The House Republican effort to nail Hillary Clinton on perjury charges faces a fairly insurmountable obstacle: The Obama Justice Department.

But that doesn’t mean the endeavor can’t do major political damage to the Democratic nominee, according to a pair of former federal prosecutors.

“I do worry we’re falling into the old Clinton game of, ‘If I’m not indictable, I haven’t done anything wrong’”

“I don’t blame the House for doing it. It’s important to make a record of how dishonest she’s been,” said Andrew McCarthy, who served as an assistant U.S. attorney in Manhattan and prosecuted several high-profile terrorist cases. “It’s always worthwhile making the case that she’s dishonest and untrustworthy, because that’s something people can wrap their mind around.”

Joe diGenova, who served as the U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., in the Reagan administration, agreed.

“They should do it, and they should have done it months ago,” he said. “At least they’re doing it now. It does have a political value, given that we are in a presidential race.”

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The House Judiciary Committee has scheduled a hearing for next month during which they intend to take up the perjury issue with senior officials from the FBI. Republicans have laid out a number of lies they say Clinton told during testimony before the House Select Committee on Benghazi, including:

  • That she repeatedly falsely claimed that none of the emails she sent  or received on her personal email account was marked as classified. The FBI later declared at least three emails had classified markings.
  • That she falsely claimed that her lawyers had gone through each of the purportedly personal emails she deleted from the system. The FBI determined the lawyers had read only email headings.
  • That she falsely claimed her work-related emails were given to the State Department in 2014.
  • That she used only one server throughout her tenure as secretary of state. The FBI determined she used multiple servers.

DiGenova said congressional Republicans made a basic mistake by not asking for a perjury investigation immediately after Clinton’s Benghazi testimony. They got caught flat-footed later when FBI Director James Comey testified about his reasons for not recommending charges in the email server case.

“It is a sign of incompetence on the part of Republicans in both the House and Senate oversight,” diGenova said. “It is an embarrassment that they had to sit there and ask the FBI director if he needed a referral. Of course he needed a referral. That’s how it works.”

Experts said Republicans should be under no illusions that the Justice Department will prosecute the Democratic nominee for president. Asked about the chances for that, diGenova said “absolutely none.”

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McCarthy noted that Comey already has “pooh-poohed” the notion that Clinton committed perjury when she claimed there was no classified information on the emails on her private server. He said only three emails had classified markings, and that they were incomplete and that Clinton could have missed them.

Perjury is notoriously hard to prosecute because prosecutors must prove not only that a defendant  made a false statement but that he or she knew it was false at the time, McCarthy said. He said it was telling that the Justice Department declined to prosecute Clinton on charges of mishandling classified information or destroying government records, which he said was a “slam dunk” case.

“To the extent that we can read the tea leaves, there’s almost certainly no interest in pursuing this,” he said. “If they’re not going to bring charges on that, I think we’re kidding ourselves to think they’re going to take up perjury.”

DiGenova said Comey made a “pure political decision” not to recommend charges in the original investigation, resulting in a “double standard of justice.”

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Clinton has the Republicans in the same spot her husband had them during his presidency in the 1990s. House Republicans impeached Clinton for his conduct related to his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. Those charges included perjury for his testimony in a separate sexual harassment lawsuit brought by Paula Jones. But the GOP did not have enough votes to win a conviction in the Senate, where Democrats stuck together.

McCarthy said Hillary Clinton is as skilled as Bill Clinton at deception. It is not perjury, in the legal sense. to make statements clearly designed to mislead but that are technically accurate.

“I do worry we’re falling into the old Clinton game of, ‘If I’m not indictable, I haven’t done anything wrong,’” he said.

But even though Republicans surely know that Attorney General Loretta Lynch has no intention of making a legal case against Clinton, McCarthy said that shouldn’t stop them from making a political case. He noted that New Hampshire Gov. Maggie Hassan, a Democrat running for the Senate, recently ducked three separate questions on CNN about whether Clinton is honest.

“That says to me that this is working. And it’s working for the best of reasons — because it’s true,” he said. “You can’t make a case with people without building a case.”