In a statement to the media on Tuesday, FBI Director James Comey made public his recommendation that no charges be brought against Hillary Clinton or others related to the former Secretary of State’s mishandling of classified information via email.
“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,” said Comey. “No charges are appropriate in this case.”
Such a prosecution, said Comey, would be unprecedented, who said there was no evidence of “intentional and willful mishandling of classified information” or “disloyalty to the United States” from Clinton or her loyalists.
Despite his recommendation not to proceed with an indictment of Clinton, Comey laid out his understanding of her negligent handling of governmental secrets.
In this Feb. 17, 2016 file photo, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton laughs during a campaign stop in Chicago. Hillary Clinton’s work-related emails from her private account are now public, more than 52,000 pages detailing her tenure as America’s top diplomat but failing to resolve questions about how she and her closest aides handled classified information. Several investigations continue looking into her exclusive use of a non-government email account and homebrew server while in government, an issue that has dogged her campaign, even though she seems well-positioned to capture the Democratic presidential nomination. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)
Of 30,000 emails handed over to the FBI by Clinton in 2014, 110 emails in 52 email chains have been determined by government agencies to contain classified information at the time they were sent or received.
The breakdown is as follows:
Eight of the email chains contained “”top secret” information at the time they were sent or received.
Thirty-six of the chains contained “secret” information at the time they were sent or received
Eight of the email chains contained “confidential” information at the time they were sent or received.
Undermining the former Secretary of State’s repeated claims that information she sent and received via email “was not marked classified at the time [of transmission]”, Comey stated that a “reasonable person” should have better protected the information in her role. He also said Clinton did send and receive information that was “properly classified as secret” by the intelligence community at the time of its discussion on email.
“There is evidence to support a conclusion that any reasonable person in Secretary Clinton’s position, or in the position of those with whom she was corresponding about those matters, should have known that an unclassified system was no place for that conversation,” said Comey.
“Even if information is not marked classified in an email, participants who know or should know that the subject matter is classified are still obligated to protect it,” said Comey. “The security culture of the State Department, in general… was generally lacking in the kind of care for classified information that’s found elsewhere in the US government.”
“There is evidence that [Clinton and her colleagues] were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information,” said Comey, adding that Clinton both sent and received information of the most classified (Special Access Programs) variety. “None of these emails should have been on any kind of unclassified system.”
Clinton’s conduct likely led to compromise of national security secrets, said Comey. Without full-time security staff electronically guarding the servers, he continued, sensitive information on her servers was vulnerable to hacking.
While not finding “direct evidence” of compromised information by “hostile actors,” Comey acknowledged that such evidence would be very difficult to obtain given the sophistication of America’s enemies.
“We do assess that hostile actors gained access to the private commercial email accounts of people with whom Secretary Clinton was in regular contact from her personal account,” said Comey.
“[Clinton] also used her personal email extensively while outside the United States, including sending and receiving work-related emails in the territory of sophisticated adversaries. Given that combination of factors, we assess it is possible that hostile actors gained access to Secretary Clinton’s personal email account,” concluded Comey.
Watch the statement below.
Comey did not take questions from reporters.
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