FBI Director James Comey was the “only hero” Thursday in a congressional hearing on Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server at the State Department, according to MSNBC political analyst Nicolle Wallace.
“[T]here was something for partisans on both sides of the aisle, but the FBI director stood out to me as the only hero in what was only otherwise a sad situation and state of affairs,” she said.
Comey announced this week he’d recommend no charges be brought against the former secretary of state, and said he’d refer the case to the Justice Department and Attorney General Loretta Lynch.
The AG closed the case later his week, saying they they also saw no reason to pursue charges.
Though Comey shut the door on the case, he also revealed his agency found several troubling details regarding Clinton’s emails.
“Secretary Clinton used several different servers and administrators of those servers during her four years at the State Department, and used numerous mobile devices to view and send email on that personal domain,” Comey said.
He added in direct contradiction to Clinton’s claim that she never handled classified information over her private servers, “From the group of 30,000 emails returned to the State Department, 110 emails in 52 email chains have been determined by the owning agency to contain classified information at the time they were sent or received.”
On Thursday, he appeared before the House Oversight Committee to answer questions about the FBI’s investigation.
“[W]ho were the heroes and villains today, especially in how you think this will be viewed from the Beltway on west through what we like to call America?” MSNBC’s Brian Williams asked Wallace.
“I started keeping three lists,” she responded. “One was the good moments for the Democrats. The other was the good moments for the Republicans, and the third was the list of good moments for James Comey and the FBI and by far, the one that took up the most pages was the list of good moments for James Comey and the FBI.”
“Anyone who thinks that the FBI is rigged or that the entire government is rigged was proven wrong today,” she added. “[I]f you’re a Democrat or a Republican, a Sanders supporter or a Trump supporter who thinks everyone in the government is rigged, I think James Comey made a pretty good case that the FBI is not and was not.”
One thing GOP lawmakers achieved, she added, is they got Comey to concede in clear terms that Clinton has been extraordinarily dishonest about the entire email scandal since day one.
“I think what the Republicans got out of today was wall-to-wall coverage of a hearing where it was not in dispute whether or not Hillary Clinton lied to the public every time she’s been asked over the last year about her email practices,” she said.
“The FBI Director Comey made perfectly clear she did, but what Democrats got was that in no uncertain terms, James Comey is standing by his decision that there was no intent to commit a crime,” she added.
