Comey's Testimony on Huma Abedin Forwarding Emails Was Inaccurate

[DonViejo]

Source: ProPublica


The FBI hasn’t decided how to correct the director’s false claim that she forwarded thousands of Clinton emails to the laptop computer of her husband, former Congressman Anthony Weiner.

by Peter Elkind, special to ProPublica, May 8, 2017, 10:39 p.m.

FBI director James Comey generated national headlines last week with his dramatic testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee, explaining his “incredibly painful” decision to go public about the Hillary Clinton emails found on Anthony Weiner’s laptop.

Perhaps Comey’s most surprising revelation was that Huma Abedin — Weiner’s wife and a top Clinton deputy — had made “a regular practice” of forwarding “hundreds and thousands” of Clinton messages to her husband, “some of which contain classified information.” Comey testified that Abedin had done this so that the disgraced former congressman could print them out for her boss. (Weiner’s laptop was seized after he came under criminal investigation for sex crimes, following a media report about his online relationship with a teenager.)

The New York Post plastered its story on the front page with a photo of an underwear-clad Weiner and the headline: “HARD COPY: Huma sent Weiner classified Hillary emails to print out.” The Daily News went with a similar front-page screamer: “HUMA ERROR: Sent classified emails to sext maniac Weiner.”

The problem: Much of what Comey said about this was inaccurate. Now the FBI is trying to figure out what to do about it.

Read more: https://www.propublica.org/article/comeys-testimony-on-huma-abedin-forwarding-emails-was-inaccurate

---

Comey misstated key Clinton email evidence at hearing, say people close to investigation

By Devlin Barrett May 9 at 10:13 AM

FBI Director James B. Comey overstated key findings involving the Hillary Clinton email investigation during testimony to Congress last week, according to people close to the investigation.

In defending the probe, Comey offered seemingly new details to underscore the seriousness of the situation FBI agents faced last fall when they discovered thousands of emails of Clinton aide Huma Abedin on the computer of her husband, Anthony Weiner.

“Somehow, her emails were being forwarded to Anthony Weiner, including classified information,’’ Comey said, adding later, “His then-spouse Huma Abedin appears to have had a regular practice of forwarding emails to him for him I think to print out for her so she could then deliver them to the secretary of state.”

At another point in the testimony, Comey said Abedin “forwarded hundreds and thousands of e-mails, some of which contain classified information.’’

more
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/comey-misstated-key-clinton-email-evidence-at-hearing-say-people-close-to-investigation/2017/05/09/074c1c7e-34bd-11e7-b373-418f6849a004_story.html?utm_term=.bab5c16bfb4b&wpisrc=al_alert-COMBO-politics%252Bnation&wpmk=1

[BumRushDaShow]

1. WaPo just put up a breaking

Link to tweet

Comey misstated key Clinton email evidence at hearing, say people close to investigation

FBI Director James B. Comey overstated key findings involving the Hillary Clinton email investigation during testimony to Congress last week, according to people close to the investigation.

In defending the probe, Comey offered seekey pointmingly (sic) seemingly new details to underscore the seriousness of the situation FBI agents faced last fall when they discovered thousands of emails of Clinton aide Huma Abedin on the computer of her husband, Anthony Weiner.

“Somehow, her emails were being forwarded to Anthony Weiner, including classified information,’’ Comey said, adding later, “His then-spouse Huma Abedin appears to have had a regular practice of forwarding emails to him for him I think to print out for her so she could then deliver them to the secretary of state.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/comey-misstated-key-clinton-email-evidence-at-hearing-say-people-close-to-investigation/2017/05/09/074c1c7e-34bd-11e7-b373-418f6849a004_story.html

EDIT: WaPo updated their sp.

[karynnj]

7. Somehow, her emails were being forwarded to Anthony Weiner, including classified information,

In light of this information, the word "somehow" sticks out as a weasel word suggesting he knew he was making something up. Forwarding messages is not a complicated inexplicable thing to do. Had Huma forwarded the messages, she would have done so just as all of us forward messages. Not to mention, the email then ends up on a Weiner email account.

If someone had given him the information that Huma had forwarded emails, would he have used the awkward "somehow" as if something we all do was a tricky thing to do. If Huma simply had her email account on his laptop - and he had the ability to access it - wouldn't he just have said that? Could there have been something more complicated to enable Huma to remotely print out the emails - explaining the "somehow"? (Not to mention, Weiner should not have access to the printed emails either.)

I am glad that it appears that Huma, trusted by Clinton as a high level aide, did not do something as stupid as forward messages to the account of anyone outside those who should see them. I hope it comes out that Comey lied or that Comey misunderstood.

[BumRushDaShow]

17. "If Huma simply had her email account on his laptop "

From all the earlier reporting that I recall, the "shared laptop" was the case. I don't think she was "forwarding" anything to him.

And even then - I think it also came out that most (if not almost all) the items that were exchanged were not marked as "classified" and only later did a few get retroactively considered and/or marked as such.

[still_one]

10. f**k Comey.

[spooky3]

2. Time for a Freedom of Information Act request to force the FBI to come clean. n/t

[JI7]

3. asshole. huma got a lot of attacks fRom the right wing

Attacking a musLim woman of color played well with the fucked up right wing base.

[athena]

4. K & R

[Me.]

5. Did He Testify Under Oath?

[karynnj]

14. Doesn't matter, lying to Congress is against the law

Looking at the WP quote, he starts the sentence with "somehow" which is pretty weird in retrospect if the FBI had even one message on Weiner's account forwarded by Abedin. It's not some mysterious process and we all know exactly how it looks on the resultant email.

Another question is did Weiner print out emails for his wife or did she remotely send emails to the printer in their home and he took the paper copies to her? 1) How would the FBI know? 2) If so, why not simply say that Weiner was given access by Abedin to emails that he should not have had access to. 3) If the emails were not classified at that point, as Clinton argued, would there be a legal problem with Abedin allowing Weiner access?

Back to Comey, proving that he LIED, rather than "misstated" something may be the crux. (Certainly we know the motivation to lie -- he is clearly defensive on his actions on BOTH the Russian/Trump investigation and the email investigation.)

[DURHAM D]

6. Comey lied to congress.

He should be in jail. Don't they still have one in the bottom of the Capitol?

[virtualobserver]

8. The article also states that her Blackberry was automatically.....

backing up her emails on Weiner's laptop.

Comey said that the emails were "somehow forwarded" to Weiner's laptop.

Auto-backup would be covered by that. "Regular practice" does not mean that all emails were printed.

Attacking the credibility of Comey over semantics is stupid when you consider that he is overseeing investigations of Trump. To do so is to protect Trump. He is laughing at this foolishness.

[Sculpin Beauregard]

12. EXACTLY. This is a non issue, really.

Let's think of who benefits if the FBI gets discredited. TrumpCo would be jubilant and fucking get away with treason.

This is semantic hairsplitting nonsense.

[Me.]

18. Actually, The Point Is His Credibility

And that has been put in doubt over and over especially in regards to the letter he sent just before the election. Further, given his continuing obfuscation, his credibility in investigating 45 is increasingly questionable.

[virtualobserver]

34. doubt has been cast as political spin.....

but not put in doubt by Comey's actual behavior.

He is trying to do his job while political forces connected to BOTH parties are trying to discredit him.

If an indictments start to flow from his investigation, people on this site will suddenly love him.

[Me.]

35. Totally Disagree

It was his own doing when he 'allegedly' lied to Congress last week and not spin by anyone else

[virtualobserver]

40. it is the accusation of lying that is spin

[Me.]

43. Nonsense

[virtualobserver]

48. your plan to get rid of Comey worked

[Me.]

49. !

[HopeAgain]

9. So he was compelled to have the truth out there immediately before the election,

but now it's not so important that Congress be updated??

Trump had to have many collaborators and history will judge all these clowns harshly

[Honeycombe8]

11. That's good to know she didn't do that.

I was wondering why she would do that. I agreed that that was certainly unethical. Glad to know it may have been, what...just a few? I hope.

[NewRedDawn]

13. I hope I am wrong

but I don't trust this snake. His reopening the email investigation on Hillary days before the election was the final nail in her coffin.

[yallerdawg]

15. This is Comey deliberately muddying the water again.

He has to know how the "emails" got on that computer. That wass an essential question of the "investigation"!

If none of these emails constituted a criminal transmission of "classified material" either deliberately or accidentally - why are they again characterized as "classified information"?

If they are just non-classified emails, why would anyone give a shit if they were on a laptop or being printed out? Why would anyone give a shit if they were stolen by "the Russians," when obviously no one gives a shit that "the Russians" stole private emails and released them in an effort to smear Hillary Clinton and interfere in our election?

Comey is trying like hell to cover his ass and justify his "nauseating" interference into the election - full well knowing his letter announcing the "potential reopening" of the case COULD ONLY HAVE an impact on the election!

Congress and the public should be relentlessly demanding the firing of this self-righteous prick.

[Blanks]

16. I saw Comey's testimony...

He talked about how they thought they might find the 'missing emails.' The emails weren't lost, they were none of the public's business. She had attorney's go through and separate out the personal emails. It's just like the speeches to the bankers. She didn't lose the speeches they just aren't anyone's business.

Trump didn't release his fucking taxes, but she's supposed to release personal emails and the content of speeches that she gave. It's none of our business. They kept raising HER bar, while lowering HIS bar. That's the issue here.

Yeah, it's our business if she was forwarding classified information that someone without the clearance, but it turned out that wasn't actually what was going on either.

It's all a bunch of bullshit.

[hughee99]

19. According to the article, she did forward classified information to someone without clearance

"Neither of those statements is accurate, said people close to the investigation. The inquiry found that Abedin did occasionally forward emails to her husband for printing, but it was a far smaller number than Comey described, and it wasn’t a “regular practice,” these people said. None of the forwarded emails were marked classified, but a small number — a handful, one person said — contained information that was later judged to contain classified information, these people said."

It just didn't seem to happen as often as Comey's statements would indicate.

[athena]

22. The article quoted suggests otherwise.

It says she had no idea how her e-mails got on that computer. The suggestion is that she didn't forward them, but that they ended up there because of her backups of her Blackberry.

According to two sources familiar with the matter — including one in law enforcement — Abedin forwarded only a handful of Clinton emails to her husband for printing — not the “hundreds and thousands” cited by Comey. It does not appear Abedin made “a regular practice” of doing so. Other officials said it was likely that most of the emails got onto the computer as a result of backups of her Blackberry.

It was not clear how many, if any, of the forwarded emails were among the 12 “classified” emails Comey said had been found on Weiner’s laptop. None of the messages carried classified markings at the time they were sent.

...

Abedin’s lawyer issued a statement after Comey’s Oct. 28 letter, saying Abedin had no idea how her exchanges with Clinton got on Weiner’s laptop, and no idea that they were there.

[hughee99]

24. Perhaps I don't understand this theory.

Abedin had a blackberry, which had classified information on it, and it was somehow automatically being backed up to her (and her husband's) private laptop... and somehow, these backups were set up without her knowledge?

Do I understand that right?

[athena]

26. It sounds to me like

perhaps she once made a backup on her husband's laptop. Who knows what the situation might have been? Maybe she was about to do an upgrade and was worried about losing everything and was not near her own computer? Or perhaps she hooked it up to her husband's laptop to recharge it and, without thinking about it, hit "OK" in answer to a question about backing it up? The e-mails got transferred to his laptop, but since this hadn't been her intent, she didn't remember it later. (No one has perfect memory. The brain discards information it considers irrelevant.)

People are thinking way too much about this. If Abedin said she had no idea, I would tend to believe her.

[hughee99]

28. If you have a blackberry that could potentially have access to classified information,

and it allows you to back up to an unsecured laptop without any sort of problems (plug it in and hit okay), do you think this sounds better?

At one point, the argument was that Clinton's setup was even MORE secure than the government's, and now, to make this argument, your telling me anyone could back up anything virtually anywhere with no security process to intervene? That actually make me feel worse about it than if she had unthinkingly forwarded some messages home to be printed out, because if that was the case, it was just one person making mistakes on specific occasions rather than anyone involved with the system having virtually no security at all.

[athena]

30. I'm sure you're completely perfect

and would never make the tiniest technical mistake. I'm sure if one scrutinized your last two decades of professional conduct, they wouldn't find a single area where you ever made a mistake!

The e-mails were not even classified at the time they were sent, because Clinton's server was never meant to handle classified information, but who cares about any of that! Go ahead and be outraged by this. With Trump in office, let's focus on what is most important: how Hillary Clinton and her staff handled their e-mails.

You can go ahead and assume that Comey is telling the truth, and that Abedin is lying. That she actually forwarded hundreds of thousands of e-mails to her husband's computer on purpose and then lied about it. I don't care because you're going on my ignore list.

[hughee99]

37. I'm not "outraged" by this, though nice try to paint my argument as something that it's not.

I didn't assume that Comey is telling the truth about everything, and conceded he's overstating how often this happened.

And this isn't a "tiny technical mistake", it's a very large mistake. It may not be Huma's mistake, but it's certainly someones. There's every reason to believe the accounts on this server (which controls the SoS's ONLY email account) would receive at least some classified information (even if it wasn't solicited). To not have any security software or protocols in place for that isn't a "tiny technical mistake".

I guess you can argue that Huma had no idea that there was any classified material on her blackberry (and that may very well be true), but it would be hard to believe that she didn't have some sort of security on her phone in attempt to prevent it from being hacked (especially given the big phone hacking scandal that occurred while she was at SoS). As someone who's backed up their phone many times, I can't say I've ever done it "accidentally", and even though i've set it to automatically sync when plugged in, it still reminds me of what I'm doing each time. I could probably turn off that message (as I'm sure Huma could have) but then you'd have to assume she has a much greater technical savvy than your excuse allows for.

I like that you set up a straw man for my argument and then put me on your ignore list. It makes it clear that although you're more than willing to post about this issue, you're not actually willing to discuss it.

[mainer]

25. My emails go to multiple devices I own. It's the email account, not the device, that stores them.

I can access my emails from my laptop, iPad, desktop, and iPhone. Maybe her email account was also accessible on that laptop because she shared it with her husband.

[athena]

27. Not everyone uses the same setup.

I use linux, and I actually store my e-mails on my computer. This way, they are available on my laptop even when I'm offline. And I don't think I'm so unusual in that.

I haven't had a Blackberry for a long time and don't remember how it stores things. But in general, it's not so difficult to save things locally. Not everyone can be online all the time.

[Blanks]

29. In the hearing...

He behaved as though 'they' were searching for Hillary's missing emails.

That was a Trump campaign issue. She deleted emails which were not submitted to the government (because they were personal emails, not because they were incriminating) she had attorneys overseeing the deletions.

He made it seem (in the hearing) as though the FBI had broad authority to seek out by any avenue possible the content of those lost emails.

OK, so Weiner's wife had inappropriately handled a couple of emails, that's what they were looking at, he had concluded his investigation of 'Hillary Clinton's emails' and had made a statement that there was nothing Hillary had done that could be prosecuted.

He made it seem like there was an ongoing investigation to find Hillary's lost emails (in the hearing) but that investigation was over. If he was investigating an improper action by Weiner's wife, it was a different investigation, and did not rise to the level of notifying congress because the candidate herself was not involved except to send emails to her COS and she had the authority to receive the emails. Hillary was doing nothing wrong, and Comey should have opened a new investigation on Weiner's wife (which he would not be able to comment on) if events unfolded as he claimed.

Comey has serious consistency issues. He can't comment on a Trump investigation, but he's investigating Weiner's laptop and he can comment on that investigation.

It's bullshit.

[hughee99]

31. All of this is true, and I'm not here to defend Comey, but it seems like

there were emails with classified info that went from Huma's blackberry to the personal laptop she shared with her husband. There is disagreement about how they got there (I don't buy the automated backup theory), but that seems to be very much the core of the matter and is not in dispute.

[Blanks]

39. If Huma's blackberry...

Was improperly handling classified information, then Huma should have been under investigation. Huma being under investigation is not something Comey should have been talking about, the FBI doesn't talk about ongoing investigations, we know this because Trump was under investigation and Comey didn't send letters to congress to let them know about it.

My point is that if Huma was mishandling classified information, that's not a reason to reopen an investigation into Hillary Clinton, if it's justification for opening an investigation into Huma, that doesn't automatically make it an investigation into Hillary Clinton.

...but more than anything Comey said (I'm paraphrasing) we thought maybe we could find the missing emails. There weren't missing emails, that was a Trump campaign chant, no wrongdoing was found with Hillary Clinton's emails and that investigation was closed.

[hughee99]

41. I think the investigation into the server already covered Huma (and others using the server).

The reason (or at least the excuse) the investigation was reopened was because they originally thought they had covered all the devices this info was transferred to, and later found out that it wasn't the case. It was never really an investigation of Hillary Clinton (though the republicans tried to portray it that way), it was an investigation of the data on her server, she was just one of the parties involved in that investigation.

In the end, they did find a limited amount of classified material on the server. Most of that was determined to have been classified later, a few things appear to have been classified at the time using markers in the email, rather than the header. They decided not to prosecute anyone for it in July, and nothing that came out later from Huma's home system changed their mind on that.

To say that Comey misrepresented the extent of it is completely fair, but it's not really accurate to say that there was NO classified data there. From all accounts I've read, that seems to be technically true.

[Blanks]

42. I didn't say there was NO classified data there...

or if I did say it, I admit I misspoke.

My point is that the FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton's email had been concluded and no wrongdoing was found.

If Huma was improperly handling classified information that she was receiving from Hillary Clinton that's an investigation into Huma, and if she was not following security protocol, then Huma was at fault.

Comey said they were looking for Hillary's lost emails, they had no reason to be looking for the emails that she deleted. If the behavior or activities of Hillary's campaign COS (or whatever her title was) was under investigation, then that should have been kept under wraps in the same way the Trump Russia investigation was kept under wraps.

[hughee99]

44. The OP suggested that Comey's testimony was inaccurate, and I agree.

I was talking about the ways in which it was inaccurate (the scope). The FBI, in their investigation found that there was some classified material that was mishandled (a small amount, not a lot as his statement might lead you to believe).

I certainly would have though Comey would have (and should have) kept this under wraps until he found something of actual interest (which he didn't). In the end, he was going to end up getting hassled either way. Either Dems were going to be upset (as we rightfully were) that he sent this info to congress as an open ended and vague "we're looking into this again" or the republicans were going to cry foul that he told them the investigation was complete and later on was looking into it again and didn't tell them.

[Blanks]

45. He was definitely in a no win situation...

I think he chose poorly.

[hughee99]

46. I agree.

[WhiteTara]

20. Lordy, Lordy! What happens when the head of the FBI

lies to Congress?

[SunSeeker]

21. Comey misstated the facts to justify his improper letter.

Country first, eh Comey?

[Cryptoad]

23. Ummm.... Its a Felony when ,,,,

you lie to them!,,,, Is it a Felony when they lie to us???????

[hamsterjill]

32. Fishy! Fishy!! Fishy!!!

Comey's actions have smelled fishy since the start, and those actions keep becoming more and more pungent.

What was his REAL motivation for trying to harm the Clinton campaign? That's the question - rhetorical as it may be.

[StevieM]

33. Comey behaved in a shameful manner, from beginning to end.

He is worse than Donald Trump.

Ken Starr taught him well.

[jpak]

36. Comey threw the election

in purpose

yup

[Blue Idaho]

38. "Inaccurate" is such a genteel word...

It means he fucking lied to get the tyrant Trump in office. The traitor.

[wishstar]

47. None of the emails were marked classified at the time Huma received them

After reviews during the investigation they were retroactively classified but were not originally marked classified at all. She did not have receive or forward any documents that were classified back at the original time period.