On Tuesday, the FBI delivered to several congressional committees a packet of documents related to its closed investigation into Hillary Clinton's handling of classified information via email during her tenure as secretary of state, along with a letter strongly defending the bureau's decision not to charge Clinton. Sharing classified documents from a closed FBI investigation is very rare, and not surprisingly, the transfer of the Clinton files — an investigative summary, "302" reports on interviews with Clinton and others, and classified emails recovered from her private server — was immediately subject to partisan sniping.
Republicans on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee say they requested the files to better understand the FBI's decision and search for evidence to support their call for the Justice Department to open an investigation into whether Clinton lied to Congress in her marathon Benghazi hearing last fall. Democrats say the GOP is baldly trying to harm the Democratic nominee politically; Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon said Republicans wanted the files "for the purposes of further second-guessing the career professionals at the FBI," and he asked for the documents to be publicly released so Republicans can't "mischaracterize them through selective, partisan leaks."
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