FBI Chief Jim Comey’s Russia Hacking Brief Turns Into ‘Sh*t Show’

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.

Asawin Suebsaeng


Kimberly Dozier

01.13.17 6:45 PM ET

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.