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Comey on Hillary Clinton: She Still Doesn't Understand What Her FBI Investigation Was About

June 19, 2018

Former FBI director James Comey on Tuesday said Hillary Clinton still doesn't understand why she was being investigated by the FBI.

Comey attended a panel discussion in Berlin, Germany to promote his memoir, A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies and Leadership, which in part recounts his tenure leading the FBI before President Donald Trump fired him last May.

Moderator Holger Stark asked Comey if he would apologize to Clinton following the revelation that he used his personal email to conduct FBI business. This revelation became public last Thursday when the Department of Justice Inspector General report was publicly released.

The report prompted Clinton to wryly respond, "But my emails" on Twitter.

"No, and here’s why. Again, I don’t want to criticize her, but it shows me that even at this late date she doesn’t understand what the investigation in her case was about," Comey said. "It was not about her use of a personal email system, and she didn’t get that during the investigation."

He went on to cite how Clinton justified her use of a private email server by saying that former Secretary of State Colin Powell used AOL and that he advised her about the private email server.

"That was not what it was about. It was about communicating about classified topics on that system when those topics have to be done on a classified system," Comey said.

Comey said that he used his personal email system to email his speeches to his government account after he wrote them at home, adding that he was "not talking about anything remotely classified and the inspector general didn't say that as well."

Comey said in a 2016 press conference that Clinton was "extremely careless" with classified information in her use of a private email server. The Inspector General report published last week condemned Comey for his conduct in that press conference and his over handling of the Clinton investigation.