But the new development that work-related emails from Clinton, never previously disclosed to the public, will be handed over to watchdog group Judicial Watch offers Chaffetz and House Republicans another real shot at building a solid perjury case. 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.
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The FBI, in doing so, warned lawmakers not to leak the files from its investigation involving the Democratic presidential nominee, noting they contain classified and other sensitive material.
A spokeswoman for the House of Representatives Oversight and Government Reform Committee said in an email that staff for the panel was reviewing the information classified as ‘secret’.
Democrats say the GOP is baldly trying to harm the Democratic nominee politically; Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon said Republicans wanted the files “for the purposes of further second-guessing the career professionals at the Federal Bureau of Investigation”, and he asked for the documents to be publicly released so Republicans can’t “mischaracterize them through selective, partisan leaks”.
“Three: Secretary Clinton did not initiate any emails that contained classified information or were marked as classified”, Feinstein said.
Having failed to find evidence to support their claims that Clinton was negligent in preventing or stopping the deadly 2012 terrorist attack on the USA diplomatic facility in Benghazi, Libya, Republicans are now focused on whether Clinton shaded the truth about her haphazard handling of emails containing government secrets.
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said in a statement provided to NBC News, “With the exception of the classified emails that had been found on the private server, I can see little legitimate goal to which Congress will put these materials”.
“Last I heard, my colleagues had their turn with the documents at 1:30 p.m.”, said a Senate Judiciary committee aide. FBI Director James Comey said that while they found careless behavior they found no reason to charge anyone with a crime.
The FBI this week sent Congress both classified and unclassified materials about its yearlong investigation into the email server Clinton used when she was secretary of State, following requests from congressional Republicans. “You can’t say one day something is unclassified and then the next day, only some people can see it, and you cannot take it outside a secure facility”.
The FBI said it had provided “relevant materials” to congressional committees looking into the matter.
A congressional aide said she did not expect anything from the documents to be made public for at least a few days.
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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”. “There has been no determination by the State Department as to whether these three emails were classified at the time they were sent”, he wrote.
