A chart disseminated within the FBI excluded “gross negligence” from a collection of statutes by which former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton could be prosecuted for the use of an unauthorized private email server.
During private testimony last year, an email was shown from an unknown individual in the FBI general counsel’s office to Bill Priestap, who served as assistant director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s counterintelligence division.
This email, sent to Priestap’s former superior Michael Steinbach, had a chart of “available statutes for prosecuting the former Secretary of State” which did not include “gross negligence,” the Epoch Times reports.
Ryan Breitenbach, the House majority counsel at the time, pressed Priestap about the email and asked why gross negligence, or the federal statute of 18 U.S.C. 793(f), was excluded from the chart of what it was willing to charge Clinton, but the statute apparently was used to obtain a search warrant to obtain material in the Clinton case.
Priestap said he didn’t know who sent the email or why they used the language, “DOJ not willing to charge this.” However, he did say his “attitude is that if there is a Federal criminal statute still on the books, then, you know — and we think there may or might be a violation of that, we still have to work to uncover whether, in fact, there was.”
The FBI declined to comment on the chart and whether it was actually used, and a spokesperson for the DOJ did not return a request for comment.
Priestap, a 20-year veteran of the FBI, reportedly decided to retire from the FBI by the end of last year.
When former FBI Director James Comey publicly recommend in July 2016 that no charges be brought against Clinton, who was then a candidate for president, he said Clinton and her colleagues were “extremely careless” in handling classified information.
Former FBI investigator Peter Strzok, who led the FBI’s probe into Clinton’s private email server, reportedly changed the language Comey used to detail Clinton’s actions from “grossly negligent” in an earlier draft to “extremely careless.”
That was significant because under federal law, mishandling of classified information through gross negligence is a criminal act.
The change in language prompted former Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, to demand information about drafts of the remarks by Comey from his successor, FBI Director Christopher Wray.
In separate testimony, former FBI lawyer Lisa Page told investigators the DOJ required the FBI to establish evidence of intent as part of any gross negligence charge, even though 18 U.S.C. 793(f) does not require it, because of “constitutional vagueness.”
In his July 2016 statement, Comey also touched on the issue of intent. “Prosecutors necessarily weigh a number of factors before bringing charges. There are obvious considerations, like the strength of the evidence, especially regarding intent. Responsible decisions also consider the context of a person’s actions, and how similar situations have been handled in the past,” he said after recommending that “no reasonable prosecutor” would bring a case against Clinton.
