Comey Defends Clinton Probe, Rejects Claims It Politicized Justice Department

James Comey again cast his 2016 handling of Hillary Clinton’s email investigation as an act of investigative duty, not a political break point, pushing back on the claim that his decisions helped politicize the Justice Department.

The former FBI director said he disagreed with criticism that his actions began the shift. That defense lands against a record that still divides Washington: on July 5, 2016, Comey announced the FBI would not recommend charges against Clinton, but said she and her staff had been “extremely careless” in handling classified information. He also said FBI investigators had reviewed about 30,000 emails Clinton had provided to the State Department.

The case became even more combustible near the end of the campaign. On Oct. 28, 2016, less than two weeks before Election Day, Comey told Congress the FBI was reviewing newly discovered emails that might be relevant to the Clinton inquiry. Eight days later, on Nov. 6, he said that review did not change the bureau’s earlier conclusion not to recommend charges. Clinton’s email controversy had already become one of the defining issues of the 2016 presidential race, and Comey’s public notices hardened the argument that the FBI had stepped directly into electoral politics.

That dispute did not end with the election. Comey was later fired by President Donald Trump in May 2017, and the Justice Department’s inspector general later examined both his July 5 announcement and his Oct. 28 and Nov. 6 letters as part of a broader review of FBI and DOJ conduct during the campaign. The inspector general found that some FBI employees exchanged text and instant messages showing hostility toward Trump and support for Clinton, adding a layer of internal bias to the public fight over neutrality.

For Clinton’s supporters and many Democrats, the Oct. 28 letter was a decisive intervention that came at the worst possible moment. For Comey, the episode remains a defense of prosecutorial restraint, with the bureau acting on evidence rather than partisan pressure. But the larger question has outlasted the 2016 race: whether the FBI’s choices helped weaken trust in federal law enforcement and set a precedent for later claims that justice itself had become political.