FBI Delivers Investigation Files to Congress

Tuesday, the Federal Bureau of Investigation presented Congress with documents related to its investigation of Hillary Clinton’s private email server.

But it wasn’t all of the documents, prompting the following statement from the House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform:

The FBI has turned over a number of documents related to their investigation of former Secretary Clinton’s use of a personal email server. Committee staff is currently reviewing the information that is classified Secret. There are no further details at this time.

The State Department had previously insisted on reviewing the files before they were handed over to Congress, but the FBI refused. Instead, it alerted Congress to the presence of sensitive classified material—particularly in the summary of Clinton’s three-and-a-half-hour interview with FBI agents in July—and noted the information should not be disseminated without its prior approval.

Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who has twice demanded answers about the FBI’s investigation from its director, James Comey, noted his staff had received the interview summaries. He then stated the unclassified portions of the documents needed to be made public as soon as possible.

“On initial review, it seems that much of the material given to the Senate today, other than copies of the large number of emails on Secretary Clinton’s server containing classified information, is marked ‘Unclassified/For Official Use,'” he said. “The FBI should make as much of the material available as possible. The public’s business ought to be public, with few exceptions.

“The people’s interest would be served in seeing the documents that are unclassified. The FBI has made public statements in describing its handling of the case, so sharing documents in support of those statements wherever appropriate would make sense. Right now, the public is at a disadvantage and has only part of the story.”

Separately, Judicial Watch announced it had been notified by the State Department that it would be receiving the documents, as well. They were demanded as part of a Freedom of Information Act request that is now pending as a federal lawsuit.

The conservative government watchdog group shared the following message it had received from the State Department’s attorneys:

[T]he FBI completed its transmission to the State Department of documents recovered by the FBI in the course of its investigation in connection with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of a personal e-mail system during her time as Secretary of State. State has voluntarily agreed to produce non-exempt agency records responsive to plaintiff’s FOIA request contained in the information transmitted.

Judicial Watch, in a press release announcing the news from the State Department, noted that in a separate filing in another FOIA lawsuit, the government acknowledged that an entire disc “containing information recovered by the FBI in the course of its investigation” had not been included “in the materials provided to the State Department by former Secretary Clinton in December 2014.” While her statements have afforded her room to wiggle, Clinton had repeatedly stated she believes the 55,000 pages of documents she turned over to the State Department in December 2014 included all of her work-related emails.

Judicial Watch noted:

In response to a court order, she declared under penalty of perjury that she had “directed that all my emails on clintonemail.com in my custody that were or are potentially federal records be provided to the Department of State, and on information and belief, this has been done.” This acknowledgment by the State Department is also at odds with her official campaign statement suggesting all “work or potentially work-related emails” were provided to the State Department.

The State Department also stated to the court that the FBI sent “a second disc containing classified documents.”

The State Department is also processing six other discs of records from “custodians other than former Secretary Clinton … including [but not limited to] materials from Ms. Abedin’s clintonemail.com account.” One of the discs of information is so large that State has asked the court for additional time to process them: “Because of the volume of materials located on the final disc, State requires additional time to load them into a document management system so that they can be searched.”

The House Oversight and Government Reform and Judiciary committees have forwarded a referral to investigate Clinton for perjury with the U.S. Attorney for the District Columbia.