The Washington Times: Two top House Republicans accused Hillary Clinton of appearing to have lied to Congress, laying out a case Monday they said could sustain perjury charges against the former State Department secretary for her use of a secret email server.
Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte and Oversight Chairman Jason Chaffetz said the evidence collected by the FBI during its investigation of Mrs. Clinton’s email use contradicts what she herself told Congress in testimony last year.
Mrs. Clinton testified that she never sent or received information marked classified, but FBI Director James Comeysaid there were three such documents that were marked at the time.
Mrs. Clinton also said her lawyers “went through every single email” in deciding which ones to return to the government to comply with open-records laws, but Mr. Comey said that wasn’t true, and in fact the lawyers only used search terms and subject lines.
The two chairman also said the FBI showed Mrs. Clinton didn’t provide all of her work-related emails to the government, and also had more than one server that stored her messages.
“Although there may be other aspects of Secretary Clinton’s sworn testimony that are at odds with the FBI’s findings, her testimony in those four areas bears specific scrutiny in light of the facts and evidence FBI DirectorJames Comey described in his public statement on July 5, 2016 and in testimony before the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on July 7, 2016,” the chairmen said in a letter referring the case to U.S. Attorney Channing D. Phillips, the chief federal prosecutor in Washington, D.C.
Mr. Phillips’ office referred questions to the main Justice Department, which didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Monday afternoon.
The Justice Department has gone to great lengths to protect Mrs. Clinton during this presidential campaign, refusing to pursue charges that she mishandled classified information, and fighting against forcing her to testify under oath in a court case about her emails. The department also reportedly refused an FBI recommendation to investigate the Clinton Foundation.
Mrs. Clinton has struggled to explain her email use during her four years as secretary at the State Department, and has also been challenged to square her public defense over the last year with the details Mr. Comey laid out from his investigation.
Mr. Comey said three of Mrs. Clinton’s messages had a “(C)” marking next to paragraphs designating them as classified at the time she handled them, which would appear to belie her declaration that none of the information was marked.
However, the FBI chief also said that while anyone at that level of government should have known what those markings were, Mrs. Clinton was not “sophisticated” enough to understand what she was handling.
Mr. Comey said he recommended against prosecuting Mrs. Clinton because even though she was “negligent,” he couldn’t show she was aware of the risks she was taking with national security.
Still, his testimony to Congress about his decision-making was damning because it poked holes in many of Mrs. Clinton’s explanations. In addition to the classified markings, Mr. Comey said his office found thousands of work-related messages Mrs. Clinton never returned to the State Department — despite her assurance that she’d given back everything under her control.
