FBI Director James Comey testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, July 7, 2016, before the House Oversight Committee to explain his agency’s recommendation to not prosecute Hillary Clinton, now the Democratic p.
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The reason all this did not result in criminal charges, Comey said, was that the Federal Bureau of Investigation “did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues meant to violate laws governing the handling of classified information” (emphasis added).
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.
“These are experienced diplomats, they have expertise in handling classified material”, Mrs Clinton said. A law that permits felony prosecution due to gross negligence has been used only once in the 99 years since it was enacted – and that was in a case involving espionage.
“Even there, they prosecuted him for a misdemeanor”, Comey told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
“In looking back at our investigations into mishandling or removal of classified information, we can not find a case that would support bringing criminal charges on these facts”, he said.
People with long memories will recall Hillary Clinton’s stint on the House Judiciary Committee during its investigation of Richard Nixon in the Watergate affair.
Comey said the FBI investigation did not find evidence of actions that would warrant criminal charges. “Seven email chains concern matters that were classified at the Top Secret/Special Access Program level when they were sent and received”, Comey said in his briefing, adding, “These chains involved Secretary Clinton both sending emails about those matters and receiving emails from others about the same matters”.
General David Petraeus was forced to resign as the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, convicted of mishandling binders of classified information, and fined $100,000 for allowing his biographer to read parts of the binders.
Lynch sparked controversy last week when she met Clinton’s husband, former president Bill Clinton, on the tarmac at the Phoenix airport – a chat that left Republicans crying foul. I get that. But you know what would be a double standard? “That is a ideal illustration of the kind of cases that get prosecuted”. Comey on Tuesday gave a scathing assessment of Clinton’s email practices, followed by his conclusion that “no reasonable prosecutor” would charge her with a crime.
Ranking Democrat on the committee, Maryland’s Elijah Cummings, drew the battle line quickly.
Damning details of Clinton’s exclusive use of a private email server were confirmed in a May report by the inspector general of the State Department: That report made clear that she violated department policy, imperiled national security and lied about it.
And he repeated his earlier contention that “no reasonable prosecutor” would have pursued criminal charges, saying at one point, “We went at this very hard to see if we could make a case”. “Given the FBI’s findings, denying Secretary Clinton access to classified information certainly constitutes appropriate sanctions”.
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America’s top cop had called her “extremely careless” in guarding the nation’s secrets. In that case, you had vast quantities of highly classified information, that’s the reference to code words. Lynch has said she would defer to the FBI’s decision.
