Hillary Should Be Called to Testify Again Only Under Oath to See if She Commits Purgery
Yard.O.P. Seeks Criminal Inquiry of Hillary Clinton'south Testimony to Congress
WASHINGTON — Republican leaders asked the Justice Department on Monday to open a criminal investigation into whether Hillary Clinton lied to Congress in testimony last fall about her private e-mail server, opening a new front end in their long-running attacks on the presumptive Autonomous presidential nominee.
The Republican request, five days after the section closed a yearlong investigation into Mrs. Clinton'due south handling of classified information in the emails, threatens to shadow her through the entrada and perhaps even into the White House if she is elected.
In a letter Mon evening, Firm Republicans asked the Justice Department to determine whether Mrs. Clinton had "committed perjury and made simulated statements" during her appearance in October before a special House panel on the 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya.
The letter was signed by Representatives Jason Chaffetz, Republican of Utah, who leads the Oversight Committee, and Robert W. Goodlatte, Republican of Virginia, who leads the Judiciary Committee.
The Justice Department declined to annotate on the request. In a Twitter post, Brian Fallon, a spokesman for the Clinton campaign, called the Republican request "another futile, partisan endeavor to keep this effect live now that the Justice Dept has declared it resolved."
Mrs. Clinton has said she regrets the decision to use a private e-mail server for official communications as secretary of land, only she has dedicated the truthfulness of her public remarks.
Legal analysts said that while information technology appeared unlikely the F.B.I. would ultimately find plenty evidence to prosecute Mrs. Clinton on charges of lying to Congress, there might exist plenty to warrant opening an investigation. That alone could testify dissentious to her campaign.
Republicans have seized on a number of contradictions betwixt what Mrs. Clinton told Congress near her private email server and what the F.B.I. plant in its investigation.
Mrs. Clinton told the House Select Committee on Benghazi, for instance, that she had turned over all her "piece of work-related" emails to the State Department and that "goose egg" in the more than 60,000 emails routed through her private server "was marked classified at the time I sent or received it."
The F.B.I. investigation establish that, in fact, there were "thousands" of piece of work-related emails that her lawyers did not turn over, and that a handful of emails were marked classified at the time — although the State Department now says they should not have been.
Still, information technology would be hard for prosecutors to show that she intended to mislead Congress — a high legal bar — and that she should be criminally prosecuted for it.
In eight hours of testimony during a marathon 11-hour session of the Benghazi committee, Mrs. Clinton was careful to hedge a number of answers most her email organisation by saying that she was basing her statements on data from her lawyers.
"At that place's not a snowball'due south chance in hell that she'd be convicted of anything," Rusty Hardin, a prominent Texas lawyer, said in a telephone interview. Mr. Hardin won an acquittal of the baseball bullpen Roger Clemens in 2012 when the Justice Section — acting on a similar referral from Congress — accused him of lying to Congress near his employ of steroids.
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Stories Differ on Clinton Emails
James B. Comey, the director of the F.B.I., and Hillary Clinton gave significantly differing accounts of her email use every bit secretary of state.
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SCRIPT: NATS of Comey from Tuesday's presser VO: THE FBI Director, JAMES COMEY, ON TUESDAY, LAID OUT THE FINDINGS OF AN INVESTIGATION INTO HILLARY CLINTON'S USE OF A Individual EMAIL ACCOUNT WHEN SHE WAS Secretary OF Country. SOT // JAMES B. COMEY // ASSOCIATED PRESS Although at that place is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information, our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case." VO: MRS. CLINTON WASN'T INDICTED BUT MR. COMEY'S STATEMENTS SEVERELY UNDERCUT SOME CLAIMS Past THE PRESUMPTIVE DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE ON SEVERAL POINTS. ——- TEXT ON SCREEN: 1. Classified material in her individual electronic mail system VO: MRS. CLINTON HAS REPEATEDLY DENIED SENDING OR RECEIVING CLASSIFIED Material ON HER PERSONAL EMAIL. MR. COMEY REFUTED THAT Claim. SOT// MRS. CLINTON // SOURCE (@19:xxx mark) I did non email any classified textile to anyone on my electronic mail. There is no classified material. So I'k certainly well-aware of the classification requirements and did not send classified material. <<Barrel TOGETHER >> SOT // COMEY // ASSOCIATED PRESS There is bear witness that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information. For case, seven email chains business concern matters that were classified at the Tiptop Surreptitious/Special Access Program level when they were sent and received. These bondage involved Secretary Clinton both sending emails about those matters and receiving emails from others most the same matters. ——— TEXT ON SCREEN: 2. Security while traveling VO: MRS. CLINTON'S Function MAINTAINED THAT SHE VIEWED CLASSIFIED Data IN Difficult Re-create ONLY. AND WHILE ON TRAVEL, At that place WERE "RIGOROUS PROTOCOLS" FOR HER TO RECEIVE THE CLASSIFIED Information. MR. COMEY REJECTED THAT NOTION. SOT // MR. COMEY: ASSOCIATED Press She as well used her personal electronic mail extensively while outside the U.s.a., including sending and receiving work-related emails in the territory of sophisticated adversaries. ——— TEXT ON SCREEN: 3. Danger from hackers or strange spies VO: MRS. CLINTON POINTED TO THE FACT THAT THERE WERE MULTIPLE SAFEGUARDS THAT PROTECTED HER EMAILS FROM FOREIGN HACKERS. SOT// MRS. CLINTON // SOURCE (@ 13:45 marking) "The organisation nosotros used was fix up for President Clinton's office. And it had numerous safeguards. It was on property guarded by the Clandestine Service. And there were no security breaches." <Butt TOGETHER>> SOT // MR. COMEY // ASSOCIATED Press MR. COMEY: "We do assess that hostile actors gained admission to the private commercial email accounts of people with whom Secretary Clinton was in regular contact from her personal account. ——— TEXT ON SCREEN: 4. Failure to plow over all work-related emails VO: CLINTON SAID SHE HANDED OVER ALL HER EMAILS TO THE STATE DEPARTMENT FOR REVIEW, Still It WAS REVEALED THAT THERE WERE THOUSANDS OF EMAILS THAT WERE Non HANDED OVER. SOT// MRS. CLINTON // SOURCE (@ :51 marker) "After I left office, the Country Section asked one-time secretaries of state for our assistance in providing copies of work-related emails from our personal accounts. I responded right away and provided all my emails that could perhaps exist work-related, which totaled roughly 55,000 printed pages, even though I knew that the State Department already had the vast majority of them. <Barrel TOGETHER> SOT // MR. COMEY // SOURCE?? "The F.B.I. also discovered several thou work-related emails that were not in the group of 30,000 that were returned by Secretary Clinton to State in 2014. ———- TEXT ON SCREEN: 5. Land Department handling of classified information VO: THE INVESTIGATION ALSO REVEALED LARGER LAX SECURITY CONCERNS REGARDING HOW THE Land DEPARTMENT HANDLED CLASSIFIED Data. SOT// MRS. CLINTON // SOURCE?? "A separate, airtight system was used by the Department for the sole purpose of treatment classified communications which was designed to prevent such data from being transmitted anywhere other than within that system, including to outside email accounts." SOT // MR. COMEY // SOURCE?? "While not the focus of our investigation, nosotros also developed bear witness that the security culture of the State Section in full general, and with respect to use of unclassified email systems in item, was mostly lacking in the kind of care for classified information establish elsewhere in the government." END It
Mr. Hardin said that "somewhere in that 11 hours, there might be something that turned out wasn't accurate, only she'd have to be certifiably insane to intentionally mislead them when there'due south a criminal investigation going on."
Michael Bopp, a Washington lawyer who has examined similar referrals from Congress, said that criminal charges against Mrs. Clinton appeared doubtful because of the difficulty in establishing whether she intended to lie to Congress, rather than only making statements that later on proved untrue.
"I do remember they're going to feel obligated to open an investigation," he said, "only it will be difficult to bring a case."
Republicans sent a dissever letter on Mon to James B. Comey Jr., the F.B.I. director, criticizing his decision not to seek criminal charges in the example and asking him to explain his thinking.
For Democrats, the threat of some other Republican-inspired investigation was more evidence of what they see every bit a partisan witch hunt meant to derail Mrs. Clinton's campaign.
"The F.B.I. said in that location was no case, just the Republicans just try and keep it alive," Henry Waxman, a quondam Democratic congressman from California, said in a telephone interview.
Mr. Waxman, who sought a Justice Section investigation in the Clemens case, predicted that prosecutors would refuse to move forward against Mrs. Clinton and that Republicans would then "complain that the Justice Department is acting on political reasons."
Representative Elijah E. Cummings of Maryland, the top-ranking Democrat on the Oversight Committee, said that Republicans "are now completely unloading on Secretary Clinton with everything they've got — right before the presidential conventions."
It is adequately unusual for members of Congress to refer cases to the Justice Department for criminal investigation. 1 of the last major referrals came in 2014, when the Republican-led House Means and Means Committee voted to seek a criminal investigation against Lois Lerner, who was a central player in accusations that the Internal Acquirement Service improperly targeted bourgeois nonprofit groups.
Afterward an investigation, the Justice Department declined last year to bring charges against her or anyone else.
At a hearing last week before the House Oversight Commission, Mr. Comey was asked by Republicans whether Mrs. Clinton's public statements — both to Congress and elsewhere — appeared to contradict what the F.B.I. had plant.
Representative Marker Meadows, Republican of North Carolina, said to Mr. Comey that based on those contradictions, "isn't information technology a logical assumption she may have misled Congress, and we need to look at that further?"
"I can understand why people would ask that question," Mr. Comey said.
He drew guffaws from some Republicans when he said that while he believed Mrs. Clinton had testified truthfully to the F.B.I. in a airtight interview this month, his investigators had non examined the split up question of whether she lied nether oath to Congress in her testimony.
Mr. Comey told Mr. Chaffetz that such an inquiry would crave a formal referral from Congress.
"You'll have one," Mr. Chaffetz told him. "You'll have one in the adjacent few hours."
Similar many things in Congress, the referral did not move quite every bit quickly as predicted. It took the Republicans two business days to put in their demand — which, for Congress, was still pretty fast.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/12/us/politics/gop-seeks-criminal-inquiry-of-hillary-clintons-testimony-to-congress.html
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