WASHINGTON—FBI Director James Comey said on Wednesday it made him feel “mildly nauseous” to think he had an impact on the 2016 U.S. presidential election, but that he had no choice but to announce just days before the vote that the agency had reopened a probe into Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton’s emails.
Comey told the Senate Judiciary Committee that one reason for the FBI’s renewed interest in Clinton’s emails ahead of the Nov. 8 election was that investigators had found emails, some of which were classified, forwarded by Clinton’s assistant Huma Abedin to her husband who was not authorized to see such information.
It was Comey’s most impassioned defense yet of his decision to tell Congress in a letter last October that the FBI had uncovered a new trove of Clinton-related emails, an announcement that angered Democrats.
Clinton said on Tuesday that her election bid was derailed in part by Comey’s announcement about the renewed probe of her use of a private email server while she was secretary of state. She also said her bid to defeat Republican Donald Trump was damaged by the WikiLeaks release of her campaign chairman John Podesta’s emails, allegedly stolen by Russian hackers.
