- House Committee Chairs send referral to prosecutors about Hillary lying to Congress
- Weak excuses offered for Hillary Clinton and FBI Director Comey — If context is important to culpability then apply it in full measure
- Video montage is on-point, “contextual” and damning
- FBI notes cannot exonerate Hillary (either that or Comey was lying)
- We can at least argue that something should be done!
Did Hillary Commit Perjury By Lying to The FBI? Or to Congress? As reported by Katie Pavlich at Town Hall
. . . the FBI is expected to release notes from its July 1 interview with former Secretary of State and current Democrat presidential nominee Hillary Clinton about her use of private email servers to transmit and store top secret, classified information. According to the FBI, the interview wasn’t electronically recorded and was conducted just three days before FBI Director James Comey announced charges would not be brought against Clinton despite her “extremely careless” mishandling of classified information.
Now, House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz and House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte are making the case Clinton committed perjury by either lying to the FBI or lying under oath during Congressional testimony.
In a letter sent to U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Channing Phillips Monday, Chaffetz and Goodlatte outlined their case by highlighting numerous examples of Clinton’s own conflicting statements about her private email server.
“The evidence collected by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) during its investigation of Secretary Clinton’s use of a personal email system during her time as Secretary of State appears to directly contradict several aspects of her sworn testimony,” the letter states. “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.”
“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,” the letter continues.
Regrettably, Hot Air feels compelled to throw cold water
Ms Pavlitch’s article at Town Hall is straight reporting and that is appropriate as an introduction to the subject. However, Columnist John Sexton at Hot Air (a sister publication of Town Hall) feels compelled to tell us how Hillary might arguably have been misunderstood. He intimates that FBI Director Comey was reasonable in not suggesting prosecution to the Department of Justice. Sexton offers up their excuses with little rebuttal, and that is our main problem with his article.
Sexton perhaps thinks he is being objective. But he is not objective when being so narrow and selective of argumentation. If he is going to be critical about the matter of the usefulness of the referral by Goodlatte and Chavetz that should be with regards to providing more argumentation to set the stage and listing more of her lies and distortions. Consider his comments set forth below. Our comments are interspersed in red.
As Ed pointed out previously, prosecutions for lying to Congress are rare. In this case, there is some obvious wiggle room for Clinton on most of these points. As to whether there were classification markings in any of her emails, there were markings contained in three of them. However, those markings were incomplete and Director Comey testified that it was “reasonable” to assume that those emails were not classified since they lacked a proper header.
Comey said more than this that was not at all exculpatory, including, words to the effect, that the nature of the topic, marked or not, meant that e-mails are confidential and that there is an obligation to treat them as such. We have known for months from the State Department and the FBI that many many e-mails that traversed her private server were confidential even if not marked. All communication with the SOS should be presumed confidential. The most mundane of matters can provide useful intelligence to our adversaries.
The “Ed ” Sexton refers to is Ed Morrissey, also of the Hot Air stable, who we consider an excellent conservative writer (as is Sexton) but holy cow why the defeatism? Morrissey’s article states:
Perjury isn’t as easy to prove as simply contradicting a sworn statement. One has to prove that the defendant knowingly and intentionally lied about a material point while under oath. Even more so than with 18 USC 793 (f), you have to find intent and materiality. Hillary can simply say that she had no recollection of ever transmitting classified material, and it would require the DoJ to prove that she did recall it and lied purposefully, rather than simply have a concrete but mistaken belief. The burden of proof will be on the prosecutor, not the defendant, to show that difference.
Prosecution of perjury in Congressional testimony is exceedingly rare, both for that reason and because most Congressional hearings involve political considerations. Nine years ago, P.J. Meitl wrote an analysis specific to prosecutions for lying to Congress, and found only a half-dozen attempts in six decades:
On what god’s green earth do you allow that the HEAD of THE DEPARTMENT is to be allowed to be ignorant of the laws and regulations that pertain to her department, which require that she is required (presumed) to know that department-related e-mails are confidential by their subject matter, that they are government property, and oh by the way, one is not allowed to destroy them. Criminal negligence is not an excuse.
The link that Morrissey supplies in his article , indicates that prosecution of lying to Congress is rare, but emphasizes that it is because testimonies and subsequent decisions about them are so often wrapped up in politics, not necessarily unprosecutable. And besides, why would we not want to expose Democrats for refusing to prosecute violations of laws and regulations? Sexton continues:
As for her attorneys reading each and every email, Clinton also told Congress she “did not look over their shoulders.” In other words, she can claim she was wrong about the details of how her attorneys processed her emails.
Hillary told her lawyers to do something illegal, – review e-mails which require security clearances, and exercised no adequate oversight – more criminal negligence. She does not get to destroy even the allegedly personal e-mails, that is for the proper authorities to review and decide. How deep or what amount the lawyers did or didn’t get done is irrelevant, although maybe they should be co-defendants of some sort. And even if this is arguably “political,” why give Hillary Clinton the benefit of dismissing it? Sexton continues:
Similarly, it’s not hard to guess what Clinton would say about the fact that there was more than one email sever during her tenure as Secretary of State. She’ll say she didn’t know, which really does seem possible given her apparent level of technical competency. So even if her statement about the number of servers is false (it is), it will be hard to prove she knew it to be false at the time she said it.
Hillary gave testimony to Congress. The date for her testimony had been in the works for plenty of time for her to be briefed, and to practice the truth if that was ever her intent, rather than evasion. It was not a trick question or highly technical. One wonders, what are YOU saying Mr. Sexton — that Congress expected that she physically wired and programmed the servers?
Hillary’s statement served her interests. She knew enough to appreciate that a private server might help avoid lawful scrutiny and frustrate disclosure rules. The standard as regards lying that Sexton suggests is hard to get around — knowing something to be false at the time it is said — is a prescription for a lot of perjury on the stand. Just lie, and then if called up short, just say you didn’t know “at the time” or “that you forgot” or “couldn’t recollect for sure.” Little can be proven with such a standard. Testimony is also about believability. Juries and judges respond to that all the time.
Here is the video montage about Hillary’s lies to Congress produced by Republicans. Her guilt is plain enough:
R Mall
