The FBI won’t recommend criminal charges against Democratic presumptive presidential nominee Hillary Clinton for her use of a personal email server as secretary of state in the Obama administration. He said there was no evidence that she knew that anything she was doing was against the law or had lied to federal investigators.
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House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) asked Comey whether the FBI had investigated statements Clinton made to Congress while under oath, including when she asserted, “There was nothing marked classified on my emails, either sent or received”.
Republicans were outraged after Comey announced on Monday that he would not recommend charges against Clinton, despite saying her email arrangement was a serious error in judgment.
“I think the professionals with whom I communicated were very careful about how they handled classified material – as I was over the course of those four years”, the former secretary of State said on CNN’s “The Lead”. And a vast quantity of classified information.
“This should be called out for what it is – another blatantly political stunt by Republicans to try and keep the issue alive after career DOJ officials declared this case closed because they didn’t get the outcome they wanted”, said Glen Caplin, a spokesman for Clinton.
Comey also testified that while people copied on Clinton emails had security clearances, some contractors who maintained the server and lawyers who examined her emails did not.
Ten Republican senators said on Thursday they had written Secretary of State John Kerry asking that the State Department immediately suspend security clearances of Ms Clinton and aides Huma Abedin, Cheryl Mills, Jake Sullivan and other former State Department employees for security violations. “So I mean-“, Cummings said.
Comey said in a press conference on Tuesday that “no reasonable prosecutor” would bring a case against Clinton for her handling of classified information as Secretary of State.
And, following Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s announcement Wednesday that she would accept the FBI’s findings and close the case, Comey explained the legal distinction that underpinned his decision not to seek charges.
“Yeah, three out of 30-some-thousand and so, and they had a small C, and apparently this was a mistake, that they were not classified and they did not have six or seven things, headers on the pages, that would have notified somebody that they were in fact classified”, Cummings said.
Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said Thursday that he would refer Clinton’s October 22 testimony to the FBI to investigate whether she lied to Congress. Whether it’s sex in the White House or taking payments from foreign governments at the Clinton Foundation or, in this case, trying to avoid public-disclosure laws, Bill and Hillary Clinton were often careless and occasionally unable to curb their own worst impulses.
The revelation came as Comey came under intense questioning from members of Congress during a House Oversight Committee hearing.
Clinton and the State Department have said those privately managed emails did not contain any information that was classified at the time they were sent.
COMEY: That’s a harder one to answer.
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If she couldn’t handle being secretary of state, how will she be able to handle being president? Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump complained that the system was “rigged”. “No reasonable prosecutor would bring the second case in 100 years focused on gross negligence”. For, if we are indeed a nation where the law applies equally to all, no one need ever again fear prosecution for negligently mishandling government secrets.
