Clinton’s Server Never Hacked Unlike US Gov’t Systems – Campaign Office

FBI Director James Comey stood by his decision not to call for charges against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, saying “no reasonable prosecutor” would have pressed charges. A misdemeanor statute requires the mishandling to be intentional, Comey said.

“The precedent that I’m setting today is my absolute best effort to treat everybody fairly”, Comey said.

(Comey) “I know from 30 years with the Department of Justice, they have grave concerns about whether it’s appropriate to prosecute somebody for gross negligence, which is why they’ve done it once, that I know of, in a case involving espionage”.

Comey said the FBI investigation did not find evidence of actions that would warrant criminal charges.

Committee chairman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, told Comey that the FBI’s decision showed a “double standard” for powerful people.

“There is no legal requirement for you to provide Secretary Clinton with classified information, and it would send the wrong signal to all those charged with safeguarding our nation’s secrets if you choose to provide her access to this information despite the FBI’s findings”.

Asked what penalties similar rule-breakers at the State Department would face, Comey was clear that there is a double standard.

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.

Comey said on Tuesday that Clinton carelessly handled classified information from her private server, but found no evidence that she had criminal intentions.

The hearing on Thursday was from the start a partisan exchange between Republicans, who impugned Clinton in their testimony and questioned Comey’s judgment for not advising prosecution, and Democrats, who lauded Comey as a fair public servant.

One by one, Comey rebutted a litany of GOP charges including that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had been biased, ignored the law, applied it unjustly or coordinated the decision with Clinton’s campaign. But he suggested that Comey had contributed to that by leaving “a perceived gap” between his public criticism of Clinton and his conclusion not to prosecute.

I don’t know whether your family’s watching this, but I hope that they are as proud of you as I am, because you are the epitome of what a public servant is all about.

“The Republicans are addicted to Benghazi”, Cummings said. Comey explained for the first time that Clinton typed an email response from her personal email address into an email chain that was marked “top secret”.

“There was nothing marked classified on my emails, either sent or received”, Clinton testified at the time.

But he also said it was possible Clinton didn’t even understand what the classification markings were, saying the investigation suggested she was not “particularly sophisticated with respect to classified information”. He also repeated that Clinton’s attorneys did not read every email before Clinton’s personal emails were deleted, again contradicting a false claim that the Clinton campaign made to TIME.

A group of Republicans senators has introduced legislation to strip Clinton of her security clearance.

“In that case, you had vast quantities of highly classified information… not only shared with someone without authority to have it, but we found it in a search warrant hidden under the insulation in his attic and then he lied to us about it during the investigation”, Comey said.

US Attorney General Loretta Lynch said on Wednesday that the US Justice Department would follow Comey’s recommendations and decline to pursue charges against Clinton. There’s all kinds of folks watching at home being told well lots of other cases are being prosecuted and she wasn’t.

He added: “In my mind, it illustrates importantly the distinction to this case”.