You as director of the federal bureau of investigation. Once again, thank you for being here today and we look forward to your testimony and answer to our questions. You may begin. Chairman. Ou, mr. Senator feinstein, members of the committee, thank you for having this annual oversight hearing about the fbi. I know that sound a little bit like someone saying theyre looking forward to going to the dentist, but i really do mean t mean it. I think oversight of the fbi of all parts of government, but especially the one im lucky enough to lead is essential i think it was john adams when wrote to Thomas Jefferson that power always thinks it has a great soul. The way you guard against that is having people ask hard questions. Ask good questions and demand straightforward answers and i , promise you ill do my absolute best to give you that kind of answer today. I also appreciate the conversation i know were going to have today, and over the next few months about reauthorizing , section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that you mentioned, mr. Chairman. This is a tool that is essential to the safety of this country i did not say the same thing about the collection of telephone dialing information by the the nsa, i think thats a useful tool. 702 is an essential tool and if it goes away, well be less safe as a country. And i mean that and would be happy to talk more about that thank you for engaging on that so we can tell the American People why this matters so much and why we cannot make it go away. As you know, the magic of the fbi that you oversee is its people. And we talk as we should a lot about our counterterrorism work, about our counterintelligence work and im sure well talk about that today. I thought i would give you some idea of the work thats being done by those people all over the country, all over the world, every day, every night, all the time. And i pulled three cases that happened and were finished in the last month just to illustrate it. The first was something i know that you followed closely, the plague of threats against Jewish Community centers this country experienced in the first few months of this year. Children frightened, old people frightened, terrifying threat of bombs at jewish institutions, especially the Jewish Community centers. The entire fbi surged in response to that threat, working across all programs, all divisions, our technical wizards, using our vital International Presence and using our partnerships, especially with the Israeli National police. We made that case and the , israelis locked up the person behind those threats and stopped that terrifying plague against the Jewish Community centers. Second case i wanted to mention is all of you know what a bot net is, these are the zombie armies of computers that have been taken over by criminals lashed together in order to do tremendous harm to innocent people. Last month, the fbi working with our partners with the Spanish National police, took down a bot net and locked up the russian hacker behind that bot net that made a mistake that russian criminals sometimes make of leaving russia and visiting barcelona. He is now in jail in spain. The good peoples computers that had been lashed to that zombie army are now freed and no longer part of a criminal enterprise. This week for the First Time SinceCongress Passed the statute making it a crime in the United States to engage in female gentle mutilation, to muteulate little girls, its been a felony in the United States since we made the 1996, first case last week against doctors in michigan for doing this terrifying thing to young girls all across the country with our partners in the department of Homeland Security we brought a case against two doctors for doing this to children. This is a among the most important work we do, protecting kids especially, and it was done by great work that you dont hear about a lot all across the country by the fbi. It is the honor of my life i know you look at me like im crazy for saying this about this job i love this work, i love this job. And i love it because of the mission and people i get to work with. Some work i illustrated by pulling those three cases from last month, but it goes on all the time, all around the country , and we are safer for it. I love representing these people, speaking on their behalf and i look forward to your , questions today. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you for your opening statement. Im going to start out probably with a couple subjects you wish i didnt bring up, and a that i third one think Everybody Needs to hear your opinion on, a policy issue. It is frustrating when the fbi refuses to answer this committees questions. , but leaks relevant information to the media. In other words they dont talk , to us, but someone talks to the media. Director comey have you ever , been an anonymous source about news relating to the trump investigation or the clinton investigation . Never. Question 2 on relatively related, have you ever authorized someone else at the fbi to be an anonymous source in news reports about the trump investigation or clinton investigation . No. Has any classified information relating to President Trump or his associates been declassified and shared with the media . Not to my knowledge. You testified before the House Intelligence Committee that a lot of classified matters have ended up in the media recently. Without getting into any particular article, i want to emphasize that, without getting into any reticular article, are there any leaks of classified information relating to mr. Trump or his associates . I dont want to answer that question, senator, for reasons i think you know. There have been a variety of leaks leaks are always a problem, but especially in the last three to six months. And where there is a leak of classified information, the fbi, if its our information, make as makes a referral to the department of justice or if its another agencys information, they do the same and then doj authorizes the opening of an investigation. I dont want to confirm in an open setting whether there are any investigations open. I want to challenge you on that, because the government regularly acknowledged when its investigating classified leaks. You did that in the valerie plain case. Whats the difference here . The most important difference is i dont have authorization from the department to confirm any of the investigations they have authorized. And it may be that we can get that at some point, but im not going to do it sitting here in an open setting without having talked to them. I can you can expect me to follow up on that offer. Sure. There are several senior fbi officials who would have had access to the classified information that was leaked, including yourself and the Deputy Director so how can the , Justice Department guarantee the integrity of the investigations without designating an agency other than the fbi to gather the facts and eliminate senior fbi officials as suspects . Well, im not going to answer about any particular investigations, but i know of situations in the past where if you think the fbi or its leadership are suspects, you have another Investigative Agency support the investigation about federal prosecutors. It can be done and has been done in the past. Ok moving on to another subject, the New York Times recently reported that the fbi had found a troubling email among the ones the russians hacked from democrat operatives. The email reportedly provided assurances that attorney general lynch would protect secretary clinton by making sure the fbi investigation didnt go too far. How and when did you first learn of this document . Also who sent it and who , received it . That is not a question i can answer in this forum, mr. Chairman because it would call , for a clarify classified response. I have briefed leadership of the Intelligence Committees on that particular issue, that i cannot talk about it here. You can expect me to follow up with you on that issue. Sure. What steps did the fbi take to determine whether attorney general lynch had actually given assurances that the Political Fix was in no matter what, did the fbi interview the person who wrote the email . If not, why not . I have to give you the same answer, i cant talk about that in an unclassified setting. Ok you can expect me to , follow up on that. I asked the fbi to provide this email to the committee before todays hearing. Why havent you done so and will you provide it by the end of this week . Again, to react to that i have to give a classified answer and i cant give it sitting here. So that means you cannot give me the email . Im not confirming there was an gmail. The subject is classified and in , an appropriate forum id be happy to brief you on it, but i cannot do it in an open hearing. I assume other members of the committee could have access to data briefing if they want it . I want to talk about going dark,. Irector comey a few years ago, you testified before the committee about the going dark problem and the inability of Law Enforcement to access encrypted data despite the existence of a court order. You continue to raise this issue in public speeches. Most recently at boston college. Mentioned at the beginning of your testimony briefly, but can you provide the committee with a more detailed update on the status of going dark problem , and how it affected the fbis ability to access in crib to data. Access encrypted any progressn to overcome problems . You said you did not think legislation was necessary at that time. Is that still your revieview . Thank you, mr. Chairman. The shadow created by the problem we call going dark continues to fall across more and more of our work. Take devices, for example. The ubiquitous default on devices is affecting about half of our work. First six months of this fiscal year, fbi examiners were presented with over 6,000 devices, for which we had lawful authority, search warrant or court order to open. 46 of those cases we could not open those devices with any technique. That means half of the devices we encounter in terrorism cases, in counterintelligence cases, in gang cases, in child pornography cases, cannot be opened with any technique. That is a big problem. And so the shadow continues to fall. Determined today to continue to make sure the American People and Congress Know about it. I know this is important to the president and new attorney general. Its something we have to talk about. Like you, i care a lot about privacy, i also care an awful a lot about Public Safety. There continues to be a huge collision between those two things we care about. I look forward to continuing that conversation, mr. Chairman. You didnt respond to the part about do you still have the view that legislation is not needed. I dont know the answer yet. I hope i said the last time we talked about this it might require legislation solutions at some the Obama Administration point. Was not in a position to tackle this. Its premature for me to say. Senator feinstein. Director, i have one question regarding my opening comment, and i view it as a most important question, and i hope you will answer it. Why was it necessary to announce 11 days before a president ial election that you were opening an investigation on a new computer without any knowledge of what was in that computer . Why didnt you just do the investigation as you would normally with no public announcement . Senator. Question, thank you. October 27, the Investigative Team that had finished the investigation in july focused on secretary clintons emails asked to meet with me. I met with them that morning in my conference room. They laid out for me what they could see from the meta data on anthony wieners laptop. What they could see is there were thousands of secretary clintons emails on that device, including what they thought might be the missing emails from her first three months as secretary of state. We never found any emails from her first three months. She was using a verizon blackberry then. Thats obviously very important if there was evidence she was acting with bad intent thats where it would be. But they werent there. Can i finish my answer, senator . So they came in and said we can see thousands of emails from the clinton email domain, including many, many from the verizon blackberry domain. We think we got to get a search warrants to go get these. I agreed. The department of justice agreed we had to get a search warrant. I authorized them to seek a search warrant. I have lived my career by the tradition if you can possibly avoid it, you avoid any action in the run up to an election that might have an impact. But i sat there that morning and i could not see a door labelled no action. I could see 2 doors, and they were both actions. One was labeled speak, the other was labeled concealed. Heres how i thought about it im not trying to talk you into this but i want you to know my thinking. Having repeatedly told this congress were done and theres nothing there, no case there, no case there. To restart in a hugely significant way, potentially finding the emails that would reflect on her intent from the beginning and not speak about it would require an act of concealment, in my view. So i stared at speak and conceal. Speak would be really bad. There is an election in 11 days lordy that would be really bad. Concealing in my view would be catastrophic. Not just to the fbi, but well beyond. And honestly, as between really bad and catastrophic, i said to my team weve got to walk into the world of really bad. Ive got to Tell Congress were restarting this. Not in some frivolous way in a hugely significant way. The team also told me we cannot finish this work before the election then they worked night. After night and found thousands of new emails, they found classified information on anthony wiener. Somehow her emails are being forwarded to anthony wiener, including classified information by her assistant huma abedin. They found thousands of new emails and called me the saturday night before the election and said weve only had to personally read 6,000. We think we can finish tomorrow morning, sunday. And so i met with them. And they said we found a lot of new stuff we did not find anything that changes our view of her intent. So were in the same place we were in july, it hasnt changed our view. I asked them lots of questions i said okay if thats where you are, then i also have to Tell Congress were done. This was terrible. It makes me mildly nauseous to think we might have had impact on the election. But, honestly, it wouldnt change of the decision. Everybody who disagrees with me has to come back to october 28th with me and stare at this and tell me what you would do . Would you speak, or would you conceal . And i could be wrong, but we honestly made a decision between those two choices that even in hindsight. This has been one of the worlds most painful experiences, i make the same decision. I would not conceal that on october 28th from the congress i spent a later by Congress People forget this, i didnt make a public announcement. I sent a private letter to the members of the Oversight Committees. It was very important that i tell them instead of concealing and reasonable people can disagree. Thats the reason i made that choice. And it was a hard choice, i still believe in retrospect the right choice, as painful as it has been. Im sorry for the long answer. Let me respond. On the letter it was just a , matter of minutes before the world knew about it. Secondly, my understanding and staff has just said to me, that you didnt get a search warrant before making the announcement. I think thats right. I authorized and the department of justice agreed we were going to seek a search warrant. I actually dont see it as a meaningful distinction. Well, its very hard, it would have been you took an enormous gamble. The gamble was that there was something there that would invalidate her candidacy. And there wasnt. So one has to look at that action and say, did it affect the campaign . And i think most people who have looked at this say yes, it did affect the campaign. Why would he do it . And was there any conflict among your staff, people saying do it dont do it, as has been reported . No, there was a great debate, i have a fabulous staff at all levels. One of my junior lawyers said should you consider what youre about to do may help election help elect donald trump president. And i said thank you for raising that. Not for a moment. Because down that path lies the death of the fbi as an independent institution in america. I cant consider for a second whose political fortunes will be affected in what way. We have to ask ourselves what is the right thing to do, and then do that thing. Im very proud of the way we debated it. At the end of the day, everyone on my team agreed we have to Tell Congress that were restarting this in a hugely significant way. Well, theres a way to do that, i dont know whether it would work or not, but certainly in a classified way, carrying out your tradition of not announcing investigations. And, you know, i look at this exactly the opposite way you do everybody knew it would influence the investigation before. That there was a very large percentage of chance that it would. And, yet, that percentage of chance was taken. Was no information. And the election was lost. It seems to me that before your department does Something Like this, you really ought to because senator leahy began to talk about other investigations and i think this theory does not , hold up when you look at other investigations. But let me go on to 702. Because you began your comments saying how important it is, and yes, it is important. Weve got, i think, a problem. And the issue that were going to need to address is the fbis practice of sea