Did Hillary Clinton commit perjury?
WASHINGTON (Talk Media News) – House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. Jason Chaffetz’s (R-Utah) asked Thursday for the FBI to investigate whether Clinton committed perjury before the House Select Committee on Benghazi, but some say that charge may be difficult to prove.
“For the Department of Justice to bring a perjury charge, it will want to be confident that it can meet its burden of proof, which is beyond a reasonable doubt. That is the standard for conviction,” said former federal prosecutor Jacob Frenkel.
The evidence is lacking, he said.
“For prosecutors to win a conviction, they will need to prove that at the precise and specific time of her testimony, then Secretary Clinton knew that her statement was false,” Frenkel said. “From the information in the public domain, that evidence does not appear to be present, and certainly not at a level that they can prove an intent to mislead Congress or to be deliberately uniformed so as to mislead Congress.”
Republicans, however, continue to point to her sworn testimony as clear evidence of perjury.
“There was nothing marked classified on my emails, either sent or received,” Clinton told the Benghazi committee during her October testimony in response to questions about her use of a private email server to transmit classified information while Secretary of State.
FBI Director James Comey defended his decision Thursday to not charge Clinton for careless handling of classified information. Attorney General Loretta Lynch has since supported that recommendation.
Comey said no evidence exists that Clinton lied to the FBI. But interrogatories initiated by Chaffetz and other Republican committee members such as House Benghazi Chairman Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC), forced Comey to concede that Clinton did lie when she told Gowdy’s committee that she never sent classified information from her private email server.
“Secretary Clinton said she never sent or received any classified information over her private email, was that true,” Gowdy asked.
“Our investigation found that there was classified information sent,” Comey said.
“So it was not true?” Gowdy interjected.
“That’s what I said,” Comey replied.
Following the hearing the State Department announced its intention to undergo a more thorough review on whether Clinton and her staff’s use of private server to send classified information violated department protocol.
This article is republished with permission from Talk Media News
Bryan is an award-winning political journalist who has extensive experience covering Congress and Maryland state government.
His work includes coverage of the election of Donald Trump, the confirmation hearings of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and attorneys general William Barr and Jeff Sessions-as well as that of the Maryland General Assembly, Gov. Larry Hogan, and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Bryan has broken stories involving athletic and sexual assault scandals with the Baltimore Post-Examiner.
His original UMBC investigation gained international attention, was featured in People Magazine and he was interviewed by ABC’s “Good Morning America” and local radio stations. Bryan broke subsequent stories documenting UMBC’s omission of a sexual assault on their daily crime log and a federal investigation related to the university’s handling of an alleged sexual assault.