Photo by John Shinkle/POLITICO Key moments from Jim Comey's Senate testimony The FBI director says the idea that the agency affected the election makes him 'mildly nauseous.' But he stands by his decision on the Clinton probe.

FBI Director James Comey returned to the Hill on Wednesday to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee, one day after Hillary Clinton blamed him for upending her presidential campaign and the morning after President Donald Trump declared Comey “the best thing that ever happened to Hillary Clinton.”

Here are the key moments from the hearing:


Comey opened up about why he sent his Oct. 28 letter about new evidence in the Clinton probe. It came down to “speak” or “conceal,” Comey said. “Speak,” he reasoned, “would be really bad. There’s an election in 11 days. Lordy, that would be really bad. Concealing in my view would be catastrophic, not just to the FBI but well beyond. And, honestly, as between really bad and catastrophic, I said to my team: ‘We’ve got to walk into the world of really bad. I’ve got to tell Congress that we’re restarting this, not in some frivolous way — in a hugely significant way.”

Sending that letter to Congress was “one of the world’s most painful experiences,” the FBI director said. “It makes me mildly nauseous to think that we might have had some impact on the election, but honestly, it wouldn’t change the decision,” he said. “Even in hindsight — and this has been one of the world’s most painful experiences — I would make the same decision. I would not conceal that.”

“Was it appropriate for you to comment on one investigation repeatedly and not say anything about the other?” Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) asked, questioning whether it was fair to speak on Clinton’s email probe but stay quiet about the Trump-Russia investigation during the campaign. “I think so,” Comey replied.

But there won’t be another “peep” about the Trump investigation, according to Comey, who insisted he treated investigations into both Trump and Clinton “consistently under the same principles” and suggested that will continue to be the case. “With respect to the Russia investigation, we treated it like we did with the Clinton investigation,” Comey said. “We didn’t say a word about it until months into it, and then the only thing we’ve confirmed so far about this is the same thing with the Clinton investigation: that we are investigating, and I would expect we’re not gonna say another peep about it until we’re done. And I don’t know what’ll be said when we’re done, but that’s the way we handled the Clinton investigation as well.”

Comey denied giving Clinton a “free pass,” as the president’s tweet claimed. “No, that was not my intention, certainly,” Comey said. “We conducted a competent, honest and independent investigation, closed it while offering transparency to the American people. I believed what I said: There was not a prosecutable case there.”

Comey used the term “intelligence porn” to describe WikiLeaks, which published stolen emails from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta and the Democratic National Committee during the campaign. “It crosses a line when it moves from being about trying to educate a public and instead just becomes about intelligence porn, frankly, just pushing out information about sources and methods without regard to interest, without regard to the First Amendment values that normally underlie press reporting and simply becomes a conduit for the Russian intelligence services or some other adversary of the United States just to push out information to damage the United States,” he said.

Comey said Russia backed Trump because he wasn’t Clinton. “He wasn’t Hillary Clinton, who [Russian President Vladimir] Putin hated and wanted to harm in any possible way,” Comey said, adding that “Putin believed he would be more able to make deals, reach agreements with someone with a business background than someone who had grown up in more of a government environment.”

Russia will continue to interfere in U.S. elections, Comey predicted. “I think one of the lessons that the Russians may have drawn from this is that this works, and so as I said last month or so ago, I expect to see them back in 2018, especially in 2020,” he said. Russia, in his view, is “the greatest threat of any nation on earth given their intention and their capability.”

Comey said the impromptu meeting between then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch and former President Bill Clinton was the “capper” for him. “A number of things had gone on … that made me worry that the department leadership could not credibly complete the investigation and decline prosecution without grievous damage to the American people’s confidence in the justice system,” he said. “I then said: ‘You know what, the department cannot by itself credibly end this. The best chance we have as a justice system is if I do something I never imagined before: step away from them and tell the American people’” what the FBI did and what it found.

It was a “hard call” to keep Lynch out of the loop on the FBI’s conclusion, said Comey, who phoned the attorney general the morning of his planned July news conference at which he recommended no charges against Clinton. “That was a hard call for me to make to call the attorney general that morning and say: ‘I’m about to do a press conference and I’m not gonna tell you what I’m gonna say,’” he testified. “And I said to her, ‘I hope you’ll understand someday why I think I have to do this.’ But look, I wasn’t loving this. I knew this would be disastrous for me personally, but I thought this is the best way to protect these institutions that we care so much about.”

“Never” has Comey leaked information, he said in response to pointed questioning from Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), nor has he ever authorized anyone to leak information to the press regarding its investigation. Comey, however, wouldn’t say whether the agency is investigating leaks within the intelligence community. “I don’t want to answer that question for reasons I think you know,” he said.

But Comey did commit to cracking down on leaks. “If I find out that people were leaking information about our investigations, whether to reporters or to private parties, there’ll be severe consequences,” he warned.

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“Where is all this speculation about collusion coming from?” Grassley asked the FBI chief in his opening statement. Comey announced before the House Intelligence Committee in March that the bureau was investigating possible collusion between Trump associates and Russian agents during the presidential campaign. But Grassley noted that James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence, said he had found no evidence of collusion before he left office and The New York Times reported that U.S. officials had no proof as well, so he challenged Comey to expound on what he dismissed as “speculation.” “For the good of the country,” Grassley said, “I hope that the FBI gets to the truth soon — whatever that may be.”

“Ye gods,” an exasperated Grassley said after questioning to no avail why the FBI provides more information in response to litigation than to congressional inquiries. Comey, as he frequently did throughout the hearing, declined to answer certain questions involving potentially classified or private matters. “If I, Chuck Grassley as a private citizen, file a Freedom of Information Act and you give me more information than you’ll give to Senator Chuck Grassley, how do you justify that?” Grassley asked, his voice rising. “Yeah, it’s a good question,” Comey said. “What do you mean it’s a good question?” Grassley snapped. “How do you justify it?” Comey said he couldn’t “as I sit here.”

The FBI “was noticeably silent” about its investigation into the Trump campaign, charged ranking member Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who suggested that Comey cost Clinton the election with his Oct. 28 letter to Congress. “I join those who believe that the actions taken by the FBI did, in fact, have an impact on the election,” Feinstein said in her opening remarks. “What’s worse is that while all of this was going on in the public spotlight, while the FBI was discussing its investigation into Senator Clinton’s email server in detail, I cannot help but note that it was noticeably silent about the investigation into the Trump campaign and Russian interference into the election.”