Democratic presidential candidate and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton testifies before the House Select Committee on Benghazi October 22, 2015 on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC.
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Ruhle said that while FBI Director James Comey said that Clinton didn’t do anything with her emails that merited prosecution, “I$3 t’s not like he gave her a stellar review and an A+”.
Republicans, however, have alleged that she may have lied during a marathon appearance before the House Select Committee on Benghazi a year ago, and they have pushed authorities to investigate the matter.
The agency wanted to review any documents relating to the interview before they are provided to Congress, State Department spokeswoman Elizabeth Trudeau said.
In a televised press conference on July 5, Comey criticized Clinton for “extreme carelessness” in her handling of classified information but said Clinton would not be prosecuted because there was no evidence that she meant to violate any laws. The Iowa Republican added, “the Federal Bureau of Investigation has made public statements in describing its handling of the case, so sharing documents in support of those statements wherever appropriate would make sense”.
Clinton’s campaign said in a statement that the release of the notes from the FBI’s investigation is “an extraordinary rare step that was sought exclusively by Republicans for the purposes of further second-guessing the career professionals at the FBI”.
All leaks of classified information are not created equal- at least not for top officials running Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. He also said Clinton was not under oath when she partook in the interview, though it would still be a crime to deliberately and knowingly mislead law enforcement. “As evidence Clinton lied, Republicans have pointed to three email chains forwarded to Clinton that contained paragraphs marked “(C)”, signifying they contained classified information. While her statements have afforded her room to wiggle, Clinton had repeatedly stated she believes the 55,000 pages of documents she turned over to the State Department in December 2014 included all of her work-related emails.
Republican lawmakers have pushed for the FBI to release any documents relating to the investigation, including notes on the former secretary of state’s three-and-a-half-hour interview last month. Later, the State Department said – and Comey confirmed – that two of those emails were mislabeled, and were in fact not marked classified.
“The FBI already determined unanimously that there is insufficient evidence of criminal wrongdoing”, said representative Elijah Cummings, the top Democrat on the Oversight committee.
Senator Dianne Feinstein said the FBI’s letter to the Judiciary Committee makes clear this is much ado about nothing.
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Sen. Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley the Senate received the FBI’s interview summaries from the investigation. “The public’s business ought to be public, with few exceptions”, Grassley said in a statement.
