FBI Recommends No Charges For Hillary Clinton In Email Server Case

Hillary Clinton and her staff were “extreme­ly care­less” in han­dling clas­si­fied data over a pri­vate email serv­er while she was sec­re­tary of state, FBI Director James Comey said Tuesday — but the FBI is rec­om­mend­ing that no charges be brought against her. Comey said his agency found more than a hun­dred emails con­tained infor­ma­tion that was clas­si­fied at the time they were sent and received — emails which should not have been on “any kind of unclas­si­fied sys­tem,” Comey said. He also said the FBI con­sid­ered it pos­si­ble that Clinton’s email domain had been hacked by a “hos­tile actor.”

Clinton’s use of a per­son­al email account and pri­vate serv­er to con­duct offi­cial busi­ness has already been crit­i­cized by the State Department’s inde­pen­dent watch­dog group as a vio­la­tion of depart­ment policy.

The FBI spent months inves­ti­gat­ing whether the pre­sump­tive Democratic nom­i­nee inten­tion­al­ly or neg­li­gent­ly mis­han­dled clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion on her per­son­al email account and pri­vate server.

Clinton has said that she nev­er used her per­son­al email to send infor­ma­tion that was marked clas­si­fied at the time, although some of her emails had been retroac­tive­ly classified.

Comey says that’s not true. Of 30,000 emails Clinton turned over to the State Department in 2014, FBI inves­ti­ga­tors found 110 emails con­tain­ing infor­ma­tion that was clas­si­fied at the time the email was sent. Eight of those were top secret, the high­est lev­el of clas­si­fi­ca­tion. Those emails should nev­er have been sent on any kind of unclas­si­fied sys­tem, Comey said. He fur­ther point­ed out that Clinton’s per­son­al email set-up involved no full-time secu­ri­ty staff — like she would have ben­e­fit­ed from if she had been on a gov­ern­ment sys­tem, or even just on Google’s Gmail service.

Another 2,000 emails have been retroac­tive­ly clas­si­fied since they were sent, Comey said.

And by por­ing over email frag­ments on servers and access­ing the email archives of gov­ern­ment employ­ees, inves­ti­ga­tors also found sev­er­al thou­sand work-relat­ed emails that were not includ­ed in the 30,000 emails Clinton released to the State Department in 2014. Three of those new­ly-dis­cov­ered emails con­tained clas­si­fied information.

But, Comey said, the FBI did not find any indi­ca­tion that those emails had been inten­tion­al­ly con­cealed from investigators.

“Our assess­ment is that, like many email users, Secretary Clinton peri­od­i­cal­ly delet­ed emails or emails were purged from the sys­tem when devices were changed,” Comey said. “Because she was not using a gov­ern­ment account — or even a com­mer­cial account like Gmail — there was no archiv­ing at all of her emails, so it is not sur­pris­ing that we dis­cov­ered emails that were not on Secretary Clinton’s sys­tem in 2014, when she pro­duced the 30,000 e‑mails to the State Department.”

Indeed, he not­ed that it was like­ly there were even more work-relat­ed emails that Clinton’s lawyers had missed in 2014, and the FBI could not find on servers or oth­er email archives. Those emails would be “gone” now, because of the way Clinton’s lawyers “cleaned their devices,” Comey said. But he not­ed that the FBI did not find any evi­dence of inten­tion­al mis­con­duct by Clinton’s lawyers.

Comey also said that, while the FBI found no direct evi­dence that Clinton’s email was hacked by a for­eign par­ty, “it is pos­si­ble that hos­tile actors gained access to Secretary Clinton’s per­son­al email account.”

Cyberattacks on Clinton’s email would be so sophis­ti­cat­ed that inves­ti­ga­tors would­n’t be like­ly to see traces of them, Comey said. And since Clinton fre­quent­ly used her pri­vate email while trav­el­ing “in the ter­ri­to­ry of sophis­ti­cat­ed adver­saries,” as Comey put it, the FBI views it as pos­si­ble that her account was compromised.

Investigators did find evi­dence that “hos­tile actors gained access to the pri­vate com­mer­cial e‑mail accounts of peo­ple with whom Secretary Clinton was in reg­u­lar con­tact from her per­son­al account,” he said.

Comey had harsh words for the care­less­ness on dis­play by Clinton, her staff and the State Department in general.

But, he said, “although there is evi­dence of poten­tial vio­la­tions of the statutes regard­ing the han­dling of clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion, our judg­ment is that no rea­son­able pros­e­cu­tor would bring such a case.” In “sim­i­lar cir­cum­stances,” some­one might face secu­ri­ty or admin­is­tra­tive sanc­tions, he said, but not crim­i­nal charges. As a result, the FBI is rec­om­mend­ing to Justice Department pros­e­cu­tors that no charges be brought against Clinton. That out­come is not unusu­al, as NPR’s Carrie Johnson has report­ed: Top offi­cials rarely face crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion for vio­lat­ing laws on clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion. But Tuesday’s press con­fer­ence was out of the ordi­nary in anoth­er way.

FBI rec­om­men­da­tions to pros­e­cu­tors aren’t usu­al­ly released to the pub­lic, as Comey said, but this case has been sub­ject to an extra­or­di­nary lev­el of scruti­ny. The FBI announce­ment — which, Comey said, had not been coör­di­nat­ed with or preap­proved by the Justice Department — comes less than a week after a con­tro­ver­sial unsched­uled meet­ing between U.S. attor­ney gen­er­al Loretta Lynch and for­mer President Bill Clinton. Lynch said the meet­ing was innocu­ous, and did­n’t include any con­ver­sa­tions about the inves­ti­ga­tion into Hillary Clinton. But after bipar­ti­san furor over the encounter, Lynch announced she would be accept­ing the rec­om­men­da­tions of career pros­e­cu­tors and the FBI in the case.  http://​www​.npr​.org/​s​e​c​t​i​o​n​s​/​t​h​e​t​w​o​-​w​a​y​/​2​0​1​6​/​0​7​/​0​5​/​4​8​4​7​8​5​5​8​6​/​f​b​i​-​r​e​c​o​m​m​e​n​d​s​-​n​o​-​c​h​a​r​g​e​s​-​f​o​r​-​h​i​l​l​a​r​y​-​c​l​i​n​t​o​n​-​i​n​-​e​m​a​i​l​-​s​e​r​v​e​r​-​c​ase