Bob Goodlatte was critical Tuesday of U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch after Lynch did not completely answer questions regarding Hillary Clinton’s handling of classified information, and the Justice Department’s decision not to prosecute her.
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“It’s clear that, a little over an hour into today’s hearing, Attorney General Lynch has no intention of answering any of our questions regarding the department’s decision not to charge former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, even the most basic questions about the legal elements the government is obligated to prove in a criminal prosecution”, Goodlatte said in a statement.
Rep. Jason Chaffetz says Attorney General Loretta Lynch and Federal Bureau of Investigation chief James Comey elevated politics over justice when they allowed Hillary Clinton to skate free despite her mishandling of classified emails.
While no charges were brought, Comey’s remarkably public comments last week on Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of classified material on her private email server while secretary of state amounted to “a public indictment of her conduct and character”, said Rep.
Members of the committee, mostly Republicans, pressed Lynch on questions surrounding FBI Director James Comey’s recommendation to not charge Clinton, to which Lynch referred to Comey’s previous statements.
Despite the fact he pulled few, if any punches in his criticism of Clinton, describing her as “extremely careless” in using a private email address and server, Comey said the FBI investigation produced no evidence of “intentional misconduct”.
Gowdy: “Secretary Clinton said she never sent or received classified information over her private email”.
In her opening statement Lynch touched on law enforcement and policing issues including last week’s sniper shooting of five police officers in Dallas by a suspect who said he wanted to kill white officers.
Attorney General Loretta Lynch is testifying before Congress amid a roiling national debate over police violence and as House Republicans seek a Justice Department perjury investigation of Hillary Clinton. After failing to get Lynch to answer his questions, Rep. Trent Franks of Arizona remarked on “your prodigious dissimulation skills” before withdrawing further questions.
“In the time when African-Americans are 30 percent more likely than whites to be pulled while driving – more than three times more likely to have their vehicle searched and more than twice as likely to be shot by police, it is imperative that we restore public faith in our criminal justice system”, he said.
Goodlatte said the conclusion not to pursue charges “defies logic and the law” – and once again criticized her for meeting on a tarmac in Phoenix with former President Bill Clinton just a week before the decision was announced. She said that the team reviewed the facts and arrived at a unanimous recommendation that she was pleased to follow. “I turned over all work related emails …’ – were found to be lies as a result of the FBI’s investigation” said Goodlatte. Some critics of the director’s recommendation believe that that meeting along with Lynch’s long-standing relationship with the Clintons influenced the outcome of the investigation.
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The congressman said he did not have a chance and he saw other Republicans, many of them former prosecutors, getting the same treatment. It requires only “gross negligence” in handling classified information – a standard Mr. Comey said Mrs. Clinton likely met.
