No double standard for Clinton, FBI director tells GOP

Her rebuttal flies in the face of FBI Director James Comey’s assessment that Clinton and her staff mishandled top-secret, secret and classified emails.

The investigation also found that three of several thousand other work-related emails – beyond the 30,000 provided by Clinton – also included classified information. The chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform said the Federal Bureau of Investigation should expect a referral asking the agency to investigate whether Clinton perjured herself during congressional testimony. “I don’t think that’s for me to recommend”, he said. Republicans have called for Clinton to be prosecuted and for her customary intelligence briefings to stop. “I can speak about what she said to the FBI”, Comey responded. “Everybody knows that, director”. Many saw this as a “double standard”, especially because Comey’s comments revealed Clinton’s declarations on the email scandal to be huge lies – just check out this Reason TV video on it.

“Even now, Hillary Clinton is unwilling to tell the American people the truth about her illicit email server that broke the rules and put national security at risk”, Michael Short, a spokesman for the RNC, wrote in a statement.

Comey told the committee he saw evidence of “great carelessness” in Clinton’s use of a private email server, but that he did not see “enough evidence” to establish a case based on gross negligence.

“She also used her personal email extensively while outside the United States, including sending and receiving work-related e-mails in the territory of sophisticated adversaries”, Comey said.

Republicans on the oversight committee pressed Comey, and the line of questioning fell along party lines. “And my judgment here is there is not”, Comey said.

Clinton, who was the department’s most senior classifying authority during her four-year tenure at its helm, did not address the FBI’s conclusion that she herself sent information on topics classified as “top secret”, the highest level, through a private server she kept in her basement.

As we’ve reported, Clinton has consistently held that she did not send nor receive any information “marked classified”.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in Denver, Colorado on June 28.

Attorney General Loretta Lynch will answer the same questions as Comey in front of another house committee next week.

He has differed sharply with the Obama administration, including over the case of Gen. David Petraeus, who pleaded guilty after he knowingly shared classified information with his biographer and lover. General Petraeus got in trouble for far less.