Just a week after the final report of a two-year, $7 million House GOP investigation of the Obama administration’s handling of the 2002 terrorist attack on a U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi landed with a thud, Republican congressional leaders have a new target in mind: the FBI.
FBI Director James B. Comey announced on Tuesday that he is not recommending criminal action against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton despite her “extremely careless” handling of highly classified email documents. Now dismayed House and Senate Republicans are demanding a full airing of the FBI’s investigation and Comey’s recommendation to the Justice Department.
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“People have been convicted for far less,” House Speaker Paul Ryan said during an interview with Megyn Kelly on Fox News Tuesday evening. Ryan said that he was almost certain Comey would recommend prosecution of the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee after he outlined his findings.
Those findings included that Clinton and several of her staff had used private, unprotected internet servers to exchange 110 emails containing highly classified information and another 2,000 that were retroactively deemed classified.
The FBI’s decision, Ryan added, “underscores the belief that the Clintons live above the law.”
With Ryan and other House and Senate GOP leaders clamoring for answers, a fresh round of protracted, highly partisan hearings on the email probe seems highly likely, at least through the November election. But Republicans are gambling on a potentially risky pivot away from attacking Clinton’s conduct as secretary of state to questioning the integrity of Comey, a highly regarded public servant with years of experience navigating Washington’s treacherous political waters.
Comey has been summoned to testify before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Thursday – the first time he will be grilled on the details of his agency’s probe and the deliberation among FBI and Justice Department officials leading up to his announcement.
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“The FBI’s recommendation is surprising and confusing,” committee chair Jason Chaffetz of Utah said in a statement announcing the hearing. “The fact pattern presented by Director Comey makes clear Secretary Clinton violated the law. Individuals who intentionally skirt the law must be held accountable.”
If there was any doubt this would be a partisan show trial, it was dispelled by the news that the hearing will be held on the same day that presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump will be on Capitol Hill to confer with House and Senate Republicans and rally support for his campaign. Trump has called Clinton’s handling of her email “horrible” and denounced the FBI’s decision not to seek an indictment as clear proof of a “rigged system.”
Other hearings are clearly in the offing, although Congress intends to be in session so little between now and the November election that lawmakers may have trouble squeezing them in. Senate Homeland Security Committee Chair Ron Johnson (R-WI) has promised his panel will mount its own investigation into whether Clinton improperly or illegally exposed classified information.
Republicans have spent the better part of two years attempting to derail Clinton’s drive for the White House, primarily through a select investigative panel headed by Rep. Trey Gowdy of South Carolina.
The contentious and highly partisan congressional investigation sought to demonstrate that the former secretary of state had been lax in providing adequate security at the Benghazi, Libya, diplomatic outpost and then was slow to respond to the terrorist attacks that killed four Americans, including U.S. ambassador J. Christopher Stevens.
Clinton was questioned for more than 11 hours last October by the special panel, but the final 800-page committee report released a week ago revealed no new evidence of culpability or wrongdoing by her.
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Still, the report constituted a stinging indictment of the State Department, Central Intelligence Agency and the Defense Department for failing to comprehend the acute security risks in Benghazi and doing something about it.
And it was Gowdy’s committee staff that first uncovered the fact that Clinton had insisted on using a private server – outside the protection of a government system – to send and receive all her official correspondence.
That revelation triggered investigations by the State Department’s Inspector General and the FBI that very nearly led to her indictment just weeks before the Democratic National Convention.
Comey’s announcement on Tuesday was a bitter-sweet vindication for Clinton. While her blatant mishandling of official email, despite repeated warnings from State Department officials, didn’t rise to the level of criminal activity, Comey’s detailed description of her conduct sharply differed from her claims that she never knowingly transmitted classified information.
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Clinton has been dogged by voter suspicion of her honesty and integrity, and she regularly garners very high negative ratings in national polls, results driven in part by concerns about her mishandling of government email. In his 13-minute presentation, Comey shattered many of Clinton’s claims about her innocence.
The revelations by Comey also fit neatly into Trump’s stinging narrative that Clinton is by far the most dishonest, corrupt and incompetent secretary of state in history. Yet Trump may have overplayed his hand again on Tuesday by accusing the FBI and the entire Justice Department of an illegal conspiracy to subvert justice.
Trump claimed that it was hardly an accident that former President Bill Clinton met with Attorney General Loretta Lynch on an airport tarmac last week in Phoenix, and that it was no coincidence that Comey recommended against an indictment on the same day that Hillary Clinton and President Obama campaigned together in North Carolina.
Republican lawmakers have never been hesitant about challenging Hillary Clinton’s honesty and competence to her face, which was more than apparent during her marathon last appearance on Capitol Hill to answer questions about her email and handling of the Benghazi tragedy.
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But GOP lawmakers may find it riskier to criticize or belittle Comey in a public setting, for the simple reason that the FBI director and former Bush-era Justice Department official is a tough, principled public servant who enjoys enormous credibility in Washington.
President Obama appointed Comey in 2013 to head the FBI, going outside of his party in choosing a new leader of the premier federal investigative agency. Yet according to The New York Times, Comey “has not shied away from clashing with the administration,” including on highly sensitive issues related to the government’s response to police brutality.
Comey gave a speech raising concerns that some police officers may be less aggressive than needed in combating violent crimes because of the controversy over a flurry of high profile cases of police brutality. President Obama has spoken out repeatedly against police brutality, and the White House didn’t agree with some of Comey’s warnings.
Comey, 55, achieved widespread admiration for his political courage in 2004, while serving as deputy attorney general in the Republican administration of President George W. Bush. He refused to reauthorize a secret National Security Agency wire-tapping program dating back to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, arguing that it was illegal.
And in a made-for-Hollywood scene, Comey rushed to a Washington hospital room where then Attorney General John Ashcroft was convalescing to prevent two top White House officials from pressuring Ashcroft to sign an order continuing the wire-tapping program.
