During the height of the campaign season in the summer of 2016, Comey did a press conference to announce that, while the FBI had discovered what many felt were prosecutorial crimes involving Clinton’s efforts to conceal emails from investigators, “no reasonable prosecutor” would bring charges.
Then, under pressure and just ten days before the election, he reopened the investigation into the email scandal, alleging that Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton had compromised national security by using a personal email server during her time as Secretary of State. Clinton later pointed to the timing of this renewed probe as a key factor in her election loss.
“New details have been uncovered” regarding that probe, Patel said, adding that “Comeny maliciously and brutally distorted the procedures of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and lied to the American people.”
“He concealed relevant documents and hid them in places that cannot be found,” Patel added.
Bongino elaborated on that during a “Fox & Friends” interview on Thursday.
The deputy director said that his office uncovered evidence from Comey’s tenure in a room that had been “hidden from us,” as the bureau has been forced to reallocate resources amid ongoing internal investigations.
“I wouldn’t call it hidden, but hidden from us at least and not mentioned to us, and then we found stuff in there and a lot of it’s from the Comey-era, and we are working our damndest right now to declassify,” Bongino told Fox News.
He added: “I totally understand people saying, ‘Well, do it now.’ The process is [that] not all information is ours to declassify; some is other intelligence agencies, it’s not—we literally can’t do it.”
“Once that gets done and that gets out there, and you read some of the stuff, we found that … was not processed through the normal procedure, digitizing it, putting it in FBI records. We found it in bags hiding under Jim Comey’s FBI, and you’re going to be stunned,” Bongino said.
Bongino did not disclose specifics about what was found but took the opportunity to criticize Comey, who was dismissed during Trump’s first term. His remarks came in response to a Fox News anchor’s question referencing earlier comments from Patel about a social media post made by Comey.
The fired FBI director drew attention earlier this month after posting an image to Instagram showing seashells arranged to spell “8647,” accompanied by the caption, “Cool shell formation on my beach walk.” Some administration officials believe the message was aimed at President Donald Trump.
The term “86,” originally from restaurant and hospitality jargon, generally means to remove, reject, or eliminate someone or something, according to Merriam-Webster, while ’47’ refers to Trump.
