Comey congressional testimony transcript download pdf

Horowitz did a really good job. Thank you, Senator Feinstein. Speaker 1: Mr. Senator Graham: Yes, sir. Speaker 1: May we have copies of that document, please? Speaker 1: Thank you. Senator Graham: Thank you very much. Senator Feinstein: Thank you very much, Mr.

The President has long claimed that the investigation of his campaign was a witch hunt and a hoax. Senator Feinstein: Mr. And I agree. Comey was fired by President Trump. Mueller also uncovered numerous contacts between the Trump campaign and individuals linked to Russia. For example, Mueller found that Trump campaign manager, Paul Manafort, gave internal polling data and campaign strategy to Konstantin Kilimnik, a Russian intelligence officer.

Senator Feinstein: So think about that for a moment. Chairman, of course the FBI should have investigated. Unfortunately, the President and his allies have been trying to rewrite the Russia investigation since the day it concluded. Those errors were serious, but the errors and the so-called Steele dossier, and this is important, played no part in the broader Russia investigation.

None of them. Senator Feinstein: President Trump and his allies also claim that the Russia investigation was a political witch hunt overseen by investigators who hated the President. We should not ignore or excuse what happened in , FBI director Ray and the intelligence community have warned that Russia is interfering in the election, with the aim of denigrating Vice President Biden. Thank you, Mr. Senator Graham: Thank you, Senator Feinstein. Is Mr. Comey, our technology working today?

Can you put him up on the screen? Senator Graham: Mr. Comey, could you speak, please? That would [crosstalk ]-. Comey: I can hear you.

Senator Graham: Okay, great. Thank you. Will he be on the screen? Senator Graham: Okay. Can you count to 10 for us, please? Comey: Sure. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, Senator Graham: Well you did your part.

Thank you very much for being with us. Could you raise your right hand, please? Comey: I do. Senator Graham: Thank you. Senator Graham: Well, one, thank you very much. Comey, on a scale of one to 10, with 10 being the top of the line rate, how would you rate the Crossfire Hurricane investigation in terms of being done thoroughly, by the book, an investigation the FBI should be proud of?

Sounds good. Okay, when did you first learn of the existence of the Steele dossier? Comey: Sometime towards the end of September of Do you agree with Mr.

Comey: I agree that it was important. Was there an effort to get a warrant approved without using the dossier? Comey: Yes. My understanding is in the summer they asked DOJ whether they would support moving forward on a warrant application. Senator Graham: And they said no, right? Comey: Correct. Senator Graham: Then you add the dossier, all of a sudden they say yes to the warrant application. Is that a fair statement? Senator Graham: Yes. So I would say that it was central, essential based on that.

The contacts between Mr. Page and alleged Russian operatives are one part of the application, is that correct? Did Mr. Page deny knowing people that you accused him of having contact with? I think the Horowitz report says that in the fall of , speaking to an FBI source, he denied knowing certain people.

He denied knowing these people, and the FBI has yet to find any evidence that he was lying. Page was in fact helping them? Page was a resource. Did you not know that? Comey: I did not know of the nature of his relationship with the CIA. Page had a reason to be talking to these people because he was working with the CIA? Would that have been a fair thing to tell the court? Horowitz found. Page said, that he in fact was assisting the CIA, which explained the contacts.

That was never given to the court. Comey: I believe Mr. Horowitz found that they should have at least considered informing the court [crosstalk ]-. Senator Graham: Should you? Would you wish that had been done if you had known about it? Senator Graham: That you had informed the court that Mr. Paige was in fact working with the CIA, and that explains these contexts.

Do you think out of a sense of fairness, the court should have been informed of that fact? I think Horowitz found he was a contact, which means [crosstalk ]-. Are you aware of the fact that email later on was doctored? I am aware from [crosstalk ]-. Senator Graham: Why is Mr. Kleinsmith facing criminal indictment?

Page told you, that these contacts had a basis, in fact, because he was working with the CIA. Did you know that Mr. Kleinsmith doctored the email for it to read that there was no association between Page and the CIA? Comey: I know nothing about Mr. Senator Graham: Well how do you feel in general about an FBI lawyer doctoring information exculpatory to somebody being surveilled? Comey: Any false statement in the course of an investigation is deeply [crosstalk ]-.

In October, when the warrant was submitted, the application was submitted, what effort had been made to verify the dossier in October?

I know the counterintelligence division was working to see how much of it they could rule in and rule out.

Senator Graham: How much time did they spend ruling in and ruling out, regarding the dossier? In October. Comey: I do not-. Senator Graham: You signed the application. Whose job is it to make sure the facts are right when you present them to the FISA court?

Comey: Well, the most basic level, the affiant, whoever is signing the affidavit [crosstalk ]-. Senator Graham: Did you sign the affidavit? Comey: No. I signed a certification which is required of the FBI director.

Comey: Not in connection with the certification. Can you give me a group of people we can look at to hold accountable for misleading the court? Who should we be looking at? Comey: To understand the process, in general and in this case, you would start with the Horowitz report, where he recounts all the many people involved in the review, production, and delivery to the court of this application.

Comey: I do not. All right. Comey, there was no effort to verify the dossier before it was given to the court. Do you agree with that? And in January of 12th, , the warrant application was renewed. Did you sign that? Comey: I signed a certification in connection with two [crosstalk ]-. Comey: One in January and one three months later. Steele, was suspected of being a Russian spy by the FBI all the way back to ? Senator Graham: How can it be, Mr.

Do you know who Christopher Steele was? When did you find out who he was? Comey: When the Steele dossier was briefed to me sometime, like I said, I think late September. Senator Graham: Were you ever told that he hated Trump and he wanted him to lose, and he very much down on Donald Trump as a person? Comey: Not that I recall, no.

Senator Graham: Do you remember friendly foreign governments putting us on notice that he tends to exaggerate and goes off on crusades? Did that make it to you? So, should the court had been informed, in a perfect world, that the primary sub-source was a suspected Russian spy? Comey: At a minimum, they should be, team of the FBI and justice should have discussed whether to inform the court about that.

Senator Graham: Were you ever told by the CIA to be careful with the dossier and Steele, that this is not good craft here? The warrant application is renewed in April You sign it in January the 12th. Are you aware of the fact that the sub-source was actually interviewed by the FBI in January ? Senator Graham: So as the director, was this an important case for the FBI, or is this kind of a run of the mill thing?

Comey: The overarching investigation was very important. The Page slice of it, far less given [crosstalk ]-. And you keep using that document over and over again to get a warrant. Every time you found information to put the reliability of the dossier in question, everybody seemed to ignore it and just plowed forward.

Comey: I do not remember being told about any interview of [crosstalk ]-. Senator Graham: Should you have been told about it? The primary sub-source told the FBI in January , after the dossier had been used twice to get a warrant, that the sub-source has no idea where some of the language attributed to him came from. That the contacts never mentioned some of the information attributed to him. And that he did not know the origins of other information that was supposedly from his contacts.

And were statements made in jest that should be taken with a grain of salt. Comey: Not that I recall. They tell the FBI, and they keep using the same document. You know how they describe to the court the sub-source? You know what they told the sub-source in the application … the court about the sub-source? That he was truthful and cooperative. Do you think those terms to the court, truthful and cooperative, fairly reflect the interview the FBI conducted in January and March?

Comey: I know the Inspector General found the disclosure was inadequate in that regard. Senator Graham: Not only, Mr. Comey, is it inadequate, it is criminally inadequate. You have a document central to getting a warrant against an American citizen. It is falling apart. The person who prepared it was on a jihad against Trump, on the payroll of Democratic party. The primary sub-source was a Russian agent.

When that person was interviewed by the FBI, he disavowed the reliability of the document to the point that it should never have been used again. And my question is, how could the system ignore all that? And how could it be used again in April and again in June? I think Mr. Horowitz found that it was not disclosed … that a variety of facts were not disclosed.

Page, for the court to know that when he said the people he met with was a result of him being associated, working with the CIA, do you think that would have been beneficial to Mr. Senator Graham: … to Mr. Do you think it would be only fair for the court to be told that the primary sub-source disavowed the document as being rumor, bar talk, you can take half of it with a grain of salt?

Do you think the FBI owed it to the court and Mr. Page to tell the court about these stunning revelations? Comey: I think Mr. Horowitz found, and it seems a reasonable conclusion, that they should have informed-. How is it possible that the system gathers so much exculpatory information? How could all that happen and not get up to you, the director of the FBI, of one of the most important investigations in the history of the FBI?

How is that possible? It should be important to every American. Is there anybody there advocating for Mr. Page during the warrant process? It means that the cops have a duty to tell the court when they find things beneficial to the person under investigation.

Over and over again, between October and June, all the information found about the dossier made it less reliable, not more reliable and you kept using again and again and again. The question, was there bias? Do you recall getting an inquiry from the CI, excuse me, the intelligence community in September, , about a concern that the Clinton campaign was going to create a scandal regarding Trump and Russia?

Speaker 3: There it is. Comey, when we now know that the Democratic Party through Fusion GPS hired Christopher Steele, a foreign agent who had a very strong bias against Trump who hired a Russian sub-source who the FBI believed to be a Russian spy to compile a dossier that was a bunch of crap to be used against an American citizen working for the Trump campaign? You already knew that. Senator Graham: Do you remember being told by the intelligence community, remember the episode with Trump in the hotel?

Senator Graham: With the hookers in the dossier? Comey: Yes, I remember that portion of the Steele-. That was pretty hard to ignore. Comey: [crosstalk 01]. This is from the Horowitz report. Did you know that when it came out?

To me, that is something that the court should know. It was the Russians. They hired a foreign agent on the payroll of the Democratic Party who hired a Russian spy to create a document that was absolutely full of misinformation and complete lies. Senator Graham: Did you know, there is no Russian consulate in Miami and the dossier mentions that there was one?

The dossier asserts that Michael Cohen went to Prague on some venture for Trump and Russia and it never happened, and they know it never happened. Senator Graham: They never corrected all the misinformation in the dossier.

It was used over and over again and they never told the court about how unreliable it was. Is that a small thing or a big thing? Senator Graham: Did you have a duty to look at any allegations regarding Clinton in Russia? Senator Graham: Well, you say you had a duty to look at allegations about the Trump campaign being involved with the Russians.

Did you have an investigation look and see if whether that was true? Thank you very much. Senator Feinstein: Thank you, Mr. However, Special Counsel Mueller and the Senate Intelligence Committee found that the Trump campaign manager, Paul Manafort, gave internal polling data and campaign strategy to a Russian intelligence officer.

The Senate Intelligence Committee issued the bipartisan finding that Manafort was a grave counterintelligence threat. Senator Graham: Without objection. Senator Feinstein: Thank you very much. Senator Feinstein: Would you agree that a direct tie between a presidential campaign manager and a Russian intelligence officer is a grave counterintelligence threat?

Senator Feinstein: Could you tell us why, please? Senator Feinstein: You would agree that this type of counterintelligence threat does warrant investigation? Comey: Yes, of course. Does the possibility that Russian intelligence services are exerting influence over a presidential campaign create a counterintelligence risk that warrants investigation? Senator Feinstein: Correct.

Is there a counterintelligence concern when a candidate for political office pursues a lucrative business deal in Russia at the same time he publicly claims to have zero interest in Russia? Comey: Yes, because of the ability that offers the foreign adversary to have leverage over that individual. Does this type of counterintelligence concern warrant investigation?

Comey: It may, depending on what facts you have to predicate the investigation. Senator Feinstein: Thank you. Did President Obama or Vice President Biden ever ask you to investigate a political rival or to go easy on a political rival?

Comey: Never. Senator Feinstein: Why would that have been problematic? President Trump has said that he would take damaging information on a political opponent from a foreign adversary and that he would not commit to informing the FBI. He publicly asked China to investigate Joe Biden and was impeached for pressuring Ukraine to investigate Biden as well. Are you concerned that Trump will embrace and use Russian interference efforts to his advantage, excuse me, as he did in ?

And he said that he would. Senator Grassley. Charles Grassley: Yeah. Thank you for your appearance here. Charles Grassley: On January the Sixth, , the Obama administration issued its intelligence community assessment on Russian interference in recent elections. That assessment included Annex A, which said that the FBI had identified and unidentified sources relating to the Steele reporting and Russia investigation.

Did you make any effort to ensure that Annex A identified that some sourcing may have been from a suspected Russian spy or otherwise unsubstantiated? If not, why not? Charles Grassley: Okay. The primary sub-source was a suspected Russian spy. The sub-source disavowed elements relating to the dossier. He was subject to a counterintelligence investigation and offered people money for classified information.

Thanks to declassified footnotes from the inspector general, we know the following: One, the FBI knew the Russians had the intent to target Steele. Two, we see that they had the opportunity to do so by various contacts Steele had with Russian intelligence assets. Three, we see the success of those efforts because some Russian disinformation made its way into the Steele dossier.

In any of your meetings with President Trump, did you inform him that the Flynn case was supposed to be closed on January the Fourth, ? The report also assessed that the information was part of a Russian disinformation campaign. That same day you signed a FISA renewal. The FBI received another report on February 27th, , that also stated parts of the dossier were false and subject to Russian disinformation.

Charles Grassley: Steele is clearly not a reliable source. Why did you say otherwise? Why did you approve the FISA application in light of the evidence? Comey: What I said about Mr. Steele that you read at the beginning of your preamble was what I believed based on what I had been told.

If so, what did you discuss? I remember sometime in the summer of , I think August, during a meeting in the Situation Room, I told the president that the FBI was endeavoring to understand whether any Americans were working or associated with the Russian effort to attack the election. Comey: I remember the Flynn investigation coming up once, I think it was January the Fifth, when President Obama held me back to urge me to do the case in the normal way and to let him know if there was any reason that he should not be sharing sensitive information about Russia with the Trump transition.

I assured him that I would keep him informed and I would conduct the investigation in that way. If I used it, I would have meant authentic and not fabricated. My times up. Senator Graham: Senator Leahy, I think by remote. Patrick Leahy: Mr. Chairman, are we coming through at the hearing? Patrick Leahy: Okay. Well, Mr. Instead, it seems, Mr. Chairman, your party, Republicans, are obsessed with two priorities: First, a mad rush to confirm a Supreme Court nominee on the eve of a presidential election, just a few days before the Supreme Court will consider the Republican lawsuit to strip millions of Americans of their healthcare.

I expressed to you some of my strong disagreements with decisions you made as FBI director, but I also recognized you were placed in a truly unprecedented situation. I have never questioned your integrity or your loyalty to the law and to the country. Patrick Leahy: Now, whether Vladimir Putin is interfering in our elections or paying bounties to kill our troops or brazenly poisoning dissidents, it seems President Trump is incapable of publicly criticizing him. The Mueller investigation ultimately decided not to look into any financial relationships between the president and Russia, despite some on the team who believed that it would be relevant to their central investigation.

We now know that President Trump owes more than million dollars in debt to largely unknown sources. He said they received all the funding we need out of Russia.

Why do you believe that this is a possibility? Have you ever felt this way about an American president? Patrick Leahy: Good enough to raise suspicions in your mind based on your experience.

Patrick Leahy: Now yesterday, reportedly over the objections of career officials, the Director of National Intelligence, John Ratcliffe, declassified and released unverified Russian intelligence, likely disinformation, about former Secretary Clinton.

The information was rejected by the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee. Are you concerned, Mr. Comey, that intelligence leaders, handpicked for their partisan loyalties, are weaponizing intelligence by selectively releasing foreign disinformation and withholding credible US intelligence assessments?

We know from our own reporting that Russia is again trying to interfere in our election. If you had to convey one message the American people about the persistent threat of Russian interference in our democracy, or any foreign interference, what would it be? Let that sink in. Let it guide how you think about the way we ought to conduct ourselves going forward. Patrick Leahy: Thank you, I have a similar feeling.

After initially trying and failing to claim executive privilege and after making the argument for months that Flynn was not receiving special treatment, she revealed that she has directly talked to President Trump about the case, has asked him not to pardon Flynn. Now you once supervised this investigation, what does the disclosure mean for how the Trump administration criticizes its official law enforcement responsibilities? Patrick Leahy: Thank you very much. Chairman, after hearing the other questions during this hearing, I may have some questions for the record.

Senator Graham: Absolutely, Senator Leahy. Senator Cornyn. John Cornyn: Director Comey, is it appropriate for the Federal Bureau of Investigation to influence a presidential election?

The FBI should do everything you can to avoid having any impact on the election of any kind, including a presidential election.

John Cornyn: Does that concern you? Comey: It concerns me whenever anyone has questions about whether the FBI is conducting itself in a competent, honest, independent way. John Cornyn: Did you call the Steele dossier salacious and unverified?

John Cornyn: You did not refer to it as unverified? The entire dossier was something we were trying to see if we could rule in, rule out. I apologize. Did you know that the information that was reported by Inspector Horowitz that should have raised questions about the reliability of the Steele dossier?

Comey: Oh, I see. John Cornyn: Can you rule out the possibility that the Crossfire Hurricane investigation was predicated in part on Russian disinformation? Comey: I think so. Comey: A friendly foreign nations ambassador. It was open based on information from an allied ambassador about something that Trump foreign policy advisers said in London about the Russian offer to the campaign of dirt on Hillary Clinton. John Cornyn: Back in January after the election, the intelligence community submitted a report intelligence community assessment.

Do you recall that? The [inaudible ] from January 6th, I think, or 5th, of-. Do you recall a discussion between you and the CIA about whether the Steele dossier should be included as part of the intelligence community assessment? Comey: I remember some interaction with my fellow leaders of the intelligence community agencies that were part of that assessment.

So they put a brief summary of it in an annex. John Cornyn: Mr. Are you familiar generally with that? John Cornyn: I know you have. Does it concern you at all as a former leader in the intelligence community, as Director of the FBI, that the questions that have up as a result of the Horowitz Inspector General report, the information we know now about the flaws in the Crossfire Hurricane investigation, including the use of the Steele dossier, the inclusion of less than complete and accurate information by an FBI attorney as part of the predicate for that, does it concern you that the questions that have been raised here will make it harder, perhaps even impossible for Congress to come together and reauthorize important tools like the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act?

So yes, it concerns me. Senator Graham: Senator Durbin. Durbin: Thank you, Mr. Comey, is personal debt and important consideration when an individual is seeking a security clearance?

Durbin: Why? Durbin: Go ahead. Durbin: So someone with substantial personal debt may be vulnerable to influence by a foreign adversary. A government official, yep. My source, New York Times, September 27th. So as a general matter, are there serious risks when someone with hundreds of millions of dollars in debt, personal debt, has access as the President does to all of the countries classified and sensitive information?

Durbin: If the President disclosed his income tax returns, we might be able to know a little more. Let me just say this. This is an important committee with a great history. I think it is entirely appropriate that we are meeting today to discuss Russian influence on American elections. Durbin: It is a great issue.

It is an important issue. That would seem to be something that the Senate Judiciary Committee might be interested in. Durbin: And yet we are not taking a look at that today. We are going back on a trip down memory lane to four years ago to decide whether or not certain documents were handled properly, and I will concede the fact, some were not.

We are not doing that. Because the agenda here is all about a dossier written five or six years ago. Durbin: Well, that may be of interest to some, but not to most of the American people.

And I think it really comes down to some fundamental questions. Why if we are embarking on this escapade into and what preceded the Russian interference in that election of , why did we decide as a committee on a partisan basis to reject my effort to include subpoenas of Trump campaign manager, Paul Manafort, and a Russian agent, Konstantin Kilimnik? But yet on a partisan roll call, this committee decided not to.

Not interested. Durbin: We have lots of questions today of Director Comey as to whether he read every document, when he read it if he did, what impact that had on him. But when it came to these two key witnesses whose names appear over and over and over again in the Russian interference of the election, this committee on a partisan roll call rejected my effort to extend subpoenas to these two individuals.

I also want to make it clear this notion about the Steele dossier. These transcripts should have been released long before now, but the White House held up their release to the public by refusing to allow the Intelligence Community to make redactions on the basis of classified information, rather than White House political interests. Only now, and during a deadly pandemic, has the President released his hold on this damning information and evidence.

But we are a country where the truth still matters and where right still matters. Our investigation into the Trump campaign, and the evidence we uncovered despite formidable obstruction, affirms that. Home russiainvestigation. As part of its commitment to transparency, today the Committee is releasing fifty-seven transcripts of witness interviews during the course of the Russia inquiry, as well as additional relevant material, so that every American can see the facts and decide for themselves: Is this conduct ok?

When news of the meeting was about to break, Trump and his son drafted a false statement for the press together in order to cover up the true purpose of the meeting.

Throughout the summer of , the Trump campaign and candidate Trump himself repeatedly sought damaging information on Clinton from Russia. Our transcripts show that numerous individuals affiliated with or working for the Trump campaign were in communication with individuals offering help to set up private backchannels with the Russian government.

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