Wednesday on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show, former secretary of state and first lady Hillary Clinton, the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee, said since former FBI Director James Comey was “talking very freely” about her, he should have also let voters know that there was an active investigation going on “about the Trump campaign and associates and Russia starting in the summer.”
Partial transcript as follows:
HEWITT: Now let’s go back to What Happened where an agreement area with you and me. I was appalled by Director Comey’s public announcement of the declining to prosecute you. I was appalled because I am a veteran of the Department of Justice. Prosecutors [HEWITT note: I meant to say “FBI investigators’] don’t make those decisions. If Attorney General Lynch was recused, it ought to have gone to Sally Yates. So when you write you had been “shivved by then-FBI Director James Comey three times over the final five months,” I agree, and I agree with the Rosenstein memo, as you do. First question, have you talked with Director Comey since he had that first press conference?
CLINTON: No. I don’t believe I’ve ever talked with Director Comey, not for 25 years.
HEWITT: Okay, he is now, you write…okay, you write that “he’s gone from villain to martyr in five seconds flat.” He got a huge book deal. He’s on the speaking circuit all because of his celebrity. Do you believe James Comey’s getting rich off of that celebrity status earned from the manner in which he treated your case?
CLINTON: Well, what I try to do in the book is to say look, you can keep two thoughts in your mind at the same time. One, I think that he violated protocol as the director of the FBI. He went outside the chain of command. He was taking unprecedented actions both in July and in October. I do not to this day understand everything that motivated him to do so, and I think that the Rosenstein memo, as I put forth in my book, is an accurate description of his violation of process. At the same time, I think he was not fired for that. I think he was fired because he refused requests to stop the Russia investigation. And I am one who thinks that that was not only the real reason he was fired, but that he should have let the American people know if he was going to be talking very freely about me, he should have let people know, voters know, that there was an active counterintelligence investigation going on about the Trump campaign and associates and Russia starting in the summer. He didn’t do that. And then when he was pressed to walk away from it, he took the right position, which is no, we have to continue the investigation. And for that, he was fired. So that’s why I say he goes in my book from villain to martyr. I still don’t fully understand his motivation. Maybe he will explain himself better in the months ahead.
HEWITT: Do you resent at all that he’s become St. James, or the Eliot Ness of the moment?
CLINTON: I think that that’s mostly around the Russia issue. And there’s a lot of reason for both Democrats and Republicans, for American citizens in general, to want to get to the bottom of what Russia did to us. I think it was an attack by an adversary using cyber means to undermine our democracy. And it’s the first time I can recall that an adversary has attacked us with so few consequences. So I think that’s what is motivating him. And I have had an interesting experience. As you know, I have a chapter called “Those Damn Emails,” and I’ve put in it…
HEWITT: Yup.
CLINTON: …all of the explanation from other people about what I did and why it was legal, and what the consequences were and all the rest of it. Not one of the people who thought it was the most important issue since World War II has said a single word of criticism about it because actually, the facts speak for themselves. So I think the Comey situation now has much more to do with Russia than anything else.
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
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