Many believe the letter Comey wrote about Clinton’s e-mail servers cost her the election. Lynch said at the time that the two spent the 45-minute, unplanned meeting talking about golf, the recent Brexit vote, and their grandchildren, while some observers were upset about the optics of such a meeting at the time. The meeting convinced him to go public in an "ultimately conclusive way," Comey said during Thursday’s highly anticipated testimony.
Comey said on Thursday that he grew increasingly concerned when Lynch directed him to refer to the Clinton probe as a "matter," not an "investigation"--a linguistic parallel to how the Clinton campaign was describing what was, indeed, a criminal investigation. Comey said Lynch’s insistence made him "queasy," because it seemed the Justice Department was trying to align its public comments with those of the Clinton campaign.