WASHINGTON — FBI Director James Comey told U.S. lawmakers on Thursday that FBI employees who mishandled classified material in the way Hillary Clinton did as secretary of state could be subject to dismissal or loss of security clearance.

Comey addressed the issue at a House of Representatives committee hearing after House Speaker Paul Ryan said in a letter to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper that Clinton should be denied classified briefings during her campaign for the presidency.

Comey, who on Tuesday said he would not recommend that Clinton face criminal charges, was asked at the hearing if Clinton should face administrative punishment for the way she handled her email and responded, “I don’t think that’s for me to recommend.”

He did say that his employees in the Federal Bureau of Investigation would face discipline for the same behavior.

“They might get fired, they might lose their clearance, it might get suspended for 30 days,” Comey said. “There would be some discipline.”

Presidential candidates normally get access to classified information once they are formally nominated and as director of the FBI, Comey does not have the authority to revoke Clinton’s security privileges.

A Clinton spokesman said Republicans’ efforts to deny her the briefings was “another blatantly political stunt.”

Comey, under persistent questioning at the hearing of the House Oversight Committee, said Clinton did not break the law.

“The question I always look at is, is there evidence that would establish beyond a reasonable doubt that somebody engaged in conducted that violated a criminal statute. And my judgment here is there is not,” Comey said.

The issue of Clinton’s use of private email servers has cast a cloud over her campaign leading up to the Nov. 8 presidential election, raising questions among voters about her trustworthiness and judgment and giving her Republican presidential rival, Donald Trump, an avenue of attack.

Comey also said Clinton knew that keeping her email server at her home in Chappaqua, New York, was unauthorized.

Comey told the committee Clinton may not have had sufficiently sophisticated understanding to know the emails that passed through her personal server were classified. Only three of the 30,000 FBI-reviewed emails were explicitly marked as classified and those were marked with a “C” in the body of the email, not in the header, Comey said.

Comey said his FBI team had conducted its investigation of Clinton “in an apolitical and professional way” and he had no reason to believe she had lied to the FBI. Clinton had said publicly she never sent or received any classified information.

Comey had disappointed some Republicans by only rebuking Clinton, not recommending charges against her, in a Tuesday announcement for what he called “extremely careless” handling of classified information while using private email servers.