The top Democrat on the House intelligence committee said on Tuesday that the FBI had been “deeply damaged” by its conduct during the presidential election and would find it hard to repair its credibility under a Trump administration.

Adam Schiff said that FBI leaks about the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email server – and the announcement by the FBI director, James Comey, 11 days before the vote, that new emails had been found – “were highly problematic, to put it in the most diplomatic of terms”.

“I think that the bureau, which I have great respect for ... has been deeply damaged by their conduct over the last year, by the violation of the DoJ policies about talking about pending or closed cases and additionally by the nonstop leaks of information,” Schiff, a Democratic congressman from California, told reporters.

However, he did not support the call made by the outgoing Democratic leader in the Senate, Harry Reid, for the FBI to balance its disclosure on the Clinton emails, which were ultimately deemed not to warrant further investigation, with details of investigations into what he called “explosive information” about “close ties and coordination” between Trump and Moscow.

“I don’t think the remedy for that is leaking more information. And I don’t think I or the bureau should be talking about investigations, no matter who they are about,” Schiff said. Even without further leaks, he suggested it would be hard to undo the damage done by the perceived politicisation of the FBI’s work.

“So going forward there is a lot of damage to be repaired, and frankly I don’t see how that happens because if there is reason to investigate anything going on with the new administration, how much confidence will the public have in the conduct of that investigation?” he asked. “How much confidence will the public have that it’s objective, that it’s based on the facts, that it’s adhering to the highest standards? You can see how half the country might believe one thing, the other is going to believe another, and ultimately no one will believe the legitimacy of the process.”



During the campaign, Trump welcomed the leaking of Clinton’s emails, which US intelligence agencies said were hacked from the Democratic National Committee by Russia to the WikiLeaks organisation. Schiff warned that the same tactics could be used by Moscow to apply pressure on Trump when he is president.

“Should the president-elect cross the Russians – as inevitably he will have to because their interests are not our interests – he can expect that if the Russians are in possession of any embarrassing emails about his team, they will be dumped,” Schiff said. “And if they are not in possession of them they will hack and do their best to get in possession of them.”

The seven Democrats and one independent on the Senate intelligence committee have called for the declassification of intelligence on Russian intervention in the US presidential election.