Four key takeaways from ex-FBI Director Comey's latest Senate testimony

You’d think more than three years removed from his departure from the FBI that James Comey would be yesterday’s news.

But in GOP circles, the former FBI director’s name is still a source of outrage as Senate Republicans drag their probe into investigators’ actions during the 2016 Trump-Russia investigation and its spinoff inquiry led by former special counsel Robert Mueller to the Election Day finish line.

Mr Comey testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday for the first time since 2017, the year Donald Trump fired him for refusing to shut down the FBI’s criminal investigation into ex-Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn.

Appearing before the Senate panel via videoconference, Mr Comey largely defended his bureau’s conduct of the 2016 Trump-Russia probe, saying it was done largely “by the book” even if there were a few instances of problematic behaviour by some agents.

"I would say, in the main, it was done by the book. It was appropriate, and it was essential that it be done," Mr Comey said. “There are parts of it that are concerning ... but overall I'm proud of the work,” he said, acknowledging that some investigators filed partially errant surveillance warrant applications and that one even doctored an email that played an essential role in securing those warrants.

1. It’s personal between Comey and Barr

Attorney General William Barr has spent a large measure of his tenure at the DOJ under Donald Trump denigrating the origins of the FBI’s 2016 counterintelligence probe into Russia’s attempts to influence the Trump campaign and swing the election to Mr Trump.

He has called the probe "abhorrent" and appointed a special investigator, US attorney John Durham, to search for potential criminal misconduct by FBI agents.

"I have no idea what on Earth he is talking about," Mr Comey said when asked about Mr Barr's comments.

Mr Comey fiercely defended both his bureau's actions and the results of the probe he led, saying the proof of the investigation's legitimacy was in the list of indictments, plea agreements, and guilty verdicts federal prosecutors have secured over the last four years.

"It was, in the main, conducted in the right way, picked up by the special counsel, led to the indictment of dozens of people, and a finding by your colleagues in the Senate that the head of Trump's campaign was a grave counterintelligence threat to the United States of America because he was funneling in information to a known Russian intelligence officer," Mr Comey said, referring to former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who is in the middle of a seven-year prison sentence after being found guilty of cheating the US tax system out of millions of dollars and conspiring to commit bank fraud.

"The notion that the attorney general believes that was an illegitimate endeavour to investigate that mystifies me," Mr Comey said.

While the Justice Department convicted more than a half dozen close Trump associates on a range of crimes – including top 2016 campaign aides Mr Manafort, informal adviser Roger Stone, and ex-deputy campaign manager Rick Gates – as a result of Mr Comey and Mr Mueller's investigations, Mr Durham's inquiry has produced just one indictment and guilty plea.

Former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith pleaded guilty in August to falsely editing an email about former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, and then using that email as a partial basis to obtain a surveillance warrant against Mr Page.

2. Comey concedes FBI wasn’t perfect

Mr Comey conceded on Wednesday that his agents’ operation was not without error, acknowledging Mr Clinesmith’s crime and DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz’ reports about widespread issues with agents applications for warrants through Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) courts.

The former FBI chief has admitted those shortcomings several times before, saying last year there was “real sloppiness” in some aspects of the 2016 Trump-Russia probe.

On Wednesday, he agreed with Chairman Lindsey Graham that there were “parts of it that are concerning.”

3. Trump’s debt to unknown creditor a ‘serious concern’

Mr Comey agreed with Democrats on the panel that intelligence officials ought to be concerned whenever someone with or seeking a security clearance is in dire financial straits, as Mr Trump appears to be based on recent tax returns.

The New York Times reported that Mr Trump only paid $750 in federal income taxes in both 2016 and 2017 after reporting millions of dollars in losses and that he’s on the hook for $400m to pay back to various unknown creditors within the next four years.

"As a general matter, are there serious risks when someone with hundreds of millions of dollars in debt, personal debt, has access, as the president does, to all of the country’s classified and sensitive information?" Senate Democratic Whip Richard Durbin of Illinois asked Mr Comey.

“It's a serious concern when anyone seeking or with a clearance has that kind of financial vulnerability,” Mr Comey said. “I don't know the circumstances, particulars of the president's case. But in general, yes,” he said.

4. Who are these hearings for?

Mr Comey was the third witness to appear before the Senate Judiciary panel as part of Mr Graham’s probe into the conduct of top DOJ and FBI officials in 2016.

Like the hearings earlier this year with former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein (who appointed Mr Mueller) and former acting Attorney General Sally Yates , Mr Comey’s evidence produced almost no new information about the events of 2016 and 2017.

It figures to be more of the same when the panel grills former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe next Tuesday.

Which all begs the question: who are these hearings even for? The Mueller report and the investigations that preceded it are so far removed from most Americans’ political consciousness, at this point, that no national polling outfit has bothered to solicit public opinion about them in over a year.

The hearings still have some bearing on the ongoing criminal case against Mr Flynn, with Mr Barr’s Justice Department siding with the defendant that his alleged crime — lying about his communications with then-Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak — was immaterial to the overall Trump-Russia investigation.

The DOJ’s abrupt decision in May to back Mr Flynn’s motion to dismiss the case was “deeply concerning,” Mr Comey said on Wednesday.

“It’s deeply concerning because this guy is getting treated in a way that nobody’s been treated before,” Mr Comey said of Mr Flynn, whose lawyer admitted in court earlier this week that she had updated Mr Trump, who ultimately commands the Justice Department, about the case.

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