The FBI on Tuesday said it had turned over to US Congress a number of documents related to its probe into US Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton’s use of a private e-mail server while she was secretary of state.
Clinton has for more than a year been dogged by questions about her use of a private e-mail account while she was the nation’s top diplomat.
US Republicans have repeatedly hammered Clinton over the issue, helping to drive opinion poll results showing that many voters doubt her trustworthiness.
The FBI said it had provided “relevant materials” to congressional committees looking into the matter.
“The material contains classified and other sensitive information and is being provided with the expectation it will not be disseminated or disclosed without FBI concurrence,” the agency said in a statement.
The Clinton campaign criticized the delivery of the documents.
“This is an extraordinarily rare step that was sought solely by Republicans for the purposes of further second-guessing the career professionals at the FBI,” Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon said in a statement.
“We believe that if these materials are going to be shared outside the Justice Department, they should be released widely so that the public can see them for themselves, rather than allow Republicans to mischaracterize them through selective, partisan leaks,” the statement added.
A spokeswoman for the US House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform said in an e-mail that staff for the panel were reviewing the information classified as “secret.”
“There are no further details at this time,” the aide said.
US Senate Committee on the Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, a Republican, said that an initial review of the material showed most of it was marked unclassified, and urged the FBI to make as much of it public as possible.
FBI Director James Comey last month told Congress that Clinton’s handling of classified information while using private e-mail servers was “extremely careless,” but added that he would not recommend criminal charges be brought against her.
Comey’s statement lifted a cloud of uncertainty from Clinton’s White House campaign. However, his strong criticism of her judgement ignited a new attack on her by Republicans, including Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.
The oversight committee, chaired by US Representative Jason Chaffetz, a Republican, had asked the FBI for the complete investigative file from its review of Clinton’s use of a private e-mail server.
The FBI has also provided documents from its investigation to the US House Committee on the Judiciary, an aide said.
Chaffetz and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, also a Republican, last month urged federal prosecutors to investigate whether Clinton had committed perjury.
They said some FBI findings about her e-mail servers were at odds with her previous testimony to Congress about the matter; for example, her statement that she had not sent or received information designated as classified.
However, the FBI, in a letter sent to the committee on Tuesday, said the fact that the agency had uncovered three instances in which Clinton had received e-mails containing “(C)” markings, which denote “confidential” information, was “not clear evidence of knowledge or intent” to mishandle such material.
The letter, which accompanied the FBI’s investigative documents, noted relevant e-mails had been forwarded to Clinton by staff, lacked “header and footer markings” indicating the presence of classified information, and only one e-mail was later determined by the US Department of State to contain classified information.
“The FBI already determined unanimously that there is insufficient evidence of criminal wrongdoing,” said Representative Elijah Cummings, the top Democrat on the oversight committee. “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.”
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