FBI sends email docs to Congress, Clinton says release them publicly

A U.S. congressional committee has been given a summary of the FBI’s questioning of Hillary Clinton last month regarding her use of a private e-mail server when she was secretary of state.

When the House Government Oversight Committee finally received the FBI’s summary from its investigation into Hillary Clinton and her private email server this week, it wasn’t pleased with what it found. The materials received were so highly classified that Republican Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Utah, the committee’s chairman, could not even read them in their entirety.

Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, the ranking Democrat on the House oversight committee, said Clinton did not originate the three email chains in question, which were forwarded to her private account by aides.

“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”, they wrote.

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said in a statement provided to NBC News, “With the exception of the classified emails that had been found on the private server, I can see little legitimate goal to which Congress will put these materials”. The FBI announced Tuesday that it’s giving a congressional committee some documents related to its Clinton email investigation.

“Nothing was marked classified at the time I sent or received it”, said Clinton.

Controversy surrounding the foundation has come to the forefront of the 2016 presidential campaign after newly publicized emails from Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state show overlapping interests between the foundation and State Department. “You can’t say one day something is unclassified and then the next day, only some people can see it, and you cannot take it outside a secure facility”.

In a statement, the Federal Bureau of Investigation said the materials were provided to Congress consistent with the agency’s “commitment to transparency” in the Clinton case.

The FBI, in a statement, made clear that it expected lawmakers to use the documents for oversight and not to selectively leak details three months before the election.

The announcement comes as the conservative group Judicial Watch announced that it would receive copies of thousands of previously undisclosed work-related emails sent or received by Clinton. The GOP is pressing the Justice Department to open a new investigation into whether Clinton committed perjury and sought the FBI documents. As Judicial Watch noted, “These records further appear to contradict statements by Clinton that, ‘as far as she knew, ‘ all of her government emails were turned over to the State Department”.