Hillary Clinton perjured herself at least three times last October while testifying before the House Benghazi Committee. She swore, under oath, that she had turned over “all my work related emails” from her private email server to the State Department. On Tuesday, FBI director James Comey revealed that the agency had found an additional “several thousand” work-related emails that she failed to turn over.
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The emails also revealed that Clinton perjured herself in two other instances during her appearance before the committee; insisting there was “nothing marked classified on my e-mails” and by telling the committee that her attorneys “went through every single e-mail.”
Comey went on to reveal that at least three of the emails were labeled as “classified” at the time they were sent. Comey further pointed out that, even if the information is not labeled as classified, a person that sends or receives information that they know to be classified is obligated to protect said information and that a competent person in Clinton’s position would have known this information to be classified.
Clinton press secretary Nick Merrill previously told TIME that Clinton’s attorneys had individually read every single email to determine whether it was a government document or personal correspondence.
Comey stated that this was also a lie. He reported that Clinton’s lawyers relied on subject titles and headlines to determine whether or not an email contained classified material. Comey believes the lawyers relied heavily on keyword searches. Keyword searches have long-been seen as an imprecise tool for deciding if an email qualifies as a federal record under the law.
The transcript below shows Clinton claiming she turned over all of her emails:
GOWDY: Let me ask you this. You say that you turned over everything. I don’t get a chance to watch you a lot on television, but when I see you are interviewed, you make a point of saying, I turned over everything.
CLINTON: All my work related emails, yes.
GOWDY: How do you know that?
CLINTON: I know that because there was an exhaustive search done under the supervision of my attorneys, and that is exactly the outcome. We turned over every work related email, in fact, as somebody referred to earlier, we turned over too many. The State Department and the National Archives said there are 1,246 out of the 30,000-plus that they have already determined did not need to be turned over.
GOWDY: And you have a really…
SANCHEZ: Regular order, Mr. Chairman.
GOWDY: … good group of attorneys, which makes me wonder…
SANCHEZ: Chairman, regular order.
GOWDY: … how they missed 15 of them.
CLINTON: Well if you are talking about Mr. Blumenthal, which I assume you are, he had some that I didn’t have, and I had some that he didn’t have. And he — I was under no obligation to make any of his emails available unless I decided they were work related. And the ones that I decided that were work related I forwarded to the state.gov accounts of the people with whom I worked.
GOWDY: Madam Secretary, is there any question that the 15 that James Cole turned over to us were work related? There’s no ambiguity about that. They were work related.
CLINTON: No. They were from a personal friend, not any official government — not any government official. And they were, I determined on the basis of looking at them, what I thought was work related and what wasn’t. And some I didn’t even have time to read, Mr. Chairman.
GOWDY: So are you telling me the 15…
SANCHEZ: Mr. Chairman, regular order.
GOWDY: Are you saying that the 15…
SANCHEZ: Mr. Chairman…
GOWDY: I will tell the gentlelady from California that I’m going to take a little extra time, just like everybody else has, and that we can either do it this round, or we can do it next round.
SANCHEZ: May I make a simple inquiry about how many more minutes the chairman plans?
GOWDY: The fewer the interruptions, the quicker I can get done. I’ll put it to you that way. How’s that?
SANCHEZ: OK, just be mindful of the time.
GOWDY: The 15 — my question to you, on the 15, did your lawyers find them and decide that they were not work related or did they not find them?
CLINTON: Well, I don’t know why he had emails I didn’t. And I don’t know why, apparently, I had emails he didn’t. And all I can tell you is that I turned over every work related email in my possession.
According to Title 18, Section 1621 the “perjury generally” statute prohibits people, even politician, from lying to Congress while under oath. The punishment for perjury include fines up to $100,000 or up to five years in jail.
