Hillary Clinton won’t face criminal charges for what FBI Director James Comey described as “extremely careless” handling of classified information, but she might not be entirely out of the woods.
“To be clear, this is not to suggest that in similar circumstances, a person who engaged in this activity would face no consequences,” Comey told reporters on Tuesday. “To the contrary, those individuals are often subject to security or administrative sanctions. But that is not what we are deciding now.”
Comey made that comment while announcing that he is not going to recommend that Clinton face criminal charges for housing classified information on an array of private email servers that did not have “full-time security staff.” FBI investigators found “evidence of potential violations” of federal law, but no “clear evidence” that the Clinton team intended to break the law.
To face criminal charges, people must be found “grossly negligent,” but Comey said actions by Clinton and her team rose only to being “extremely careless.”
“Prosecutors necessarily weigh a number of factors before bringing charges,” Comey said. “There are obvious considerations, like the strength of the evidence, especially regarding intent. Responsible decisions also consider the context of a person’s actions, and how similar situations have been handled in the past.”
But Comey criticized Clinton for putting “very sensitive” information at risk.
“For example, seven email chains concern matters that were classified at the Top Secret/Special Access Program level when they were sent and received,” he said. “These chains involved Secretary Clinton both sending emails about those matters and receiving emails from others about the same matters. There is evidence to support a conclusion that any reasonable person in Secretary Clinton’s position, or in the position of those government employees with whom she was corresponding about these matters, should have known that an unclassified system was no place for that conversation.”
There are “numerous means” of punishing federal government employees who disclose classified information, and they were outlined in a recent Congressional Research Service report.
“The agency may impose disciplinary action or revoke a person’s security clearance,” the report says. “The revocation of a security clearance is usually not reviewable by the Merit System Protection Board and may mean the loss of government employment. Government employees may be subject to monetary penalties for disclosing classified information.”
Comey also confirmed that foreign governments hacked into email accounts of Clinton’s aides, although he couldn’t establish that her account was hacked. “But, given the nature of the system and of the actors potentially involved, we assess that we would be unlikely to see such direct evidence,” he said. “Given that combination of factors, we assess it is possible that hostile actors gained access to Secretary Clinton’s personal email account.”
