http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/aug/16/fbi-defends-clinton-handling-classified-material/ By Stephen Dinan - The Washington Times - Tuesday, August 16, 2016
The FBI went to bat for Hillary Clinton on Tuesday, saying that handling emails with classified information — even when it’s marked — isn’t enough to prove she had “knowledge or intent” to break the law.
In a letter to congressional investigators, the FBI’s chief liaison to Capitol Hill said Mrs. Clinton did handle three messages with a “(C)” mark next to paragraphs, “ostensibly indicating” the following information as classified. But Jason V. Herring said that’s not enough to show she was negligent.
Mr. Herring also questioned whether the laws against handling classified material in a “grossly negligent” way would hold up in court, saying the FBI has long been suspect.
“The fact that Secretary Clinton received emails containing ‘(C)’ portion markings is not clear evidence of knowledge or intent,” Mr. Herring said in a letter to House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz, a Republican, and Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, the ranking Democrat.
Mr. Chaffetz on Monday had sent a letter laying out four different areas where he said Mrs. Clinton may have lied to Congress and calling for her to face perjury charges, including over the “(C)” markings.
Mrs. Clinton testified to Congress in 2015 that she never sent or received any messages marked classified. But FBI Director James Comey, in his own testimony to Congress last month, said that wasn’t true, pointing to the three messages that contained “(C)” markings.
Mr. Comey said those weren’t enough to charge her with mishandling of classified information, because he couldn’t prove she knowingly intended to botch the handling. Instead, Mr. Comey said, he concluded Mrs. Clinton wasn’t “sophisticated” enough to understand the markings or the sensitive nature of the information.
Congressional Republicans, though, said that doesn’t ameliorate Mrs. Clinton’s inaccurate statements to Congress. In addition to the “(C)” markings, they identified three other areas where they said Mrs. Clinton was untruthful: her claim that she’d turned over all of her work-related messages, her statement about the number of servers or devices she used to handle email, and her declaration that her lawyers read every single message to determine which were work-related.
Mr. Cummings said Republicans’ attempts to keep the email issue alive were political.
more
