It was the most detailed explanation to date about why the Justice Department concluded without charges a year-long investigation that had dogged Mrs Clinton’s presidential campaign and raised questions for voters about her trustworthiness.
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She didn’t know how LinkedIn works.
A long-awaited report by the U.S. State Department’s independent watchdog revealed in May that Clinton never requested permission to use her private email account during her stint in the State Department despite her repeated claim in the last 12 months that her practices were allowed by the department.
The investigation, if it is still ongoing, is believed to focus on accusations leveled in the book ‘Clinton Cash, ‘ which painted a portrait of Mrs. Clinton as an avaricious public official who traded official favors to foreign governments and overseas companies for private benefits including seven-figure donations to the Clinton Foundation and six-figure speaking fees for former President Bill Clinton.
On Thursday FBI director James Comey refused to comment when the chairman of a congressional committee asked him if the Clinton Foundation was still under scrutiny from federal law enforcement.
Comey also refused to say whether the Clinton Foundation was “tied into” the email investigation that the Obama administration wrapped up this week.
Rep. Jason Chaffetz, a Republican from Utah, asked Comey the big question: Did Clinton lie?
A recurring theme in Comey’s almost five hours of questioning was Clinton’s purported lack of understanding of the basics of how to safeguard state secrets.
Comey did not recommend charges against Clinton, the presumptive Democratic candidate for president, over her personal email server while she was secretary of state.
The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform had called the emergency hearing to hear explanations from Comey about why he declined to recommend criminal charges despite FBI investigators finding that Clinton and her inner circle were at times “extremely careless” in transmitting classified information over a private computer server housed in Clinton’s basement.
Comey declined to answer directly when Chaffetz asked whether Clinton had done “anything wrong”. Like I said, I understand why people are confused by the whole discussion – I get that – but you know what would be a double standard?
“I think it would be a very tall order”, Mr. Comey said, to determine that “she was acting with criminal intent“.
Comey also said Clinton knew her email server at her home in Chappaqua, New York, was not authorized to receive classified information. Clinton’s response, delivered with a laugh, was: “What?”
“I beg you to fill the gap”.
“If you were a House Republican sitting on the panel today, you probably felt like that hearing backfired”, Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon said on CNN’s “The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer”, arguing that the GOP had tried to use the hearing to create a “drip, drip” of coverage that would keep the issue in the news. That it could be hacked, electronically, not physically?
“Do you need a referral?”
The Republicans, time and again, steered the hearing back to the question of whether it was reasonable that a presidential candidate who’d held several posts involving sensitive material should be so seemingly clueless when it came to data security.
Rep. Mark Meadows, a North Carolina Republican, repeatedly expressed disbelief that such a senior official wouldn’t have recognized a classified marking. She had the backing of 16 percent of Republicans, while only 5 percent of Democrats said they planned to vote for Trump.
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Anita Kumar contributed to this article.
