Schiff: There’s Not Much ‘Legal Jeopardy’ for Clinton in the E-mail Scandal

Friday on MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports,” Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) said Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton does not have to worry about “legal jeopardy” resulting from the FBI investigation into her handling of classified material on a unsecured private email server during her tenure as secretary of state.

Partial transcript as follows:

MITCHELL: “Now, I know that you’re in Hillary Clinton’s corner, but you’re a former prosecutor yourself, from L.A. At this stage, what is the legal jeopardy here? There’s a political — there’s obviously political jeopardy, anytime you’re talking about this stuff. It’s not what she wants to be talking about. What’s the legal jeopardy for her or some of her close aides?”

SCHIFF: “You know, honestly, I don’t think there’s much legal jeopardy here, if you’re talking about a series of e-mails, none of which were marked classified at the time, and frankly, many of which are being classified retroactively, they weren’t even classified at the time, it’s hard to make any kind of a case that there should be some criminal charge under those circumstances. I know people are comparing it to the case with General Petraeus, but that was a case of intentionally providing highly classified information, known to be classified at the time, to someone writing a biography. Very different circumstance here. So, you know, I think the FBI is doing their due diligence. They have to. I wouldn’t read much into the fact they gave a limited immunity to Mr. Pagliano, that’s what they should do to make sure they dot every I, cross every T, look under every stone. But there’s no indication to me that this is going to go much farther.”

Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN

COMMENTS

Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.