FBI Director James Comey "had a deal tapped out" with Hillary Clinton aides to whom he granted immunity even though investigators suspected their laptops also mishandled classified data, GOP Rep. Louie Gohmert said Thursday.
In an interview on "The Steve Malzberg Show" on Newsmax TV, the former judge and member of the House Judiciary Committee slammed Comey's testimony before the panel Wednesday.
Comey testified former Hillary Clinton chief of staff Cheryl Mills and another top aide had "some" classified material on laptops they turned over to the bureau in its probe of Clinton's private server – yet still received immunity.
"If you get immunity in order to get the laptop… that involved negotiation and he had a deal tapped out," said Gohmert, who also serves as vice chair on the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security.
"If you're working out a deal for immunity, but you're concerned that things on the laptop might actually lead to something else, you are protecting Hillary Clinton, you go ahead and do exactly what she did and that was delete things that she felt would be harmful," he charged.
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Gohmert said as a judge, he's seen that law enforcement officials "don't wait to negotiate about turning over a laptop. They go get it and then that eliminates the chance that they got time to destroy what's on the laptop."
"The fact that stuff is destroyed while in your possession that can either prove your innocence or prove your guilt is evidence of intent… it's evidence of guilt," Gohmert said, citing a legal doctrine known as "spoliation of evidence."
Gohmert blasted Comey for seeming that email investigation revelations "didn't faze" him.
"He didn't seem to be affected by it at all," he said. "A thousand emails went between the CIA Director [and former four-star Gen. David] Petraeus and Secretary Clinton on her unsecured secured server. You know there was classified information. There had to be.
"Those were all destroyed so we can never see what they were? That is evidence of intent.… It's evidence of guilt."
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