Committee on Oversight and Government Reform - Democrats

“Republicans claim they hate frivolous lawsuits, but just this week they made a frivolous perjury referral against Secretary Clinton. Today, we received a letter from the FBI confirming that not one of the emails Secretary Clinton received was properly marked classified. All Republicans have to do is read the FBI’s letter to understand this, but they want a ‘do-over’ because they do not like the FBI’s answer. It is clear that Secretary Clinton was telling the truth based on the facts she had at the time, and this Republican perjury referral is making a mockery out of congressional authority and trivializing our procedures for political purposes.”

“The fact that Secretary Clinton received emails containing ‘(C)’ portion markings is not clear evidence of knowledge or intent. As the Director has testified, the FBI’s investigation uncovered three instances of emails portioned marked with ‘(C),’ a marking ostensibly indicating the presence of information classified at the Confidential level. In each of these instances, the Secretary did not originate the information; instead, the emails were forwarded to her by staff members, with the portion-marked information located within the email chains and without header and footer markings indicating the presence of classified information. Moreover, only one of those emails was determined by the State Department to contain classified information. There has been no determination by the State Department as to whether these three emails were classified at the time they were sent.”

At a hearing last week before the Committee, FBI Director James Comey provided significant new information that debunked Republican conspiracy theories, yet Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte sent a referral to the FBI requesting another investigation into whether Secretary Clinton told the truth when she testified before Congress. They ignored a letter from Ranking Member Elijah Cummings explaining why this criminal referral was “unwarranted” given the new facts Director Comey provided at the hearing.