On Thursday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “The Beat,” former FBI Acting Director Andrew McCabe stated that the FBI was “overconfident” in its decision to have then-FBI Director James Comey hold his press conference on Hillary Clinton’s emails and that the FBI’s actions around the Clinton email investigation “had an impact on the election.”
McCabe said, “There is no doubt that I felt that that was the right call at that time. … Ultimately, my conclusion is that we were overconfident. I think we gambled too heavily on Jim’s considerable abilities as a communicator. We felt so confident in the work that we had done. I still hold that confidence. We felt so confident in the result of that investigation, and we were overconfident in our belief that Jim could present those findings in a way that would convince people to kind of put their pre-conceived political approach to the issue aside and accept the work that we had done.”
He added, “I think that our decisions in the end of the Clinton email investigation, particularly the decision to make that announcement in October to Congress about the reopening of the case…I think it’s undeniable that those actions had an impact on the election.”
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