The FBI released interview documents of its investigation of Hillary Clinton Friday, providing details of the bureau’s probe into the former secretary of state’s use of a private email server in conducting official business.
Mark Hemingway and Jeryl Bier have already noted some takeaways from the documents, including one pertaining to Clinton’s health around the time she would have received information about preserving records upon her transition out of the State Department. Here are some other nuggets:
Equipment shortages
The FBI identified 13 mobile devices which were “potentially” used to send emails using Clinton’s clintonemail.com address, eight of which were email-capable BlackBerry devices she used during her time at the State Department. Clinton’s lawyers were unable to locate any of the 13. Additionally, the FBI was unable to recover all server equipment and log data in its investigation. The lack of hardware limited the FBI’s forensic analysis and made it impossible to definitively conclude that none of the equipment was compromised.
“C” Is for “confidential”
Clinton was asked about an April 2012 email with the subject line “Call to President Banda”, which contained “portion marking”. The report states:
FBI director James Comey previously said in testimony before Congress that it was “possible she didn’t understand what a ‘C’ meant when she saw it in the body of an email.”
Security breaches attempted, but ultimately unsuccessful
The report noted frequent “brute force” login attempts to Clinton’s email, one incident of a virus discovered by IT specialist Bryan Pagliano that he deemed was “nothing of great concern”, and a hack attempt in January 2011 that prompted a server shutdown. None of these occurrences were ever successful security breaches, however.
Clinton’s server also had a brief period of vulnerability in early 2009. She began using clintonemail.com across the server set up by Pagliano in January, but it wasn’t until late March “that access to the server was afforded an added layer of security”.
Classifying drone strikes is circumstantial
From the report: “Clinton stated deliberation over a future drone strike did not give her cause for concern regarding classification. Clinton understood this type of conversation as part of her routine deliberation process. Moreover, she recalled many conversations about future strikes that never occurred.”
Additionally, “Clinton believed the classification level of future drone strikes depended on the context. Clinton believed drone strikes to be an “important tool” but also a program frequently in the press [redacted].”
