Comey defends releasing FBI’s Clinton report before holiday weekend

by Jessie Hellmann - 09/07/16 5:02 PM ET

FBI Director James Comey responded Wednesday to accusations that the agency played politics with the timing of the release of a report detailing the Hillary Clinton email investigation, saying he doesn’t “play games.”

{mosads}Comey has faced criticism from Republicans such as Speaker Paul Ryan, who questioned releasing the documents before a holiday weekend.

“I almost ordered the material held until Tuesday because I knew we would take all kinds of grief for releasing it before a holiday weekend, but my judgment was that we had promised transparency and it would be game-playing to withhold it from the public just to avoid folks saying stuff about us,” Comey said in a memo to employees Wednesday, according to CNN.

“We don’t play games. So we released it Friday. We are continuing to process more material and will release batches of documents as they are ready, no matter the day of the week.”

The report revealed new details about Clinton’s use of a private email server while secretary of State and the subsequent FBI investigation of her actions.

Clinton’s Republican rivals lunged after new information that aides destroyed large numbers of emails and Clinton had used multiple devices to send emails during her tenure.

While Comey announced in June he would not recommend charging Clinton, he called her behavior “extremely careless.”

In the memo Wednesday, Comey also said it was never likely the FBI would recommend charges as the case wasn’t prosecutable.

“At the end of the day, the case itself was not a cliff-hanger; despite all the chest-beating by people no longer in government, there really wasn’t a prosecutable case,” he said in the memo.

Ryan Tuesday took a swipe at the FBI, accusing agency officials of acting like “political operators.”

“It’s like the most buried time you could put out stories. I’m surprised. I mean, I can’t believe they would do what is such a patently political move. It makes them look like political operators versus law enforcement officers,” Ryan said in a radio interview with WRJN in Wisconsin.

Tags Hillary Clinton Paul Ryan