FBI Director James B. Comey said Thursday that it would have been virtually unprecedented to charge Hillary Clinton under a federal statute making it a felony to mishandle classified information through “gross negligence.”
The case, he said, would have been just the second in nearly a century.
“No reasonable prosecutor would bring the second case in 100 years based on gross negligence,” he said.
“We’re mystified and confused by the fact pattern that you laid out and the conclusions that you reached,” House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) told Comey. “It seems that there are two standards, and there’s no consequence for these types of activities and dealing in a careless way with classified information. It seems to a lot of us that the Average Joe, the average American, that if they had done what you laid out in your statement, that they’d be in handcuffs.”
Comey stood by his recommendation that Clinton not be charged. He said in the Clinton email investigation, as in all probes, agents were focused on the facts, the law, “and how have similar people — all people — been treated in the past.” They are keenly interested, he said, in “what did the person do, and when they did that thing, what were they thinking.”
“We don’t want to put people in jail unless we prove that they knew they were doing something they shouldn’t do,” Comey said.
