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FBI Director James Comey addresses the media after visiting with employees and other law enforcement officials, Tuesday, April 5, 2016, in Detroit. | AP Photo Comey pledges 'no outside influence' on Clinton email case

FBI Director James Comey said Wednesday that he's keeping careful track of the investigation into Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's email server, in part to make sure the probe isn't affected by politics.

"I love the FBI because we aspire to, and I think we are, three things: We're honest, we're competent, we're independent. We're not perfect. We're competent, we're independent," Comey said in response to an audience member's question during an appearance at Kenyon College in Ohio.

"I've stayed close to that investigation to ensure that it's done that way. That we have the resources, the technology, the people and that there's no outside influence. So, if I talk about an investigation while it's going on there's a risk that I'll compromise both the reality and the perception that it's done honestly, competently and independently. So, I'm going to say no comment to that."

Press reports in recent weeks have said that FBI agents working on a probe of how classified information ended up on the former secretary of state's home server are planning to question her top aides from her tenure as secretary of state. Investigators are expected to come to Clinton soon thereafter. She has pledged publicly to cooperate with the inquiry.

Speaking to an audience of law enforcement officials in New York on Monday, Comey said the timing of the upcoming Democratic convention in July would have no impact on the probe, although he said he wanted the investigation concluded "promptly."

Comey's main focus Wednesday was on privacy and encryption issues, including the FBI recent clash with Apple over access to an iPhone used by one of the shooters in the San Bernardino, Calif. terrorist attack that killed 14 people in December.

Comey said the FBI recently "purchased a tool" that allowed them to get access to that phone, defusing that fight with Apple but leaving unresolved the issue of the government's right to compel Apple to help break into a phone as well as the broader question of whether manufacturers should be forced to make devices that permit access by law enforcement in order to carry out court orders. The FBI director provided few details on how the method worked, but said he was confident it would be "closely protected" by both the FBI and the private party who came up with it.

"The FBI is very good at keeping secrets. The people we bought this from I know a fair amount about them and I have a high degree of confidence" in their ability to keep the technique under wraps, Comey said.

However, Comey also called the technique "quite perishable," in part because the phone it works on, the iPhone 5c, is becoming less common. He also acknowledged later that the Obama Administration is debating whether to reveal the technique to Apple, adding that he'd taken part in such talks as recently as Wednesday morning,

The FBI chief conceded that if the method was used in criminal prosecutions it would likely have to be revealed to defense lawyers. "It will ... disappear if we use it in a criminal case," Comey said.

During the question-and-answer period, Comey also touched on other topics that have been in the news in recent months, including the leak of millions of background check files stored by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management and an upswing in violence in major U.S. cities.

Comey said Americans like him who had their personal data compromised are at little risk of identity theft by actors looking for financial gain, but are at risk for a phishing-type attack that could be used to compromise private or government computer systems. "I really don't perceive a risk to any of us from a financial perspective from that theft," the FBI director said. "There's a significant counterintelligence risk, but I don’t think Aunt Sally needs to worry about her credit card being run up."

And even as the FBI chief warned that journalists would view it as a "conflict narrative" that puts him at odds with President Barack Obama, Comey repeated his suspicion that a spike in murders in some cities is the result of police becoming more lax out of fears they'll become the subject of misconduct allegations due to viral cellphone videos.

"Something is happening. ... A whole lot more people of color are being murdered in America's largest cities in shocking ways," Comey said. "It may be some impact from viral videos that somehow police are fearing being that video and in some places its causing a marginal pull back that the officers may not even notice."

Notwithstanding the reports of tension with the White House over his analysis, Comey said he plans to continue to raise the surge in violence and look for explanations, in part because it seems to be getting worse. "We just got our quarterly data and it’s even worse in a lot of place," the FBI chief said.