Perhaps
the head of the FBI was expecting a sedate review of the intelligence
that tied the Kremlin to the DNC hacks. But that’s not what he got.
On Friday morning in the bowels of the Capitol Visitor Center in Washington, DC, U.S. intelligence chiefs finally
briefed
members of the House of Representatives on Russia’s alleged hacking
during the 2016 election. What started as a standard classified,
closed-door briefing degenerated into a gigantic “sh*t show” of angry,
bitter Democratic lawmakers screaming in FBI director
James Comey’s face.
“It
got incredibly uncomfortable,” one congressional aide briefed on the
meeting told The Daily Beast. “People were mad, people were loud. It was
like…they wanted Comey’s head on a plate,” the source said, describing
the elected Democrats in the room.
When
Comey started addressing the group, he told them he was “tone deaf to
politics,” something he’d said in an open hearing this past week,
according to a different congressional staffer briefed on the meeting.
He then added that he “doesn’t pay attention to timing, but does what he
thinks is right,” to the scoffs of Democrats in the room. Comey after
all, rocked the election with his 11th hour announcement that the bureau
was investigating a new trove of Hillary Clinton’s emails—and his 11th
hour and 59th minute proclamation those there was nothing new or
incriminating in those messages.
Friday’s
raucous back-and-forth lasted for an anxious, sneering 10-15 minutes.
And it demonstrates that Democrats still blame the FBI director for
their stinging loss at the polls, only a day after word emerged that the
FBI Inspector General is looking into whether Comey followed FBI policy
by those pronouncements about the Clinton probe. (The FBI did not
immediately respond to a request for comment.)
“There
was a big sh*t show toward the end of the briefing where [Democratic
congresswoman and former Democratic National Committee chair]
Debbie Wasserman Schultz,
in an attempt at a public [cover-your-ass], badgered Comey in front of
everyone basically blaming him for her losing her job, saying the FBI
hadn’t properly warned the DNC they were being hacked, and hadn’t been
more aggressive in their attempt to alert the DNC,” the Hill staffer
recounted. “It lasted an uncomfortable amount of time, like 5 minutes.
Republicans were booing and calling for her to sit down.”
(Comey
in testimony this week said that the FBI had asked for access to the
DNC servers and John Podesta’s server multiple times but had been
denied, and ultimately the DNC contracted a private company, which then
shared the what they found about the intrusions with the bureau.)
"As
a Member of Congress, I will not compromise information learned and
discussed in any classified briefing," Wasserman Schultz told The Daily
Beast in a statement. "However, the FBI Director must clarify for the
American people, the agency’s policies for investigating and alerting
those who are hacked by foreign governments. There are further questions
that must be answered by Director Comey, who must provide more clarity
on this and other questions that have arisen surrounding the FBI's
handling of Russian hacking during the 2016 election cycle."
According to multiple sources, this started
when Democratic congressman Jerrold Nadler first began pushing hard on
Comey to explain his letters to Congress regarding Hillary Clinton right
before the election (which many Democrats and
Clinton herself blame
for Trump’s surprise election-night victory), and whether or not he
would have made the controversial move had Trump been in the crosshairs.
“Do
you believe that standard has been met with reference to the possible
investigation of the Trump campaign’s possible connections to the
Russian government? And if not, why not?” Nadler asked Comey on Friday
morning, according to
The Guardian.
After
all, Comey the other day had huffed that he “would never comment on
investigations—whether we have one or not—in an open forum,” when asked
by Sen. Angus King, an Independent from Maine, whether there was an
active probe into ties between the Russian government and Team Trump.
“The irony of your making that statement here, I cannot avoid,” King replied.
Four
sources told The Daily Beast that Nadler’s confrontation on Friday set
off a chain-reaction. “A bunch of” Democratic lawmakers began jeering at
and scolding the FBI director about an apparent Clinton/Trump “double
standard.” This dominated the final 15 minutes of the classified intel
briefing, during which Comey remained evasive, dodged questions, offered
up half-baked answers, and stayed “defiant,” according to lawmakers in
the room.
Among the Democrats charging
Comey with historic malpractice were the former DNC chairwoman and House
Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who capped off the hate-fest portion of
the briefing by revisiting Nadler’s line of questioning and further
“grilling” Comey, according to two aides.
Towards
the merciful conclusion of the meeting, Pelosi chastised the FBI chief
for his behavior and for apparently not treating the House members with
an adequate level of respect, according to the sources.