Washington, D.C. - Today, Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, Ranking Member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, released a letter that the FBI sent to the Oversight Committee clarifying several aspects of its investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s emails. Specifically, the letter stated:
“The fact that Secretary Clinton received emails containing ‘(C)’ portion markings is not clear evidence of knowledge or intent. As the Director has testified, the FBI’s investigation uncovered three instances of emails portioned marked with ‘(C),’ a marking ostensibly indicating the presence of information classified at the Confidential level. In each of these instances, the Secretary did not originate the information; instead, the emails were forwarded to her by staff members, with the portion-marked information located within the email chains and without header and footer markings indicating the presence of classified information. Moreover, only one of those emails was determined by the State Department to contain classified information. There has been no determination by the State Department as to whether these three emails were classified at the time they were sent."
In response, Cummings issued the following statement:
“The FBI already determined unanimously that there is insufficient evidence of criminal wrongdoing. Republicans are now investigating the investigator in a desperate attempt to resuscitate this issue, keep it in the headlines, and distract from Donald Trump’s sagging poll numbers."
The issue of whether documents were “marked" as classified was addressed previously by Director Comey at a hearing before the Oversight Committee on July 7, 2016. Ranking Member Cummings also had this exchange with Director Comey at that hearing.
