Comey made the disclosure to argue the point that the case of Petraeus, who knew he had top secret information and lied to the FBI about it, differed from the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s handling of classified information.
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House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi (D-California) dismissed the latest Republican move as purely political.
The move came a day after Attorney General Loretta Lynch agreed with the Federal Bureau of Investigation recommendation that no criminal charges should be filed in relation to the email case. The Justice Department on Wednesday accepted that recommendation and formally closed the investigation.
He also said he would not answer whether the Clinton Foundation was “tied into” the investigation of Clinton’s email server.
It was almost five hours into the hearing before Comey was asked about the bureau’s investigation of the Clinton Foundation, which reportedly concerns how the foundation’s interests, and the interests of its contributors, intersected with decisions made by Clinton during her 2009 to 2013 tenure as secretary of state.
The comments came in an emergency hearing of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee called just two days after Comey announced his recommendation, which some committee members deemed “mystifying”.
“I believe and have said many times that I take classified material seriously”, Clinton said in an interview with NBC.
In a stinging assessment of her email practices as secretary of state, Comey rebuked Clinton and her aides for being “extremely careless” in their handling of classified information and contradicted numerous defenses and explanations she’s put forward for months.
Comey also said that it was possible that a foreign power managed to hack into Clinton’s personal account and complained that Clinton had used the unsecured service while traveling in trips “in the territory of sophisticated adversaries”.
“Our committee has an obligation” to report any untruthful testimony to the FBI, Gowdy said.
“The question I always look at is, is there evidence that would establish beyond a reasonable doubt that somebody engaged in conduct that violated a criminal statute”.
The Republican National Committee said in an email to reporters that Clinton “continued to misrepresent the facts about her email scandal and refused to commit to cooperating with a rekindled State Department probe into her handling of classified material”. Only three of the FBI-reviewed emails were explicitly marked as classified and those were marked with a “C” in the body of the email, not in the header, he said.
“And I think that what’s important here is follow the evidence”.
But Comey said that while the FBI’s year-long investigation turned up “evidence of great carelessness”, he stood by his decision not to recommend prosecution.
In the face of the criticism, the FBI chief said that his agency’s investigation was apolitical and professional with a team reviewing some 30,000 e-mails sent and received via private servers that Clinton had used both inside and outside the US.
But when it comes to arrogance, Clinton is a distant second to her opponent, presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump.
“I really don’t want to get in the business of trying to parse and judge her public statements”, he said.
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“I firmly believe your decision was not based on convenience but on conviction”, Rep. Elijah E. Cummings of Maryland, the ranking Democrat, told Comey.
