Sen. Lindsey Graham said Hillary Clinton, not President Trump, is the one who committed obstruction of justice.
During an interview on Monday, the South Carolina Republican said he suspects the FBI let Clinton off because they favored her to win the presidential election.
“I think the decision not to prosecute her was probably most likely politically motivated, because obstruction of justice, taking a hammer to two phones being asked for as evidence, cleaning a server, bleaching it out so you can’t get the emails is classic obstruction of justice,” Graham said on Fox News. “Compromising classified information — she clearly did that, the decision not to prosecute her was pretty simple, in my view. If you want her to win, you can’t prosecute her.”
The FBI investigation into Clinton’s use of an unauthorized private email server came to a conclusion during the 2016 presidential election. Former FBI Director James Comey publicly recommended in 2016 that no charges be brought against Clinton, who was then a candidate for president, but admonished the former secretary of state and her colleagues for being “extremely careless” in handling classified information.
Still, the debate over Clinton’s home-based email server, which she claims was set up for convenience, remains alive today. Critics, like Graham, often point to two actions taken by her team over the course of the investigation. Justin Cooper, a former Clinton Foundation adviser, destroyed two of Clinton’s Blackberry phones with a hammer, but claimed he did not intend to conceal information. Clinton’s team also used a digital tool called BleachBit to scrub the server that was eventually confiscated by law enforcement agents.
Graham, who is chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he will wait for the completion of investigations by the Justice Department and its inspector general on the actions of the Justice Department and FBI to determine whether to try and change the laws in order to prevent future politically motivated schemes.
The Justice Department is able to reopen the Clinton email case, and experts told the Washington Examiner last year that Trump’s 2016 adversary arguably could be charged until March 2025 — after Trump would leave office even if he wins a second term.
Special counsel Robert Mueller recently concluded his investigation into Russia interference in the 2016 election. He looked into whether Trump attempted to obstructed justice, and despite laying out 10 instances of possible obstruction, he did not make a determination about whether he believed the president committed a crime. Democrats argue Mueller left it to them to investigate and decide while Attorney General William Barr said there was insufficient evidence to accuse Trump of an obstruction crime.
Graham said the Mueller case is “closed.”
