Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Kaine earlier this week criticized FBI director James Comey for what he called a “double standard” in his handling of investigations into Hillary Clinton compared to inquiries into Donald Trump.
“It’s making our folks mad, because it does seem like a little bit of a double standard for the reason that you set out,” Kaine said Monday on the “Stephanie Miller Show” which airs on the SiriusXM radio channel Progress. Kaine was responding to reports from The New York Times and CNBC that cited sources who claimed Comey was against publicly disclosing Russia’s role in election year hacks of Democratic Party officials and committees.
“Really, there are two protocols that law enforcement officials follow that were both broken in that letter Friday and we don’t really understand why. Why would you break them? So the first one is not talking about a pending investigation and the second one is not releasing controversial information right before an election. Now, we know that these are strong protocols that have been in place for a long time. We know that Director Comey believes in these protocols.”
Kaine said the burden was on Comey to explain his reasoning.
“When he testified before Congress at the end of September, and he was asked repeatedly about concerns about Russia engaging in these activities, over and over again he said, ‘I will not comment upon any pending investigation even to say whether or not there’s an investigation going on,'” Kaine said.
“And then on the seventh of October, when the national intelligence community released the letter saying that Russia was engaging in these activities, the reporting yesterday suggests that he agreed with the evidence, but did want to sign on to the letter because he didn’t believe the FBI should be commenting on something controversial right before an election.
“So, if he understands that these are the protocols, and has been acting in accord with these protocols up to just recently, why issue this vague letter Friday that violated both of the protocols? It seems like a double standard and I really think the burden is on him to explain why.”
