The FBI won’t recommend criminal charges against Hillary Clinton for her use of a private email server while secretary of state, agency Director James Comey said Tuesday, lifting a major legal threat to her presidential campaign. But Comey called her actions “extremely careless” and faulted the agency she led for a lackadaisical approach to handling classified material.
Comey’s decision almost certainly brings the legal part of the issue to a close and removes the threat of criminal charges. Attorney General Loretta Lynch said last week that she would accept the recommendations of the FBI director and of career prosecutors.
“No charges are appropriate in this case,” Comey said in making his announcement.
But Comey made that statement after he delivered a blistering review of Clinton’s actions, saying the FBI found that 110 emails were sent or received on Clinton’s server containing classified information. He added it was possible that people hostile to the U.S. had gained access to her personal email account.
“Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information,” he said.
Yet after criticizing Clinton, her aides and the department for their actions, he said that after looking at similar circumstances in past inquiries, the FBI believed that “no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case.”
Comey made the announcement just three days after the FBI interviewed Clinton in a final step of its yearlong investigation into the possible mishandling of classified information.
He said he shared the FBI’s findings with no one else in the government before making his announcement, which came just hours before Clinton was to travel with President Barack Obama on Air Force One to campaign together for the first time this year.
The declaration from Comey is unlikely to wipe away many voters’ concerns about Clinton’s trustworthiness, especially since the FBI director so thoroughly criticized her actions before delivering his verdict.
“There is evidence to support a conclusion that any reasonable person in Secretary Clinton’s position … should have known that an unclassified system was no place” for sensitive conversations, Comey said.
Nor will the recommendation stop Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, who has called for criminal charges, from continuing to make the server a campaign issue or suggesting Clinton was helped by a Democratic administration. After Comey’s announcement, Trump tweeted, “The system is rigged … Very very unfair! As usual, bad judgment.”
Clnton’s personal email server, which she relied on exclusively for government and personal business, has dogged her campaign since The Associated Press revealed its existence in March 2015.
She has repeatedly said that no email she sent or received was marked classified, but the Justice Department began investigating last summer following a referral from the inspectors general for the State Department and the intelligence community.
The scrutiny was compounded by a critical audit in May from the State Department’s inspector general, the agency’s internal watchdog, which said that Clinton and her team ignored clear warnings from department officials that her email setup violated federal standards and could leave sensitive material vulnerable to hackers. Clinton declined to talk to the inspector general, but the audit said that she had feared “the personal being accessible” if she used a government email account.
The Clinton campaign said agents interviewed her this past Saturday for three and one-half hours at FBI headquarters. Agents had earlier interviewed top Clinton aides including her former State Department chief of staff, Cheryl Mills, and Huma Abedin, a longtime aide who now is the vice chairwoman of Clinton’s campaign.
Lynch on Friday said that she would accept whatever findings and recommendations were presented to her. Though she said she had already settled on that process, her statement came days after an impromptu meeting with Bill Clinton on her airplane in Phoenix that she acknowledged had led to questions about the neutrality of the investigation.
(AP)
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16 Responses
No shock here, They are all crooks.
As soon as Lynch said she will do what the FBI recommends, everyone knew that its over and the FBI will not press charges.
What a joke!!!
Wait there are some Mosdos in Monsey and Lakewood that the FBI is busy with. They are more important than national security!!!
Teflon Bill-Hill.
Even Trump said that he can walk down Fifth Ave. and kill someone and his poll numbers will go up.
Bill and Hill have been doing these shenanigans throughout their careers and have gotten away with it, every time! Do we want her as president? Do we want Trump?
I think we’re really in trouble!
אנו אין לנו לסמוך אלא על אבינו שבשמים.
But yet Scooter Libby got 2 1/2 years.
1. Unless Obama issues a pardon, which binds future presidents, the matter can be addressed again next January (which will happen unless she gets to pick the new Attorney General).
2. She is largely accused of stupidity and incompentence rather than malicious and deliberate criminality. Recently the courts have been getting skpetical of prosecutions where “mens rea” is not alleged and proven byond a reasonable doubt.
No surprise with regard to the outcome. If stupidity were a crime, Bush and Cheney would be sitting in a federal prison making license plates for lying about WMD and leading us into a war that resulted in the death of over 4,000 Americans and maiming of thousand of others. Time to move on. Prosecution requires proof of criminal intent and none was found. But first, we will hear for the next week from Trump about the “system is rigged” etc…
If the FBI would apply the same standard of required intent to everyone they investigated, allot less people would be charged. I commend them and believe they were thorough in their investigation, but we’ve seen some reason cases were they were quick to charge people.
Any other person would already have been rotting in jail. The Clintons are very very very crooked people!
I guess there’s always the Clinton Crime Family Syndicate donations to look into now.
Pollard can’t leave the country because he knows secrets from 30 years ago. Clinton gave the enemy secrets and is nominated by the DemoCrooks.
#4 said it well “She is largely accused of stupidity and incompetence rather than malicious and deliberate criminality.” Would you want to have a “stupid and incompetent” president?
I would rather have a president who talks too much than one who is “stupid and incompetent”.
After all, there was no true investigation. It was all for show.
For all those who think being accused of “stupidity and incompetence” is an excuse, let me ask you something:
If you are stupid and incompetent when you fill out your income taxes, will the IRS not come after you because of that?
If you were stupid and incompetent while driving, and you break the rules of the road, will the cop not give you a ticket?
When doctors are stupid and incompetent, they get sued. When teachers are stupid and incompetent, they get fired.
And when Hillary Clinton is stupid and incompetent, she gets…nominated for President.
Can anyone in this comments section imagine a Republican Secretary of State getting away with what Hillary Clinton did? It would never happen. Even General Petraeus got much worse for divulging much less.
The FBI should hang its head in shame over this one. No one really believes that Hillary didn’t know what she was doing, and didn’t know that it was prohibited. Including the FBI.
To EY Mom (#10)
Sadly mommelah, it is you who should hang your head in shame. Your collection of misstatements is embarrassing. To prosecute this crime under DOJ guidelines, caselaw and legal precedent requires INTENT…there was none here according to the career legal experts at the FBI. If you make stupid mistakes in filling out your return, you pay the back taxes, you are NOT charged criminally etc. etc..If you don’t like Hillary, don’t vote for her (assuming you are old enough to vote).
EY Mom, excellent post! Great comment!
Right on the money!
“Clinton gave the enemy secrets and is nominated by the DemoCrooks.”
Wrong. She did not give any hostile parties any secrets. Even though she actually had authority as SoS to do just that.
“If you are stupid and incompetent when you fill out your income taxes, will the IRS not come after you because of that?”
Yes, but only to get their money. They won’t prosecute you.
“Can anyone in this comments section imagine a Republican Secretary of State getting away with what Hillary Clinton did? ”
Yes. Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice, to name two.
“Even General Petraeus got much worse for divulging much less.”
Wrong again. He *deliberately* gave information that was marked classified to someone not authorized. Clinton did not do that. And even Petraeus did not go to prison.
Yes, yes – we should all hang our heads in shame, those of us who dare to contradict liberal lies and rhetoric, yes, I’m sure Clinton had only noble intentions in risking national security, and when she kissed
arafat’s wife etc.
AnavHador – you are entitled to state your opinion – you should not be attacking and intimidating other for doing so even if that is a main liberal stategic defense
BTW I am all for voting for Clinton – then you can all come running here, to Eretz Yisroel
To GadolHadorah:
I’m sorry, but legal precedent mandates no such thing.
The federal penal code reads as such:
“Whoever, being entrusted with or having lawful possession or control of any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, note, or information, relating to the national defense,
(1) through gross negligence permits the same to be removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his trust, or to be lost, stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, or
(2) having knowledge that the same has been illegally removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of its trust, or lost, or stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, and fails to make prompt report of such loss, theft, abstraction, or destruction to his superior officer—
Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.”
Did you read that? There is NO mention of intent there. And please don’t say that “extreme carelessness” is not the same as “gross negligence.” If you don’t believe me, look it up.
This was a 100% political decision. The FBI did not want to indict her, or if they did, did not want to take the heat that would have come with an indictment.
To CharlieHall:
Please don’t drag up Colin and Condi again.
First of all, the rules under which Hillary Clinton was working were drawn up in 2005, after Colin Powell had left State. So he was working under completely different rules and guidelines than she was.
Furthermore, his private email account was installed in his office, not at his home; it was a *commercial account* – NOT a private server like Hillary’s; AND he did NOT use it exclusively, which Hillary did.
Oh, and only 2 of his emails were classified – retroactively.
As for Condoleeza Rice, she didn’t use her private email for work-related emails at all.
Sorry, no comparison.