The House GOP is definitely not, as one former presidential candidate put it, sick and tired of hearing about Hillary Clinton’s “damn emails.”
The Republican chairmen of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and the Judiciary Committee, who last month called on the Department of Justice to consider prosecuting Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton for perjury, have backed up their case with a lengthy letter detailing what they say are examples of false statements the former secretary of state gave under oath during a hearing last October.
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And on Tuesday, according to NBC News, they will receive the notes taken by Federal Bureau of Investigation agents during their interview with Clinton during the agency’s investigation into her use of a private email server while secretary of state, possibly providing them with more ammunition in their effort to see Clinton face some sort of criminal indictment.
GOP lawmakers were bitterly disappointed last month when FBI Director James Comey announced that while his investigators found that Clinton had been “extremely careless” in her handling of information that was sensitive and in some cases classified, he would recommend against a prosecuting her.
However, they quickly pivoted from seeking an indictment on a charge of negligent treatment of sensitive information to asking for a perjury prosecution. During his testimony, Comey described investigators’ findings that directly contradicted things Clinton had said to the media and while under oath before the House Oversight Committee.
In the letter sent to Channing Phillips, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, Oversight Committee Chair Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) and Judiciary Committee Chair Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) wrote, “During a House Select Committee on Benghazi hearing on October 22, 2015, Secretary Clinton testified with respect to (1) whether she sent or received emails that were marked classified at the time; (2) whether her attorneys reviewed each of the emails on her personal email system; (3) whether there was one, or more servers that stored work-related emails during her time as Secretary of State; and (4) whether she provided all her work-related emails to the Department of State.
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“Although there may be other aspects of Secretary Clinton’s sworn testimony that are at odds with the FBI’s findings, her testimony in those four areas bears specific scrutiny in light of the facts and evidence FBI Director James Comey described in his public statement on July 5, 2016 and in testimony before the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on July 7, 2016.”
Meanwhile, Clinton’s Republican opponents in the general election are calling for other investigations. Vice presidential nominee Mike Pence, the governor of Indiana, on Sunday complained about the short-lived appointment of a donor to the Clinton Foundation to a high-level national security board, and about emails from Clinton Foundation officials seeking favors from State Department personnel during Clinton’s time as secretary of state.
“This is exactly the kind of pay- to- play politics the American people are sick and tired of. It is just one more example of the way I do believe that the Clintons have been operating over the last 30 years,” he said on Fox News Sunday.
The Clinton campaign has dismissed much of Republicans’ rhetoric about the email scandal as election season partisanship. However, history suggests that if Clinton wins in November, these investigations will be dragged out well beyond the election.
