The Republican response is based on a what seems to be a misreading of one passage in James Comey‘s new book in which the former FBI director reflects on the Clinton investigation. | Alex Brandon/AP Photo Fact-check: Comey didn’t say he reopened Clinton investigation because of poll numbers

As FBI director, James Comey reopened the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server days before the 2016 election because of poll numbers, the White House said on Friday, repeating an assertion that doesn’t square with a passage in Comey’s new book.

Press secretary Sarah Sanders leveled several broadsides against the former bureau director at a White House briefing, responding to reporters’ questions about decisions related to the Clinton investigation by saying, “Now he claims it was based because of poll numbers.”


The comment appeared to be part of a coordinated Republican effort to undermine Comey’s reputation for integrity upon the release of his new book, “A Higher Loyalty.”

The Republican National Committee sent an email quoting a tweet from political analyst Nate Silver, who wrote: “If Comey’s decision to release the letter on Oct. 28 was influenced by his interpretation of the polls, that really ought to cut against his image as an honorable, principled decision-maker. Instead, he was just being expedient and trying to save his own hide.”

The Republican response is based on what seems to be a misreading of one passage in the book, as Comey reflects on his decisions regarding the Clinton investigation in the days before the 2016 election.

“I had assumed from media polling that Hillary Clinton was going to win,” Comey writes after discussing the Clinton investigation and his decision-making at length. “I have asked myself many times since if I was influenced by that assumption. I don’t know. Certainly not consciously but I would be a fool to say it couldn’t have had an impact on me.

“It is entirely possible that, because I was making decisions in an environment where Hillary Clinton was sure to be the next president, my concern about making her an illegitimate president by concealing the restarted investigation bore greater weight than it would have if the election appeared closer or if Donald Trump were ahead in the polls. But I don’t know.”

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Comey sent a letter to Congress announcing the investigation was reopened on Oct. 28, after the FBI found evidence of previously undiscovered emails on the computer of former Rep. Anthony Weiner in the course of another investigation. Comey has said since, and explains in the book, that because he had announced that the investigation was closed, he felt he had a duty to inform lawmakers that that was no longer the case.

The FBI found no evidence to change its previous decision not to charge Clinton, and Comey announced that the investigation was again complete on Nov. 6, two days before the election.

Comey in his book devotes considerable ink to his thinking during the investigation, and writes: “I have replayed the Clinton email case hundreds of times in my mind. Other than mistakes in the way I presented myself in the July 5 public statements in front of the television cameras, I am convinced that if I could do it all again, I would do the same thing, given my role and what I knew at the time. But I also think reasonable people might have handled it differently.”

