FBI Director James Comey will soon personally interview former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as part of the bureau’s investigation into whether classified information was mishandled on her server, according to a report from the website Mediaite, which has since made its way to the influential Drudge Report.
But is it true? Will Comey, who took office in September 2013, personally interview the Democratic presidential front-runner?
The report on which Mediaite bases its headline comes from Al Jazeera America. In a segment that aired Wednesday, Al Jazeera’s David Shuster reported that FBI investigators have finished examining Clinton’s emails and her private server and will soon begin interviewing her aides.
A Clinton interview will soon follow, Shuster reported, corroborating other recent reports.
But nowhere in the segment did Shuster state that Comey will personally interview Clinton. Such a move would be unorthodox. Though Comey is a former prosecutor, interviews would seemingly be conducted by the investigators working the case.
Unfortunately, the FBI is not shedding much light on the matter.
“We have no information to provide you,” an FBI spokeswoman told The Daily Caller. “We’d refer you to the very brief comments the director has made in the past.”
Comey said during a House hearing earlier this month that he is closely watching the Clinton investigation.
“I can assure you is that I am very close personally to that investigation to ensure that we have the resources we need, including people and technology, and that it’s done the way the FBI tries to do all of it’s work: independently, competently and promptly,” Comey said. “That’s our goal, and I’m confident that it’s being done that way, but I can’t give you any more details beyond that.”
Suggesting that he has no information that Comey will personally take part in the investigation, Shuster tweeted a link to an article from the website American Thinker which also questions the Mediaite headline.
There is other evidence that even if Comey is planning to interview Clinton — or even sit in on it — the information would not be made known to the public.
According to a Time magazine profile of Comey published Thursday, the FBI is so concerned with preventing leaks about the case that agents have been told that they may be polygraphed.