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Comey: Hillary Clinton did not lie to the FBI

WASHINGTON — FBI Director James Comey is backing up Hillary Clinton‘s long-stated reason for setting up a private email server when she became Presi...
Comey

WASHINGTON — FBI Director James Comey is backing up Hillary Clinton‘s long-stated reason for setting up a private email server when she became President Barack Obama’s secretary of state.

Comey tells a House committee that the FBI’s “best information” is that Clinton set up the private server “as a matter of convenience.” Those comments are in line with what Clinton has told the public.

When he announced Tuesday that he would recommend that Clinton not be charged, Comey said Clinton and her aides had been “extremely careless” in their handling of classified information. Yet he added that they should not be prosecuted.

Attorney General Loretta Lynch said Wednesday that she had accepted the recommendations of Comey and of her prosecutors that no charges be filed.

Comey says under questioning from lawmakers that the investigation did not establish that Clinton was “particularly sophisticated” with the use of electronic information. That prompts Florida Congressman Ron DeSantis to reply, “Good grief.”

Comey says he did not hold Hillary Clinton to a different standard when he recommended no charges over her use of a private email server while she was secretary of state.

Comey is telling a House committee that the FBI tries very hard to apply the same standard “whether you are rich or poor, white or black, old or young, famous or not known at all.”

Comey told the panel that Clinton did email classified material and used multiple devices during her four years as secretary of state, contradicting her public statements.

Republicans are pointing out that a rank-and-file government worker who used an unclassified email system to conduct classified government business would have been charged with a crime.

James Comey says then-CIA Director David Petraeus hid material in the insulation in his attic as the agency pursued its case.

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Testifying about Hillary Clinton’s emails on Thursday, Comey was questioned about the case of Petraeus in which he was prosecuted for mishandling classified information.

Petraeus pleaded guilty last year to knowingly sharing binders of classified information with his biographer, a woman with whom he was having a sexual relationship. The Justice Department made clear that the retired Army general knew the material was top secret when he divulged it and had lied to the FBI about it.

Comey made the surprising disclosure about the Petraeus case during questioning.

Comey says of Hillary Clinton there is, “no basis to conclude that she lied to the FBI.”

Comey told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that his investigation found evidence of “great carelessness” by Hillary Clinton’s handling of classified information but no evidence that she or her staff illegally discussed classified information.

Comey says there was only one precedent in the past 100 years for prosecuting on a “gross negligence” item and “no reasonable prosecutor” would bring this case.

 

The chairman of the House committee probing why Hillary Clinton was not indicted this week is telling FBI Director James Comey that the decision is a mystery.

The Utah Republican, who chairs the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, tells Comey that the “fact pattern” he laid out in a scathing report this week about Clinton’s use of a private email server does not match his conclusion not to indict her.

Chaffetz says he can’t explain why there was no consequence for Clinton when an average American would likely be in handcuffs.

He adds that Clinton’s blending of private and official business on an unsecured private email server “not an innocent mistake.”

“There does seem to be two standards,” Chaffetz said.

 

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