had them stay on the -- playing any role in connection with that investigation.
Mr. Gowdy. Would you have fired them?
Mr. Comey. That I can't answer in the abstract. I'd certainly want the FBI disciplinary process to work and to look at it, to decide whether discipline was appropriate and what that would be. But I can't answer the ultimate question.
Mr. Gowdy. But if I understood your answer to the first part of that correct, you would not have allowed them to remain on the Clinton investigation had you been aware of those texts.
Mr. Comey. My judgment would have been -- and based -- the challenge for me is I haven't read all the texts, but based on what I saw -- have seen in the media since I left the FBI, that unless there was some explanation for that that I was missing, in my judgment, they wouldn't have remained part of the investigation.
Mr. Gowdy. Well, I don't want you to answer that question in the abstract. Peter Strzok did offer a justification. He said that he was not biased for Clinton or against Trump. Not that his bias didn't impact his work, he got around to that later. He just said he wasn't biased.
So, if you had brought him in and he had said, "Oh, but, Director Comey, I know I said he was a loathsome human being and I know I said that she should win 100 million to zero, but that doesn't mean I can't do my job," because that is certainly what
