A Republican-led House oversight panel is reviewing the documents that have been classified as secret.
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House Oversight Chairman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., have asserted that Clinton’s October testimony during a review of the deadly 2012 attack on the USA diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, was at odds with the FBI’s recent findings.
The FBI on Tuesday provided Republican congressional leaders a package of documents summarizing its now-closed investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of private email servers while secretary of State.
Republican congressional leaders sought the FBI’s notes in an attempt to support their recent call for the Justice Department to launch a new investigation alleging that Clinton provided false testimony to Congress past year about her use of the personal email system.
At the State Department Tuesday, spokesman Mark Toner said the department had not yet reached an agreement with the Federal Bureau of Investigation about whether “witness interview summaries” should be shared widely. But FBI Director James COmey confirmed in his press conference on his agency’s decision to not recommend a criminal indictment for Clinton that investigators had unearthed thousands more work-related emails from Clinton. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump routinely attacks Clinton over her email use.
“The State Department is also processing six other discs of records from ‘custodians other than former Secretary Clinton … including [but not limited to] materials from Ms. Abedin’s clintonemail.com account'”. “The people’s interest would be served in seeing the documents that are unclassified”.
More than 100 emails exchanged by Clinton were subsequently reviewed and determined to contain information considered classified. Though it is an exaggeration to claim that Ms. Clinton ran her agency as a pay-to-play operation, the latest unearthed emails from the Clinton State Department nevertheless reveal that the ethical wall she was supposed to have built between herself and her family’s organization was not impermeable enough.
“If these materials are going to be shared outside the Justice Department, they should be released widely so that the public can see them for themselves, rather than allow Republicans to mischaracterize them through selective, partisan leaks”, he said in a statement.
The Oversight Committee also has formally asked if Clinton committed perjury during her Benghazi testimony in October 2015, because her statements to Congress appear to conflict with the FBI’s findings. But the world will soon find out what was in the deleted emails recovered from Clinton’s private email server, and if her lack of transparency in the past is any indicator, they were probably deleted for a reason.
The ongoing ordeal, also, has been a thorn in the side of Clinton’s presidential campaign – and a source of ammunition for GOP challenger Donald Trump. Instead, summaries of the interviews are written on FBI Form 302, and have come to be known as “302’s”. “I’ve heard her say, ‘I’ve made a mistake and I’ve learned something from it and I wouldn’t do it again and I apologized'”.
“The FBI is providing certain relevant materials to appropriate congressional committees to assist them in their oversight responsibilities in this matter”, said FBI spokeswoman Carol Cratty. After Clinton’s use of a private e-mail server when she was secretary of state became public, the group got the the case reopened and has been obtaining – and publicizing – a steady barrage of e-mails and deposition transcripts on the e-mail system and other topics.
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Clinton maintains she had no knowledge that classified material was included in her emails, and cites the State Department, which now says two of the three emails that included portion markers should not have been classified at the time they were sent and the markings should have been removed.
