In an "emergency" hearing called by committee chairman Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), members of the House Oversight Committee questioned FBI director James Comey about the FBI's findings regarding Hillary Clinton's use of a private e-mail account during her tenure as Secretary of State. The Representatives will also question State Department Inspector General Steve Linick, and Intelligence Community Inspector General Charles McCullogh III later today. The hearing comes two days after Comey called the use of private e-mail by Clinton and the mishandling of classified information by her, her staff, and State Department officials "extremely careless," but declined to recommend criminal prosecution.

“The FBI’s recommendation is surprising and confusing," Chaffetz said in a statement announcing the hearing. "The fact pattern presented by Director Comey makes clear Secretary Clinton violated the law. Individuals who intentionally skirt the law must be held accountable. Congress and the American people have a right to understand the depth and breadth of the FBI’s investigation. I thank Director Comey for accepting the invitation to publicly answer these important questions.”

When asked by Chaffetz why he had made a public statement about his recommendations rather than passing on a "finding of fact" to a prosecutor to make a decision on prosecution, Comey responded, "Everything I did would have been done privately in a normal course. What I decided to do was offer transparency to the American people...I was very concerned that if I didn't show that transparency, people would say, 'something squirrely is going on here.'"

Comey added that he knew "lots of people are saying that there have been lots of cases where there's been prosecution and something is going on here. But that's just not the case." He said no cases based on negligent mishandling of classified data had been prosecuted in the past 50 years.

The director patiently, repeatedly answered questions about the perceived "double standard" of the decision, explaining that while disciplinary action would likely have been taken against an active government employee under similar circumstances to Clinton's, there would be no action that could be taken against a former employee. He said that if there were a "righteous prosecution" to go forward with, he would have urged that the Justice Department do so.

Update, 11:30 am: Eight e-mail threads of the more than 30,000 messages stored on Clinton's server included conversations containing what was determined by State Department and Intelligence Community review to be of the highest level of classification (Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information). But that information wasn't marked as such—and much of it was sent to Clinton by her staff from the State Department's unclassifed e-mail system. Both Clinton and State Department staff sent messages stored on Clinton's server and on the State Department's unclassified e-mail system that included classified, secret, and Top Secret/SCI information, including names of intelligence community personnel.

In response to questions about whether Clinton should have been aware that she was sending highly classified data in unclassified e-mails, Comey said, "I don’t think our investigation established she was that sophisticated about classification." (Later in his testimony, Comey elaborated that the lack of sophistication was more technical than understanding the importance of protecting classified data.)

Congressman Mick Mulvaney (R-SC) responded, "Isn't she an original classification source?"—meaning that Clinton was responsible for assigning a level of classification to information as Secretary of State.

"Yes, she was," Comey replied.

"Good grief," exclaimed Mulvaney.

"Based on your answers, and what we know, it seems to me that she is stunningly incompetent in handling e-mail and classified information," said Rep. Gary Palmer (R-AL), acknowledging Comey's honesty. "For a Secretary of State, that level of carelessness is shocking."

Chaffetz concluded the hearing with a battery of questions over the people who had access to Clinton's e-mails, including the administrators and lawyers. "She's not the head of Fish and Wildlife," Chaffetz shouted.

Comey responded that it wasn't unreasonable for Clinton to assume that administrators would not be reading her e-mail. And in other testimony, Comey said that because of the lack of security markings on the vast majority of the content, it was reasonable to assume Clinton believed the contents to be unclassified.

Under further questioning from Chaffetz, Comey said that the FBI did not look at civil issues, such as violations of the Freedom of Information Act and federal records law, nor did they look at whether Clinton had committed perjury before Congress in sworn testimony wherein she said that she had neither sent nor received classified information via her e-mail.

Update, 1:00 pm: While a statute passed by Congress in 1917 allowed for prosecution based on "gross negligence," Comey said that there were questions about the constitutionality of that statute, and a later statute for misdemeanor offenses based on negligence. He said the decision not to recommend prosecution "fits within a framework of fairness and what the Justice Department has prosecuted over the last 50 years. I don't see cases that were prosecuted on facts like these," continued Comey. "There was one time it was charged in an espionage case, and the defendant pled guilty on another charge so it was never adjudicated."

The general tone of Comey's testimony was that while Clinton was careless with classified information, virtually none of the information that was sensitive was marked as such. Three e-mail threads included "content markers" at the beginning of paragraphs within the body of messages indicating that the paragraphs included classified information (using a letter "C" in parentheses). In response to a question from Rep. Thomas Massie, Comey said, "Someone down in the chain put a portion marking in the paragraph."

However, as noted by Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, the State Department had said that the content classification markings were in error—that they were preliminary marks from a "call sheet" for Clinton, and should not have been left in the document when it was forwarded to Clinton.

Comey also said that Clinton's mail server was "less secure" than Gmail. "Individual accounts might be less secure, but Google does regular security checks and updates," he explained. Clinton's mail server, set up by people working for former President Bill Clinton's foundation, sat in a basement of the Clinton home in Chappaqua, New York.

As for Clinton's comments when asked if she had "wiped" her server: "Do you mean with a cloth?" Comey quipped. "I would assume it was a facetious comment about a cloth, but I wouldn't know that."