Reid, a Democrat from Nevada, told radio host John Catsimatidis of 970 AM in New York that he sent a letter to Comey before the election urging him to look into Russia and reports that it was meddling in the election.
"I wrote a letter in August [2016] to the Director of the FBI Comey and said Russia is messing with our elections and you need to do something about that. And by October he had done nothing," Reid said. "We now know he should have done something."
Reid said Comey didn’t get involved because he thought President Trump’s Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, was going to win. Reid has been a sharp critic of Comey since before the 2016 election and blamed the former FBI director for Clinton’s defeat. Comey was fired by Trump in 2017.
"Now the hindsight from his troops are that he didn’t do it because he thought Hillary would win the election. He therefore thought it would be too political for him to get involved," Reid said.
Special counsel Robert Mueller submitted his final report on election meddling to Attorney General William Barr on Friday. Mueller was appointed within days of Comey’s firing, and Comey later told Congress he leaked memos between he and Trump to try to spur the creation a special counsel investigation.