Although FBI Director ultimately ended up recommending that no criminal charges be brought against Hillary Clinton, he did lay out a damning case against the former secretary of state for her “extremely careless” behavior regarding her use of a private email server. Moreover, Comey’s statement last week exposed as lies many of the claims Clinton and her team have made in defense of her email practices. As the Associated Press put it, Comey’s announcement “left much of her account in tatters.”
So even though she may have escaped prosecution with regard to her email practices, two House GOP chairmen are now pursuing another angle: whether Clinton committed perjury.
“The evidence collected by the FBI during its investigation of Secretary Clinton’s use of a personal email system appears to directly contradict several aspects of her sworn testimony,” Reps. Jason Chaffetz and Bob Goodlatte wrote in a letter sent Monday to federal prosecutors. “In light of those contradictions, the Department should investigate and determine whether to prosecute Secretary Clinton for violating statutes that prohibit perjury and false statements to Congress, or any other relevant statutes.”
Rep. Elijah Cummings, top Democrat on the Oversight Committee, slammed the letter in a statement, accusing Republicans of “completely unloading on Secretary Clinton” ahead of the president conventions and “squandering” even more taxpayer money “in a desperate attempt to keep this issue alive and bring down Secretary Clinton’s poll numbers ahead of the election.”