State Department reopens Clinton emails probe

Republican Congressman Jason Chaffetz said he would forward Clinton’s testimony before the House Benghazi Committee to the FBI to investigate whether or not she lied under oath when she said she didn’t send or receive emails marked as classified.

FBI Director James Comey said on Tuesday Clinton had been “extremely careless” in the handling of classified information, and Republicans have criticized the decision not to prosecute.

Ms Clinton’s similar claims that she never emailed “any classified material to anyone on my email” and “there is no classified material” also didn’t strike Mr Comey as accurate.

Comey’s testimony was a way for Congress to get more information about why the Federal Bureau of Investigation didn’t recommend charges for the presumptive Democratic nominee over her use of a private email server during her time as secretary of state.

FBI Director James Comey testified in front of the House Oversight and Governance Reform Committee for almost five hours today.

“I think there is a legitimate concern that there is a double standard”, Utah Rep. Jason Chaffetz declared. “If not now, who?”

“I hope what you’ll tell the folks in the cafes is, look me in the eye, and listen to what I’m about to say”, Comey said.

In the face of the criticism, the FBI chief said that his agency’s investigation was apolitical and professional with a team reviewing some 30,000 e-mails sent and received via private servers that Clinton had used both inside and outside the US.

Additionally Thursday, Republican lawmakers said they would now ask the FBI to investigate whether Clinton lied to the committee.

House Speaker Paul Ryan is asking intelligence officials to block Hillary Clinton’s access to classified information for the rest of the campaign.

“That is something that, at the time, as even director Comey said, seemed like a convenience – but it was the wrong choice”.

“The Petraeus case, to my mind, illustrates perfectly the kind of cases the Department of Justice is willing to prosecute”, Comey told the committee.

Clinton’s staff may face administrative sanctions for mishandling classified information from the State Department, and she may now face a perjury investigation.

“He (Comey) defined all the allegations as being contradictory to what Ms. Clinton actually did, so it validated that there was a problem”, Gosar said after the hearing.

Cooper accused representatives of being “armchair prosecutors”.

“We’re all very partisan here”, Cooper said. “This a moment for committee members to take a deep breath and calm down”. Chaffetz then asked whether Clinton lied to the public.