In a prepared opening statement for Tuesday’s hearing, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte of Virginia criticized Lynch over her “troubling” meeting with Bill Clinton while an investigation of his wife was under way. Comey testified in detail in his own appearance before Congress last week, and Lynch repeatedly referred Republicans to the Federal Bureau of Investigation director’s testimony, refusing to get drawn into debating Clinton’s conduct or the facts of the case.
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“I accepted that recommendation. I saw no reason not to accept it”, Lynch testified.
The department’s records officials did examine accounts of Clinton aides and other agency officials to find other Clinton emails, but only after it became known that Clinton had turned over almost 33,000 emails after disposing of a similar number she and her lawyers determined were personal.
Comey also accused Clinton of “extreme carelessness” in her handling of classified emails on a private server, but said there was no evidence that she or her aides meant to violate laws governing classified actions, and therefore no reasonable prosecutor could bring a case.
Republican lawmakers continued to give Lynch heat for privately meeting with former President Bill Clinton days before Comey chose not to recommend that the former Secretary be charged. Kendall said that Clinton’s comment in a 2010 email that she anxious that any use of a State email account might risk the “personal being accessible” did not need to be explored further in a deposition because it had already been explained by Abedin, who said Clinton did not want to expose any of her private emails.
Following the Dallas shootings, she said she was “heartbroken” and pledged her department would do everything it could to support law enforcement and to protect free speech and assembly rights of protesters.
But the FBI director made no mention of any potential violations of the law during his formal summary of the investigation, which centered on whether Clinton, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, mishandled classified information during her tenure at the State Department.
After Goodlatte spoke, Lynch faced aggressive questioning from Republican Jim Jordan of OH, who said Lynch “made a bad situation worse” by saying that she would accept the FBI’s recommendations without even knowing that they would be.
Despite the prodding, Lynch wouldn’t budge in her refusal to discuss the investigation and the decision-making process.
Comey said his agents had recovered “hundreds” of work-related emails that Clinton failed to provide, which she apparently deleted.
In its May report on Clinton’s email practices, the State Department’s inspector general found that her decision not to use an official department email address “is not an appropriate method” of preserving emails under the Federal Records Act.
Wisconsin Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner expressed his frustration with not getting more answers.
The panel’s chairman, GOP Rep.
Halfway through the more than two-hour hearing, Rep.
But Republicans kept the focus on Clinton, trying to draw Lynch out on whether Clinton lied to the public or to Congress, and on a couple of occasions turning the conversation to then-president Bill Clinton’s impeachment proceedings 18 years ago. Clinton has said she did not send or receive emails marked classified when she sent them, claims that Comey contradicted last week.
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The nation’s top law enforcement official was peppered with questions by the House Judiciary Committee, her first congressional appearance in the wake of the Clinton decision.
