Prominent Republican lawmakers criticized Hillary Clinton and the FBI Friday evening, blasting the former for her use of a homebrew server and the latter for its handling of its investigation of her private emails.
Their comments came after FBI Director James Comey, who recommended in July that no charges be brought against Clinton, informed Congress that his agency would be investigating a batch of emails possibly linked to the Democratic nominee’s private server.
Clinton’s team responded angrily to the news, which reportedly caught them totally by surprise, and they demanded Friday that Comey come forward and explain the full meaning of the letter.
The Democratic nominee herself repeated that call during a press conference.
Later that same evening, Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., who is a sitting member of the House Judiciary Committee and a member of the House Oversight Committee, said in an interview on Fox News’ “Kelly File” that Clinton really has no one to be angry with except for herself.
“Secretary Clinton had an extraordinary email arrangement with herself. She is the author of her own destiny. Everything that’s happened since then has been a natural probable consequence of deciding you’re going to have a rogue email system. So I understand she’s upset, and I understand she doesn’t like the timing, but she need look no further than herself.”
Gowdy, who is also the former chair of the Select Committee on Benghazi, continued, and listed many of the contradictory claims Clinton has made since the email scandal first appeared.
“This is the same person who said I neither sent or received classified info. The same person who said she turned over all work related emails, only had one device, my lawyers went thru everything, that’s the same person that now wants all of this public disclosure. The same person who went to great lengths to make sure these emails were private, now all of a sudden wants it all made public. It’s just too rich,” the congressman said.
House Judiciary Chairman Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., added in a later interview that he is somewhat perplexed by the FBI’s handling of the entire issue.
“[Comey] had already taken the mantle of this problem on his shoulders when he announced back in July that he did not find evidence sufficient to prosecute her when many owe people, including many members of the Judiciary Committee thought when he held his news conference when he said she violated this, did this wrong and this wrong, a lot of us thought we were going to here therefore there’s going to be an indictment,” the congressman said.
“He said however, there’s not going to be an indictment. So now having taken this on and having new evidence and having been criticized for a number of aspects of how this has been handled, he has the responsibility of saying we have new evidence. I assume there’s some significance to it. I think this is probably more substantial and that is why he put it out now,” he added.
