The White House on Monday dismissed Rep. Jason Chaffetz’s criticism that there may have been a criminal “quid pro quo” between a senior State Department official and the FBI over the classification of Hillary Clinton’s email.
Chaffetz and other Republicans say new FBI documents released Monday confirm that the State Department and the FBI at least talked about a deal to declassify some of the classified information found in Clinton’s emails, in return for allowing the FBI to put some staff on the ground in Iraq. But Earnest deflected questions about that finding, and repeatedly referred to State Department and FBI denials of the quid-pro-quo charges.
He also criticized Chaffetz’s handling of a congressional probe into the terrorist attack on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi.
“I recognize that Congressman Chaffetz likes to try to make a big deal out of these kinds of things, but the fact of the matter is this is a member of Congress who is leading a Benghazi commission that Republicans in Congress acknowledge was geared solely to try to drive down Hillary Clinton’s poll numbers,” Earnest said.
Earnest also went after Chaffetz for using a personal gmail email account for official lawmaker business.
“When you consider who might be a bad messenger when it comes to prosecuting these criticisms, I might have in mind a congressman who passes around an official business card with a gmail email address on it … so it doesn’t put him in a very good position to be criticizing the email habits of other people when he is engaged in the worst kind of that behavior,” Earnest said.
The Federal Records Act, which requires all federal agency employees to keep accurate records of their email and other activities, does not cover members of Congress. Unlike government officials in the executive branch, including Hillary Clinton when she was secretary of State, federal lawmakers also aren’t required to use official email accounts or to retain or store their email while in office or afterward.
Chaffetz earlier Monday told Fox News that new email correspondence between the State Department’s Patrick Kennedy and the FBI “is a flashing red light of potential criminality.”
When pressed further by reporters about the quid pro quo allegations Monday, Earnest grew indignant.
“You’re suggesting they would lie?” Earnest asked a reporter who said the emails appear to show illegal activity, despite the State Department and FBI denials. “Look, man, if that’s the place we’re going to be in, maybe you should ask someone else.”
“The point is: Both the State Department and the FBI indicated that the reports being flaunted around by congressional Republicans [are] not true,” he added. “And here’s the thing, the FBI did take a look into it – there were investigators who took a look at the situation – and they didn’t choose to prosecute anybody.”
