WASHINGTON — FBI Director James Comey told Congress that revealing the reopening of the Hillary Clinton email probe just before Election Day came down to a painful, complicated choice between “really bad” and “catastrophic” options. He said he’d felt “mildly nauseous” to think he might have tipped the election outcome but in hindsight would change nothing.

“I would make the same decision,” Comey declared during a lengthy hearing Wednesday in which Democratic senators grilled him on the seeming inconsistency between the Clinton disclosure 11 days before the election and his silence about the bureau’s investigation into possible contacts between Russia and Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.

Comey, offering an impassioned public defense of how he handled the election-year issues, insisted that the FBI’s actions in both investigations were consistent. He told the Senate Judiciary Committee that the FBI cannot take into account how it might benefit or harm politicians.

“I can’t consider for a second whose political futures will be affected,” Comey told the senators.