By Bonnie K. Goodman
After much requests from Congressional Republicans, the FBI plans to release their report not recommending criminal charges against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. CNN was the first to report on Tuesday, Aug. 30, 2016, that the FBI is releasing their report to the Justice Department and their notes from their July interview with Clinton from their investigation into her usage of a private email server.
The FBI intends to release the documents as early as Wednesday, Aug. 31 as a response to Freedom of Information Act requests. The documents include the bureau’s 30-page report to the DOJ, and the interview notes known as FD-302 covering the FBI’s three-hour interview with Clinton.
Earlier this month the FBI handed the same documents to the House Oversight Committee in addition to the interview notes with Clinton’s aides. The committee’s chairman Jason Chaffetz then called on the FBI to release an unclassified version of those documents to the public. Chaffetz described the documents as “over-classified.” Clinton’s campaign also wanted the documents released, believing it would be best for them to be released in their entirety, then have the GOP release just certain excerpts that might be more damaging.
FBI Director James Comey announced in July that the FBI would not recommend pressing charges and instead suggested an administrative punishment. Comey called Clinton’s handling of classified information “extremely careless,” but argued, “no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case.” The Justice Department and Attorney General Loretta Lynch “unanimously” agreed and declined to charge Clinton. Despite no criminal case pending, Clinton has not been able to escape her scandals from her tenure at the State Department, and recent revelations have dented her lead in the presidential race.
newsbuzzmusings.wordpress.com 