F.B.I. Chief to Explain Recommendation on Hillary Clinton Before Congress
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Version 0 of 1. WASHINGTON — The F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, will testify before Congress on Thursday to explain his decision to recommend no criminal charges against Hillary Clinton, but the appearance will be only the beginning of the tests Republicans plan as they maneuver to capitalize on Mr. Comey’s rebuke of the presumptive Democratic nominee and her handling of classified emails. Next week, Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch will be called before the House Judiciary Committee. A Senate panel is demanding F.B.I. answers to pointed questions on the former secretary of state’s private email server. House Speaker Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin even suggested that Mrs. Clinton be barred from classified briefings for the remainder of the presidential campaign. Those moves could stretch out Mrs. Clinton’s email travails for weeks, if not months, alleviating some of the anguish among many Republicans, who believe their party’s presumptive nominee, Donald J. Trump, has failed to seize the remarkable opportunity presented by Mr. Comey’s reproach. Instead of drawing sharp attention to what Mr. Comey called Mrs. Clinton’s “extremely careless” handling of 110 classified emails, and contrasting the F.B.I.’s findings with Mrs. Clinton’s shifting explanations of her use of a private email server, Mr. Trump responded tepidly on Twitter. “The system is rigged,” he wrote. Referring to a case involving David H. Petraeus, the retired general and C.I.A. director, he added: “General Petraeus got in trouble for far less. Very very unfair! As usual, bad judgment.” Veteran Republican campaign operatives said they were stunned that Mr. Comey’s announcement was not met with a battalion of well-credentialed Republican law enforcement and national security officials flooding televisions to raise questions about the inquiry and hammer Mrs. Clinton. Nor were any talking points sent to leading Republican members of Congress offering guidance on the best lines of attack against Mrs. Clinton after what was a remarkably harsh assessment of her conduct. Instead, the responsibility for keeping the issue alive appears to have fallen to Republican leaders in Congress. Mr. Ryan’s suggestion that Mrs. Clinton be barred from receiving classified information was extraordinary, even if it was certain to be ignored by the Obama administration. The Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who is widely viewed as one of the party’s more skilled tacticians, focused Wednesday on raising doubts about Mrs. Clinton’s trustworthiness. He said Mrs. Clinton’s statements to the F.B.I. should be made public to compare with her prior remarks. “There’s no particular penalty for lying to the public, unless the public gets tired of it, but there is a real penalty for lying to the F.B.I.,” Mr. McConnell said at a news conference at the Capitol. Mr. McConnell deflected a question, pivoting off Mr. Ryan’s comment, about whether he believed Mr. Trump was qualified to handle classified information. “The question here is Hillary Clinton and her public explanations, compared to her private representations to the F.B.I.,” Mr. McConnell said. “We’re entitled to know all that. The American people would like to have the answer to that.” These efforts come with substantial risks for Republicans. Mr. Comey is a veteran law enforcement official who served as deputy attorney general in the George W. Bush administration and is highly regarded in both parties for his integrity and independence. If he makes a convincing case for his decision on Thursday before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, it could make Republicans look foolish and bolster efforts by Democrats to put the email issue to rest. Democrats were quick to accuse the Republicans of refusing to accept the F.B.I.’s recommendation, despite past praise for Mr. Comey. Representative Xavier Becerra of California, the No. 4 House Democrat, said Republicans appeared unwilling to relent no matter the findings of professional, nonpartisan law enforcement authorities. “It makes you wonder: Will they ever stop?” he said. A spokesman for Mrs. Clinton, Brian Fallon, accused Republicans of flip-flopping. “For weeks, Republicans have said they trusted F.B.I. Director Comey to lead an independent review in Secretary Clinton’s emails,” Mr. Fallon said, “but now they are second-guessing his judgment because his findings do not align with their conspiracy theories.” But Mr. Comey’s appearance will be only the beginning. Representative Robert W. Goodlatte of Virginia, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, made it clear that at a hearing with the attorney general on Tuesday, he would focus on Ms. Lynch’s impromptu meeting with former President Bill Clinton, before the F.B.I.’s announcement. The decision not to prosecute “is uniquely troubling in light of Attorney General Lynch’s secret meeting with former President Bill Clinton,” Mr. Goodlatte said in announcing the hearing. Republicans’ push for the public release of all the investigative materials, including a transcript of Mrs. Clinton’s recent interview with the F.B.I., was led by Senator John Cornyn of Texas, who said Mr. Comey had “dismantled every bit of Secretary Clinton’s explanation about her private email server.” Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, demanded still more information. In a letter to Mr. Comey, Mr. Johnson said he wanted to know the number of F.B.I. employees assigned to the investigation of Mrs. Clinton’s emails, a list of all F.B.I. resources detailed to the investigation, a cost estimate for the F.B.I. and any other federal department or agency roped in and an explanation of the difference between “extreme carelessness” and gross negligence, a prosecutable offense. Those questions and more should be answered by July 19, the senator demanded, a week before the Democratic National Convention. All of those efforts stood in remarkable contrast to the Trump campaign’s disjointed response. “We’re relying on somebody who’s tweeting with exclamation points,” lamented Brian Walsh, a veteran strategist and former spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee. Others said Mr. Trump was simply not in a position to offer the needed contrast to Mrs. Clinton’s reckless handling of classified information. “Imagine Jeb Bush looking disappointed and talking about the importance of following the rules and a society ruled by law with a government that is held accountable,” said Kori Schake, a fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and a national security aide in Mr. Bush’s administration who is now backing Mrs. Clinton. “This should be a really great moment for a Republican nominee. But there’s no way in the world Donald Trump could pull that off.” Mr. Trump’s campaign did issue a longer statement regarding Mrs. Clinton’s email use beyond his initial assessment, and he used his own rally Tuesday night in North Carolina to assail his Democratic rival. “We are talking about the safety of our people,” he told a crowd in Raleigh. “The laws are very explicit. Stupidity is not a reason that you’re going to be innocent.” Yet for many in his party, there was deep angst over the possibility that they could lose to a Democratic candidate who was deemed by one of the country’s most respected law enforcement officials to have presided over a State Department whose lackadaisical security culture invited foreign hackers. “He’s making somebody who should be sitting in a jail cell look like the sane choice for president,” said John Noonan, a former Air Force officer who served as a national security aide to Mitt Romney in 2012. “This should have been a two-foot putt. But Republicans never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.” |