July 11, 2016

House GOP Wants Clinton Investigated for Perjury

The FBI’s investigation of her email system “appears to directly contradict several aspects of her sworn testimony.”

Bastiaan Slabbers/Zuma

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House Republicans asked the US Department of Justice to investigate Hillary Clinton for allegedly lying to Congress in relation to the classified information that the FBI found on the former secretary of state’s private home email server.

“We write to request an investigation to determine whether former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton committed perjury and made false statements during her testimony under oath before congressional committees,” wrote Reps. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), chairman of the House Oversight Committee, and Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, in a letter sent Monday afternoon to the US attorney for the District of Columbia.

The letter comes a week after FBI Director James Comey announced that even though Clinton and her aides had been “extremely careless” with classified information, he was not recommending that the DOJ file formal charges. The next day, Attorney General Loretta Lynch formally closed the case.

In a hearing last Thursday, Comey told the House Oversight Committee that the FBI didn’t investigate whether Clinton had committed perjury when she testified before Congress last fall because that was not within the scope of what they had been asked to do. Chaffetz told Comey he’d send a referral to the FBI “in the next few hours.”

The formal request arrived the following Monday. “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,” the two committee chairs wrote. “In light of these 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.”

Chaffetz also sent a letter late Monday directly to Comey asking for the FBI to turn over the “investigative file” on the case, which “should include…all witness interview transcripts, notes, 302 reports, documents collected, and memoranda or analysis created during the course of the investigation.”

Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon called the request a “futile, partisan attempt to keep the issue alive”:

Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, blasted the Republicans’ request for a perjury investigation.

“Republicans are so frustrated with the FBI’s unanimous decision that they are now completely unloading on Secretary Clinton with everything they’ve got—right before the presidential conventions,” Cummings said in a statement. “They are spending their final days here in Washington climbing all over each other, collecting hundreds of signatures for their partisan letter attacking the FBI Director for doing his job, sending a so-called ‘criminal referral’ devoid of any actual facts, and demanding access to the FBI’s entire investigative file.”

Read the full letter below:

 

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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