FBI Director James Comey is set to make his first appearance before Congress since announcing the agency’s recommendation to not prosecute Hillary Clinton over her private email setup.
Comey will field questions Thursday from the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee about an FBI announcement that dispersed the threat of criminal charges but also revived public scrutiny of Clinton’s handling of classified information.
Attorney General Loretta Lynch said Wednesday that she accepted the recommendations and findings of Comey and of her career prosecutors and would not file charges against Clinton. Lynch is likely to face questions of her own next week at a separate oversight hearing of the House Judiciary Committee.
Comey’s decision, and the way he delivered it, infuriated Republicans who felt that the FBI director in his unusually detailed and critical televised statement Tuesday had laid out a sufficient basis for prosecution.
“The FBI’s recommendation is surprising and confusing. The fact pattern presented by Director Comey makes clear Secretary Clinton violated the law,” said House oversight committee chairman Jason Chaffetz, a Utah Republican. “Individuals who intentionally skirt the law must be held accountable.”
House Speaker Paul Ryan has also said that “there are a lot more questions that need to be answered” and that Clinton should be barred from receiving classified briefings in the course of the campaign. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump complained that the system was “rigged.”
In a stinging assessment of her email practices as secretary of state, Comey rebuked Clinton and her aides for being “extremely careless” in their handling of classified information and contradicted many of the defenses and explanations she’s put forward for months. But he also said there was no evidence anyone willfully or intentionally mishandled classified information and that “no reasonable prosecutor” would pursue such a case.
Comey, who served as deputy attorney general in the George W. Bush administration, was appointed in 2013 to a 10-year term as FBI director by President Barack Obama.
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4 thoughts on “Comey faces an angry Congress”
The Republican Party is in a panic!
Because all they have to offer is the orange man Donald Trump they know for certain Hillary Clinton will most certainly be the next and first women President of the United States.
Hillary’s server was certainly more secure then one of the aging government systems. Least we forget the State Department, White House, NOAA, USPS and other government servers were hacked repeatedly.
A question. The classified information was from what department? If from the State Department, her possession and transmission of it is mote; as Secretary of State she is the Classification and Declassification authority for that information. Ergo, she may have determined it was not classified. Now for the classified information that was marked and from another agency that may be an issue. So it is possible for the information to be unclassified for one department but classified for another, until a higher authority classifies or declassifies.
Who is the highest classification/declassification authority? Why the President.
Now as to Congressman Ryan’s assertion that Hillary Clinton should not receive PDB and other classified briefings. He is talking out his ars. He does not have the authority to determine who should or should not receive the briefings. Republicans scream that President Obama oversteping his authority and here they are doing the same thing, hypocrites.
As brought up above, if Hillary Clinton is to be investigated for her handling of classified material what about all those congressmen who mishandle classified information?
Oh this election cycle is going to be great fun, what with Donald Trump always off the party line and speaking extemporaneously
Also no mention of all the Republican Congressmen and Senators who have intentionally leaked classified information for partisan purposes after classified briefings, and never faced prosecution? We would have many of those politicians in jail if we did, and those were intentional.
From a technical point of view, I think he is wrong about the relative security of the State Department’s server versus Clinton’s private server: The State Department server is used by thousands of users who are all subject to phishing attacks. Nobody has ever stated how many times the State Department server was hacked. Clinton is now contrite, but she was very likely not wrong about the higher security of her private server.
No mention that Comey is a Republican? It seems like this would be an important fact.
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