FBI chief defends call of no Clinton charges
The hearing before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee divulged few new details about the FBI investigation, beyond a revelation by Comey that the presumptive Democratic presidential candidate may not have understood the meaning of small classification markings in the bodies of three emails that indicated those paragraphs were considered confidential.
In his testimony, Comey reiterated that the FBI had uncovered no evidence that Clinton knowingly sent classified information despite displaying “great carelessness” and a lack of technical sophistication.
The Justice Department on Wednesday accepted that recommendation and formally closed the investigation.
“I do not see evidence that is sufficient to establish that Secretary Clinton or those with whom she was corresponding both talked about classified information on email and knew when they did it that they were doing something that was against the law,” Comey said.
Asked why Clinton's conduct could not be prosecuted under a 1917 law involving “gross negligence,” the FBI director noted that only one person had been charged under that provision in the past 99 years and that defendant had engaged in espionage. He questioned the constitutionality of the law.
“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.
Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, chairman of the committee, said he was “mystified. … We believe that you have set a precedent, and it's a dangerous one. The precedent is that if you sloppily deal with classified information, if you are cavalier about it, and it wasn't just an innocent mistake and this went on for years, then there is going to be no consequence.”
Despite being pressed repeatedly by Republicans, Comey declined to say whether he believed Clinton lied in her public statements about the email server. He said he believed she had been truthful to FBI agents during her 31/2-hour interview Saturday.
He also expanded on his comment Tuesday that a “very small number of the emails … bore markings indicating the presence of classified information.”
Republican critics had pounced on that revelation as evidence that Clinton lied when she insisted she never sent or received emails marked classified.
Comey told lawmakers that none of the three emails in question had “headers” marking the emails as containing classified material. Instead, he said, the body of three emails contained markings — the letter C in parentheses — that indicated the information within that paragraph was confidential, the lowest level of classification.
Separately, State Department officials have disputed whether the information in those emails should have been marked confidential in the first place, attributing it to “human error.”
They said the information — which involved possible conversations between Clinton and foreign officials — no longer was deemed confidential by the time the emails were sent.
Democrats said the disclosure vindicated Clinton.
The State Department said late Thursday that it will conduct an internal review of the former secretary of state's use of a private email server to conduct government business now that the Justice Department has decided she will not be prosecuted.
One possible outcome of such internal reviews is that employees, even if they no longer work there, could face a range of disciplinary actions, from having notes placed in their employment files to losing their security clearances.
That could preclude their working for other government agencies.
The hearing, and another next week involving Attorney General Loretta Lynch, are part of an effort by GOP leaders to keep the Clinton email controversy at center stage, even as Clinton's campaign attempts to put the issue behind it.
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