take. And I don't want to quibble, but there's no policy around taking action in a runup to an election, but there's a really important norm that I believe in. If you can avoid it, you take no action in the runup to an election. It might have an impact on the election, I believe in that, even today.
Ms. Jackson Lee. Well, I can't put words in your mouth, but you were, in essence, engaged or interfering or participating in an election of the known and documented leaders of the free world.
I would consider the elections of the President of the United States in a world context as one of the most significant elections that we would ever have in the world.
Again, would you not consider that maybe in that context that the timing was very difficult?
Mr. Comey. Oh, excruciating. Causes me great pain even to sit here and talk about it today, but the two alternatives I saw, I chose the least bad. I still think the other alternative was worse. And as between bad and worse, I had to choose bad. I wish we weren't involved, but given that we were involved, we tried to make the right decision for the right reasons.
Ms. Jackson Lee. You sent a letter dated October 28th, 2016, to indicate that there was a reopening of the investigation. I count the numbers of addressees as 16.
Why would you need to send -- did you send this classified? Did you send this with an indication that this was not to be
