House Republicans push for new FBI Hillary Clinton investigation

During an exchange with Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., Comey confirmed that the FBI’s investigation found at least three emails with classified markings on Clinton’s server, despite Clinton’s assertion during the Benghazi hearing that she had neither sent nor received any items marked classified.

FBI Director James Comey testifies during a hearing before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Thursday. Comey made clear that “it wasn’t Republicans or Congress who asked for the investigation”, but it was suggested by the State Department inspector general.

At the hearing on Thursday, Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings, the committee’s ranking member, invited Comey to counter those claims.

The FBI’s investigation found that eight email chains on Clinton’s server contained information that was classified as “Top Secret” and that 110 individual emails contained classified information.

Republicans and Democrats asked important questions, and Comey responded or failed to respond.

Comey’s reply: “In connection with her use of the email server? There were no documents that were in fact marked classified”, Cummings said.

Comey: There was classified material emailed.

“I don’t think our investigation established she was particularly sophisticated with respect to classified information and the levels”.

Maloney, the Democratic representative from New York’s 12th district, was among numerous congressmen who probed Comey with questions that have been raised over the controversial recommendation, including whether Clinton lied under oath.

“There is no outcome, director – there is no effect”, Chaffetz said, demanding to know why Clinton and her aides do not appear to be paying a price over the long-running controversy.

“I did not have a basis for second-guessing their conclusion”, Clinton said in an interview with CNN. For some of this information, “any reasonable person in Secretary Clinton’s position… should have known that an unclassified system was no place for that conversation”.

And, following Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s announcement Wednesday that she would accept the FBI’s findings and close the case, Comey explained the legal distinction that underpinned his decision not to seek charges.

You’ve got to be kidding.

When you want to put major news events into proper perspective, it helps to use your Time Machine. Comey said it was not true. Instead, Republicans went on at length in a vain attempt to challenge Comey’s knowledge of the law and his personal integrity. These Democrats also argued that the entire investigation was a “Republican witch-hunt”, when it was not. “But you refused, so now you are being summoned here to answer for your alleged transgressions”.

“What does it take for somebody to misuse classified information and get in trouble for it?” he asked Comey. The department had suspended its probe while it was waiting for the Justice Department to complete its criminal investigation.

Yet Director Comey skated by the voluminous amount of circumstantial evidence linking Hillary Clinton’s many lies demonstrating guilty knowledge to proof of her criminal intent.

Republicans are trying other avenues to keep the email controversy that has clouded her presidential campaign for months, alive. He said there was no evidence that she knew that anything she was doing was against the law or had lied to federal investigators.

Nothing could surprise us at this point, and Trump’s family is entertaining the notion.

We didn’t start the fire. The question remains will this hurt Clinton’s bid for the White House? For one thing, there’s going to be a lot of partisan energy driving the controversy.