FBI Director James Comey testified before Congress on Thursday, doubling down on his conclusions in the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server as Secretary of State.
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Clinton’s gender was not brought up at all in Comey’s remarks about her and the investigation into her private email server, nor did they play into Obama and Trump’s commentary about her.
Lynch said late Wednesday that she met with Comey to review the recommendations and accepted what the attorney general described as the “unanimous” decision by investigators and career prosecutors following the yearlong investigation.
Ms Lynch had previously said she meant to accept the recommendations of the Federal Bureau of Investigation director and of her career prosecutors.
Lynch, too, has come under scrutiny after meeting one-on-one with former President Bill Clinton at a Phoenix airport last week.
The decision had been expected and was largely a formality given FBI Director James Comey’s recommendation a day earlier against any prosecution.
Comey, in an unusually detailed and public accounting of the investigation Tuesday, said “no reasonable prosecutor” would pursue a criminal case and said he was advising the Justice Department against bringing any charges. A conservative member of the House Intelligence Committee told CNN he and others on the panel are considering how they can prevent Clinton or others who have been irresponsible with classified material from having access to it.
“Our folks did it in an apolitical and a professional way”, Comey said of the FBI’s handling of its yearlong investigation.
The director also said some of the communications were marked as classified, a finding at odds with Clinton’s previous characterizations that no information marked classified was moved through her system. Everybody thought based on what was being said she was guilty.
Clinton’s campaign hit back against Chaffetz Wednesday afternoon, releasing a web video featuring Chaffetz suggesting he would accept Comey’s decision.
“It would be unreasonable for a prosecutor not to go forward and nearly an abdication of duty”, said Giuliani, adding it would have been a “no-brainer” during his time at the Department of Justice. Still, they found “no evidence” that Clinton’s camp intentionally deleted messages in an effort to hide them, Comey said.
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Most administrative sanctions, anything from a reprimand to a dismissal, can’t be imposed on Clinton and three of her closest aides Cheryl Mills, Jake Sullivan and Huma Abedin as they have already left government, experts of the government’s classified information regime said. Because similar cases in the past, have involved either “clearly intentional and willful” mishandling of information, he said.
