WASHINGTON _ FBI Director James Comey on Thursday defended his decision to recommend that no criminal charges be brought in the investigation of Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server during her tenure as secretary of state.
Testifying before a House committee, Comey said that he and his team of FBI agents didn't "give a hoot about politics" in reaching their determination, which was accepted by Attorney General Loretta Lynch in formally closing the investigation into the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee's handling of classified information.
Comey said a key reason for his conclusion was that Clinton did not knowingly send classified information despite displaying "great carelessness" and at times lack of sophistication.
"I do not see evidence that is sufficient to establish that Secretary Clinton or those with whom she was corresponding both talked about classified information on email and knew when they did it, that they were doing something that was against the law," Comey said.
Asked why Clinton's conduct could not be prosecuted under a 1917 law involving "gross negligence," he noted that only one other person had been charged under that provision in the past 99 years.
"We don't want to put people in jail unless we prove that they knew they were doing something they shouldn't do," Comey added.
Comey's reasoning did not satisfy Republicans, who expressed concerns that the FBI and Justice Department were showing deference to Clinton and would have prosecuted someone else in similar circumstances.
Rep. Jason Chaffetz, the Republican chairman House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, said he was "mystified. ...We believe that you have set a precedent, and it's a dangerous one. The precedent is that if you sloppily deal with classified information, if you are cavalier about it, and it wasn't just an innocent mistake, and this went on for years, then there is going to be no consequence."
Chaffetz also signaled that Republicans were not going to let the issue go with a single hearing. Under questioning from the Utah Republican, Comey said his agents had not reviewed Clinton's testimony in October before a select House committee investigating a 2012 terror attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya. Clinton told the committee that "there was nothing marked classified on my emails either sent or received," according to Chaffetz.
Comey, who on Tuesday told reporters that a handful of her emails "bore markings indicating the presence of classified information," testified he would need a referral from Congress to investigate whether Clinton told the truth in her testimony.
"You'll have one in the next few hours," Chaffetz promised.
Democrats on the committee defended Comey's investigation and said Republicans were seeking to score political points.
"I firmly believe your decision was not based on convenience but on conviction," Rep. Elijah Cummings, the ranking Democrat, told Comey.
The hearing, and another one next week involving Lynch, are part of an effort by GOP leaders to keep the Clinton email controversy at center stage as Clinton's campaign attempts to put the issue behind them.
Elected leaders including Rep. Paul D. Ryan, R-Wis., the speaker of the House, and Sen. Charles E. Grassley, R-Iowa, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, have been critical of the FBI recommendation. Grassley on Wednesday fired off a letter to Comey demanding information about how he reached his recommendation in light of "inconsistencies" in his reasoning "that raise serious questions as to how the FBI reached its conclusions."
Like Clinton, Comey and Lynch now find themselves enmeshed in a political controversy over the matter. Republicans have spent two days bashing the FBI director for not recommending that Clinton face criminal charges. Lynch has been criticized for meeting privately with Clinton's husband, former President Bill Clinton, on her government jet last week at Phoenix's international airport.
The attorney general has said she only discussed personal matters and the investigation of his wife did not come up. Even so, it forced her to announce she would accept the recommendations of Comey and career prosecutors and agents who worked the case.
FBI agents found that 110 emails in 52 email chains contained information that was classified when it had been sent, Comey told reporters on Tuesday. Eight of those chains contained information that was top secret, the highest level of classification. An additional 2,000 emails, Comey said, were upgraded to classified status at a later date.
Comey also said that it was possible that a foreign power managed to hack into Clinton's personal account and complained that Clinton had used the unsecured service while traveling in trips "in the territory of sophisticated adversaries."
