FBI Director James Comey testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee on May 3. | AP Photo Comey clarifies testimony on Abedin emails

FBI Director James Comey is cleaning up testimony he gave to a Senate panel suggesting that former Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin forwarded thousands of potentially sensitive emails to her husband, former Rep. Anthony Weiner.

A top FBI official sent a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday saying that the bulk of the transfer of data Comey mentioned “occurred as a result of a backup of personal electronic devices, with a small number a result of manual forwarding by Ms. Abedin to Mr. Weiner.”


Comey also backed away from a claim that Abedin had a “regular practice” of forwarding messages to Weiner for him to print out.

The FBI letter says Abedin “manually forwarded” two email chains containing classified information to Weiner’s account. It does not say how sensitive the information was or whether it was classified at the time it was sent.

At the hearing, Comey came under fire from Democrats for his disclosures about the Clinton email investigation. That criticism flared up again Tuesday as it emerged that the FBI chief had misstated some facts about the episode that led to the probe being reopened just before last fall’s election.

