By Glenn Kessler
Sunday, July 31, 2016
“Director Comey
said my answers were truthful, and what I’ve said is consistent with what I
have told the American people, that there were decisions discussed and made to
classify retroactively certain of the emails.”
—Hillary Clinton,
interview on “Fox News Sunday,” July 31, 2016
Clinton made these remarks after “Fox News Sunday” host
Chris Wallace played a video of her saying: “I did not email any classified
material to anyone on my email. There is no classified materials. I am
confident that I never sent nor received any information that was classified at
the time. I had not sent classified material nor received anything marked
classified.”
As Wallace put it, “After a long investigation, FBI
Director James Comey said none of those things that you told the American
public were true.”
After Clinton denied that, Wallace played another video
of an exchange between Comey and Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), chair of the House
Select Committee on Benghazi:
GOWDY: Secretary Clinton said there
was nothing marked classified on her emails either sent or received. Was that
true?
COMEY: That’s not true.
GOWDY: Secretary Clinton said, “I
did not email any classified material to anyone on my email. There is no
classified material.” Was that true?
COMEY: There was classified
material emailed.
So what’s going on here?
The Facts
Clinton is cherry-picking statements by Comey to preserve
her narrative about the unusual setup of a private email server. This allows
her to skate past the more disturbing findings of the FBI investigation
For instance, when Clinton asserts “my answers were
truthful,” a campaign aide said she is referring to this statement by Comey to
Congress: “We have no basis to conclude she lied to the FBI.”
But that’s not the whole story. When House Oversight
Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) asked whether Clinton had lied to the American
public, Comey dodged: “That’s a question I’m not qualified to answer. I can
speak about what she said to the FBI.”
At another point, Comey told Congress: “I really don’t
want to get in the business of trying to parse and judge her public statements.
And so I think I’ve tried to avoid doing that sitting here. … What matters to
me is what did she say to the FBI. That’s obviously first and foremost for us.”
Comey was also asked whether Clinton broke the law: “In
connection with her use of the email server? My judgment is that she did not,”
Comey said.
As for retroactive classification of emails, Comey did
say many emails were retroactively classified. But he also said that some
emails were classified at the time — and Clinton and her aides should have been
aware of that.
Here’s how Comey put it in his lengthy statement when he
announced the completion of the investigation: “Although we did not find clear
evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws
governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence that they
were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified
information.”
Comey said “seven e-mail chains concern matters that were
classified at the Top Secret/Special Access Program level when they were sent
and received. These chains involved Secretary Clinton both sending e-mails
about those matters and receiving e-mails from others about the same matters.”
He added: “There is evidence to support a conclusion that
any reasonable person in Secretary Clinton’s position, or in the position of
those government employees with whom she was corresponding about these matters,
should have known that an unclassified system was no place for that
conversation.” He noted that “even if information is not marked ‘classified’ in
an e-mail, participants who know or should know that the subject matter is
classified are still obligated to protect it.”
In her response to Wallace, Clinton at one point appeared
to deflect responsibility to her aides: “I relied on and had every reason to
rely on the judgments of the professionals with whom I worked. And so, in
retrospect, maybe some people are saying, well, among those 300 people, they
made the wrong call.”
Testifying before Congress, Comey said it was possible
Clinton was not “technically sophisticated” enough to understand what the
classified markings meant. But he said a government official should be attentive
to such a marking.
The Pinocchio Test
As we have seen repeatedly in Clinton’s explanations of
the email controversy, she relies on excessively technical and legalistic
answers to explain her actions. While Comey did say there was no evidence she
lied to the FBI, that is not the same as saying she told the truth to the
American public — which was the point of Wallace’s question. Comey has
repeatedly not taken a stand on her public statements.
And although Comey did say many emails were retroactively
classified, he also said that there were some emails that were already
classified that should not have been sent on an unclassified, private server.
That’s the uncomfortable truth that Clinton has trouble admitting.
Four Pinocchios
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