FBI Director James Comey testified Wednesday that former Hillary Clinton chief of staff Cheryl Mills and another top aide had “some” classified material on laptops they turned over to the bureau in its probe of Clinton's private server use as secretary of state -- yet the aides still received immunity.
Comey made the acknowledgment while testifying before the House Judiciary Committee, where Republicans had tough questions about a newly revealed set of immunity deals in the Clinton case.
At one point, a defensive Comey's umbrage at the grilling seemed to boil over.
“You can call us wrong," Comey said. "You can call me a fool. You cannot call us weasels.”
The director claimed the findings did not constitute a crime but declined to directly answer a question on whether having classified material on a laptop or other private electronic device was against federal regulations.
“You’d have to know the circumstances,” Comey told committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va.
The FBI’s two-year investigation into the private server found numerous Clinton server emails contained classified information and she was “extremely careless.”
However, the agency concluded the investigation without recommending criminal prosecution, and the Justice Department closed the case this summer.
"It seems clear that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton committed multiple felonies involving the passing of classified information through her private email server. The FBI, however, declined to refer the case for prosecution on some very questionable bases," Goodlatte said Wednesday. "We, as Congress and the American people, are troubled how such gross negligence is not punished."
Mills’ testimony in the FBI investigation and potential testimony before Congress was not covered in the immunity deal.
Five people were granted some form of immunity in the case including Mills, Samuelson, and former agency IT specialist Bryan Pagliano.
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