The director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation says that while there is evidence Hillary Clinton and her State Department aides violated statutes with regard to her privately held email server, the Bureau will not be recommending the Department of Justice prosecute the former secretary of state and presumptive Democratic nominee for president.
“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 James Comey, the FBI director, at a Tuesday public statement.
In prepared remarks delivered at FBI headquarters, Comey laid out the details of the Bureau’s investigation, including the discovery that 110 emails in 52 chains that passed through Clinton’s unsecure server contained classified information at the time the emails were sent or received. That included 8 chains classified as confidential, 36 that were secret, and 8 that were “top secret,” the highest level of classification. Both Clinton and the State Department have claimed no classified material was sent or received over the email server.
Comey said while there was no “clear evidence” Clinton or her aides intentionally allowed that classified information to pass through, “there is evidence they were extremely careless in their handling of secure government information.”
“Any reasonable person” in Clinton’s position, Comey added, “should have known that an unclassified system was no place for that kind of conversation.”
Comey said that he had not spoken with or consulted with anyone at the State Department, the Justice Department, the White House, or any other government entity prior to his Tuesday announcement.
