and speaking to the press about a confidential FBI investigation was a blatant violation of FBI rules for confidential intelligence sources. The next day, the FBI terminated its formal relationship with Steele and filed a memo to that effect, saying the cause was “confidentiality revealed.”

  But Steele was still a potential loose cannon. He had the dossier, and he knew the FBI was investigating the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia. In terms of disrupting the election, Steele was a ticking time bomb.

  Even as the FBI was distancing itself from Steele, on October 30 a Russian businessman involved in the Trump Tower Moscow sent Michael Cohen a text message alluding to potentially damaging tapes—presumably the ones described in the Steele dossier. “Stopped flow of some tapes from Russia but not sure if there’s anything else. Just so you know,” wrote Giorgi Rtskhiladze, who had been discussing the proposed Trump project with high-ranking officials, including the mayor of Moscow.

  “Tapes of what?” Cohen asked.

  “Not sure of the content but person in Moscow was bragging had tapes from Russia trip,” Rtskhiladze responded. “Will try to dial you tomorrow but wanted to be aware. I’m sure it’s not a big deal but there are lots of stupid people.”

  “You have no idea,” Cohen replied.

  Cohen relayed the conversation to Trump—meaning the Republican nominee knew about possibly embarrassing tapes a full week before the election.*

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  THE FBI OBTAINED a search warrant for Weiner’s laptop on October 30, and the computer was physically transferred from New York to the bureau’s operational technology division in Quantico, Virginia. The laptop contained 1,355,980 items and approximately 650,000 emails. While that seemed a daunting and time-consuming task, technicians were able to narrow the Clinton-related emails to under 50,000. The FBI reviewed 6,827 emails that were either to or from Clinton and deemed 3,077 of those emails “potentially work-related.” Strzok led the team that pored over each of these, working near twenty-four-hour days. They found thirteen email chains containing confidential information, though none were marked as classified. All were duplicates of emails that had already been examined.

  On Friday, they told Comey they might finish before the election and made a final push to finish their review the next day. There was little disagreement that Comey should send another letter to Congress addressing the findings, although some worried that it was too close to the election to say anything. Strzok, for one, worried that anytime the FBI made an announcement, it only “reinvigorated” the news cycle, thrusting the FBI into the partisan wrangling. But there was no opposition at the Justice Department, which wanted Comey to correct any misimpressions that Clinton might still be charged, and lawyers there reviewed and signed off on a draft of the proposed letter.

  The letter reached Congress on Sunday afternoon, November 6:

  I write to supplement my October 28, 2016 letter that notified you the FBI would be taking additional investigative steps with respect to former Secretary of State Clinton’s use of a personal email server. Since my letter, the FBI investigative team has been working around the clock to process and review a large volume of emails from a device obtained in connection with an unrelated criminal investigation. During that process, we reviewed all of the communications that were to or from Hillary Clinton while she was Secretary of State. Based on our review, we have not changed our conclusions that we expressed in July with respect to Secretary Clinton. I am very grateful to the professionals at the FBI for doing an extraordinary amount of high-quality work in a short period of time.

  As the Times put it, Comey’s letter—his third public statement on the Midyear investigation—“swept away her largest and most immediate problem” but came “at the end of a rocky week for Mrs. Clinton that included wild, false speculation about looming indictments and shocking discoveries in the emails.”

  Trump immediately reverted to form—that Clinton “is being protected by a rigged
system. It’s a totally rigged system,” as he said in Michigan on November 6 and at every subsequent rally.

  Comey wanted nothing more to do with the election. He was, in his words, “too tired to care.” He’d dedicated his career to the Department of Justice and the FBI in large part because they were institutions that stood apart from and above partisan politics. He had no plans to vote.

  Comey had nonetheless achieved the dubious status of celebrity, or perhaps notoriety. That night he, his wife, and one of their daughters went out for dinner, where “Comey was spotted with a giant margarita at El Tio Tex Mex Grill,” The Washington Post duly noted.

  Perhaps because it drained the suspense from the Clinton email story rather than added to it, and had none of the “wild speculation” that had provided such good tabloid fare, Comey’s November 6 letter got far less media attention. It wasn’t even the lead news story that day; it was overshadowed by reports that a swarm of secret service agents had rushed Trump at a Nevada rally after someone in the crowd yelled, “Gun.” (The man turned out to be unarmed.) The next day’s news was dominated by the latest polls (which showed Clinton in a slight uptick, with a lead of 3.5 percentage points over Trump).

  Strzok and Page never discussed any of their own work in terms of how it might affect the election. Strzok and Page had often advocated a tougher investigative approach toward Clinton and had even questioned issuing the November 6 letter exonerating her. None of their colleagues detected any hint of the political sentiments they expressed in what they assumed were confidential text messages.

  Despite her lead in the polls, Page and Strzok weren’t at all sure Clinton would win.

  “The nyt probability numbers are dropping every day,” a worried Page texted Strzok on November 3, referring to the Times’s online forecast. “I’m scared for our organization.”