NEW PRESSURE ON COMEY TO RETURN TO CAPITOL HILL, AS WHITE HOUSE ACCUSES HIM OF ‘FALSE TESTIMONY’<\/a><\/b><\/p>\nJohnson said the full transcripts \u201cmay shed light\u201d on the FBI\u2019s decision-making process during their investigation, the FBI\u2019s interactions with other federal entities, and the FBI\u2019s \u201cdistinction\u201d between \u201cextreme carelessness\u201d and \u201cgross negligence,\u201d when referring to Clinton\u2019s handling of her private email server.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Comey ultimately accused Clinton of being extremely careless in her handling of her personal email and server while secretary of state, but recommended against criminal charges. The claim that he drafted an exoneration statement weeks before Clinton was interviewed, however, raised questions about the bureau’s handling of the case — and about Comey’s prior testimony.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Comey in June said one of the big reasons he spoke out on the case was concern over then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch\u2019s infamous meeting days earlier on an Arizona tarmac with former President Bill Clinton. He also testified a year ago that he made the decision not to seek charges after the Clinton interview.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Some Republicans want Comey to return to Capitol Hill to testify and clarify his past statements. Just Monday, the White House slammed Comey\u2019s testimony as \u201cfalse.\u201d<\/p>\n
The interviews with Rybicki and Anderson were part of an OSC investigation into whether Comey violated the Hatch Act in October 2016. Richard Painter, former White House chief ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush, requested an investigation after complaining that Comey may have influenced the election by telling Congress in late October that the bureau was revisiting the Clinton email probe.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Due to longstanding OSC policy, the only punishment from such a probe could be termination. So after President Trump fired Comey in May, the OSC investigation ended.<\/p>\n
During that investigation, though, the OSC signed non-disclosure agreements with the FBI, giving them the privilege of redacting protected information. Those non-disclosure agreements bar the OSC from turning over any documents to Congress without permission from the FBI, despite Johnson\u2019s committee having jurisdiction over the watchdog agency.<\/p>\n
However, Johnson contends that, \u201cAny reliance upon these non-disclosure agreements to withhold information from the Committee would be inappropriate.\u201d<\/p>\n
Johnson gave a deadline of Sept. 21 for the OSC to provide full transcripts, documents, and details regarding their investigation into Comey.<\/p>\n
Both the FBI and the OSC told Fox News they had \u201cno comment\u201d on the interviews or on why portions of the transcripts have been redacted.<\/p>\n
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Brooke Singman is a Politics Reporter for Fox News. Follow her on Twitter at @brookefoxnews<\/a>.<\/p>\nArticle source: http:\/\/feeds.foxnews.com\/~r\/foxnews\/politics\/~3\/S2tInBkxen8\/gop-senator-wants-full-transcripts-from-comey-staffer-interviews.html<\/a>\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sen. Ron Johnson is calling for the release of full, un-redacted transcripts from interviews the Office of Special Counsel conducted with former FBI staffers for James Comey, after initial details from those documents raised questions about the bureau\u2019s handling of the Hillary Clinton email case and the ex-director\u2019s statements to Congress. Johnson, R-Wis., chairman of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[84],"class_list":["post-90811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-political","tag-political"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=90811"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90811\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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