A James Comey timeline
9/4/2013 Comey is sworn is as FBI director.
Comey, a former deputy Attorney General under President George W. Bush, is seen as a bipartisan pick for President Obama.
3/2/2015 The New York Times reports that Hillary Clinton used a private email server as Secretary of State.
6/16/2015 Donald Trump announces that he is running for president.
8/4/2015 The Washington Post reports that the FBI is investigating whether classified information was kept on Clinton's private email server.
6/14/2016 The Democratic National Committee announces that Russian hackers have broken into the party's servers.
The cyber-security firm Crowdstrike, which investigated the incident, said the servers were breached by Russia-backed hackers they called Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear. The hackers then passed the information along to WikiLeaks and others to make it public.
6/27/2016 Bill Clinton meets with Attorney General Loretta Lynch.
The disclosure that the two talked while on a tarmac in Phoenix leads to Lynch recusing herself from the investigations into Hillary Clinton, although both Lynch and Bill Clinton deny discussing the case.
7/2016 The FBI begins an investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
7/5/2016 Comey holds a presser saying that their investigation did not find any criminal wrongdoing with Hillary Clinton and her personal email server.
He says the FBI will not recommend charges be brought against Clinton.
10/28/2016 Comey announces via a letter that new emails have been found that are relevant to the investigation into Hillary Clinton.
It is later revealed that Clinton aide Huma Abedin sent the emails to her husband, Anthony Weiner, himself the subject of an unrelated investigation into allegations he engaged in sexting with a 15-year-old girl.
11/5/2016 Comey clears Hillary Clinton once again.
He says the new emails do not point to any wrongdoing by Clinton.
11/8/2016 Donald Trump wins the presidential election.
12/12/2016 U.S. says it has "high confidence" that Russia hacked Democratic Party servers.
3/20/17 Comey confirms the FBI is investigating any connections between Russia and Mr. Trump's associates and whether there was any coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia's meddling.
Comey makes the disclosure while testifying before the House Intelligence Committee.
4/27/2017 Rod Rosenstein is confirmed as deputy Attorney General.
Rosenstein will oversee the Department of Justice's investigation into any ties between Mr. Trump, his associates, and the Russian government. This is because Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from the matter after it became known that he did not inform the Senate about a meeting he had with the Russian ambassador prior to Election Day.
5/2/2017 Clinton says Comey's October 28th letter contributed to her defeat.
"If the election had been on October 27, I would be your president," Clinton said during an interview in New York. "I was on the way to winning until the combination of Jim Comey's letter on October 28 and Russian WikiLeaks raised doubts in the minds of people who were inclined to vote for me but got scared off — and the evidence for that intervening event is, I think, compelling [and] persuasive."
5/3/2017 Comey testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
He says that he has no regrets about how he conducted the investigation into Clinton, although it makes him "mildly nauseous" to think that the FBI could have affected the outcome of the election.
5/8/2017 ProPublica reports that Comey's testimony misstated crucial facts.
The website says that Huma Abedin only sent a handful of sensitive emails to Weiner. Comey had told the Senate committee that she had in fact sent "hundreds and thousands" to her husband. He later clarified the statement.
5/9/2017 Mr. Trump fires Comey, over his missteps in the Clinton email case
Letters from Rosenstein and Sessions make the case to the president that Comey should be dismissed for mishandling the Clinton case. Hours before they are released and Comey is fired, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer declines to tell reporters that Mr. Trump still has confidence in Comey. Spicer then tells reporters around 5:30 p.m. that Comey has been terminated on the advice of Sessions and Rosenstein.
