“They weren’t looking at it”.
Advertisement
To criminally charge Clinton based on the facts his agency’s yearlong probe had found would have been unwarranted and mere “celebrity-hunting”, Comey said.
Hillary Clinton’s decision to use a private email server was selfish, unwise and – it seems – borderline illegal.
During the Congressional hearing, Comey acknowledged for the first time that there were only three classified emails, and that in each case the emails contained only “partial” markings – meaning, he acknowledged, that they were improperly marked and that as a result, the materials could have been reasonably judged as not classified. “Was that true?” Gowdy asked. On Thursday, Comey testified that Clinton’s claims about her email, some made under oath, were “not true”.
“So I think of that as kind of real sloppiness”, he said.
The U.S. attorney a year ago, for example, went after a naval reservist named Bryan Nishimura for mishandling classified materials in nearly exactly the same way as the former secretary of state.
Republicans signaled they’re not done with election-year investigations of Hillary Clinton and whether she lied to Congress, even after a House committee signed off Friday on its report into the deadly 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya.
Clinton was “extremely careless,” according to Comey, making it “possible that hostile actors gained access to” classified information.
When grilled by an animated Rep. William Hurd (R-Texas), Comey firmly responded that the guidelines for prosecution should be applied equally, noting that the Federal Bureau of Investigation was not going to recommend prosecution for someone based on their celebrity status. What we can’t establish is that she acted with the necessary criminal intent.
“You’ve set a precedent and it’s a unsafe precedent. that there’s going to be no consequences”, said Republican Congressman Jason Chaffetz, who leads the House of Representatives’ government oversight panel.
Hillary Clinton was widely mocked in the 1990s when she spoke of a “vast right-wing conspiracy”, but it’s not paranoia if they’re really out to get you. David Petraeus was caught on tape admitting to his mistress that he knew he was leaking classified information.
Under an onslaught of Republican criticism, Comey vigorously defended the government’s decision and rejected GOP accusations that the presidential candidate was given special treatment.
He explained that under relevant statutes, prosecutors would have to prove Clinton clearly knew she was breaking the law to win a case. I get that. But you know what would be a double standard?
Following the hearing, Clinton’s campaign released a statement saying Comey’s testimony “shut thte door on any remaining conspiracy theories once and for all”.
Advertisement
For more coverage on the testimony, the New York Times and the Washington Post has you covered. Chaffetz then asked whether Clinton lied to the public. “Even there, they prosecuted him for a misdemeanor”, Comey told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
