‘I’m not going to comment on the existence or nonexistence of any other ongoing investigations, ‘ Comey told House Oversight Committee chair Jason Chaffetz, a Utah Republican.
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“We don’t want to put people in jail unless we prove that they knew they were doing something they shouldn’t do”, Comey said. Some had been deleted over the years and we found traces of them on devices that supported or were connected to the private e-mail domain. “There would be some discipline”.
“What does it take for somebody to misuse classified information and get in trouble for it?” he asked Comey.
“I think it’s possible, possible that she didn’t understand what a (c) meant when she saw it in the body of an email like that”, Comey told bewildered Republican lawmakers.
Clinton was secretary of state until early 2013.
In other words, does her status as the presumptive Democratic nominee for president protect her from criminal charges related to her use of a personal server for State Department communications? “As we have said for many months, we will work with the FBI to determine the appropriate disposition of potential federal records it has recovered”, said State Department Spokesperson John Kirby.
“I can not provide specific information about the Department’s review, including what information we are evaluating”.
“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.
Comey gave his most detailed explanation to date about why the Justice Department concluded without charges a yearlong investigation that had dogged Clinton’s presidential campaign and raised questions for voters about her trustworthiness.
Attorney General Loretta Lynch formally closed the case Wednesday.
Under persistent questioning at the hearing of the House Oversight Committee, Mr Comey said Mrs Clinton did not break the law. That evidence did not exist in this case, Comey said.
The agency, Comey said, did not investigate Clinton’s testimony before the House Benghazi panel past year because Congress had not asked it to.
We the People are held to a much different standard than high-falootin’ folks like Hillary Clinton.
FBI Director James Comey said in a press briefing on July 5 that he thought no criminal charges should be filed against Clinton, but did describe the handling of emails by her and her staff as “extremely careless”.
At first, the Federal Bureau of Investigation director listed what Clinton did wrong, noting among other things that on her private server she’d sent and received messages that were classified at the time.
“If your name isn’t Clinton or you’re not part of the powerful elite, that lady justice will act differently”, said Chaffetz.
A Democratic member of the committee, Representative Elijah Cummings of Maryland, defended Comey’s actions by saying: “I firmly believe your decision was based on conviction, not convenience”. The attorney general has accepted that recommendation, but the controversy isn’t going away.
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The hearing took place as Mr Trump met with Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill to get them behind his candidacy, discussing a variety of issues, including his campaign style.
