MSNBC anchor Stephanie Ruhle asked Rep. Matt Cartwright (D., Pa.) on Wednesday how he could say that Hillary Clinton has not committed perjury when her story under oath on her private email server conflicted with the FBI’s subsequent findings.
Ruhle first played a compilation of clips showing FBI Director James Comey contradicting Clinton’s past claims about her email practices at the State Department. Ruhle appeared confused how lying on the stand was not legally considered perjury.
The compilation showed Clinton saying that "nothing was marked classified at the time [she] sent or received it." It then cut to Comey saying this statement was not true. Ruhle then played Clinton saying that she gave "all of [her] work related emails" to the State Department. Comey said this claim was not true since the FBI found thousands of work-related emails that were not handed over to the State Department. Finally, the compilation showed Clinton describing how her lawyers went through every single email individually. Comey told Rep. Trey Gowdy (R., S.C.) under oath that this was also not true.
"You’re an attorney," Ruhle said. "I’m not, but I’m definitely a confused American when I watch these things. How is that not perjury?"
Cartwright explained that there were only three partially marked classified emails out of thousands.
"Here’s what we established when I questioned Director Comey," he said. "The question was: Were there things marked classified that she sent or received? And out of the tens of thousands of emails that they were reviewing, only three of them had any markings whatsoever suggesting a possible classification, and there’s a clip from that. I wish you guys would run–"
"But only three is not zero," Ruhle snapped back. "But, hold on a second. Only three isn’t zero. You either did it or you didn’t do it, no?"
Cartwright told Ruhle to stay with him as he explained the manual for classifying documents. He also clarified that the three emails containing the partial markings were received by Clinton, not sent by her.
"It’s a stretch to continue beating this dead horse," he said.