Fox News host Sean Hannity said Hillary Clinton’s emails are a “real threat to our safety and security” during his program Monday evening.
It’s been years since the FBI investigated Clinton’s use of an unauthorized server, hosted in the basement of her home in Chappaqua, N.Y., during her time as secretary of state. Former FBI Director James Comey publicly recommended in 2016 that no charges be brought against Clinton, who was then a candidate for president, but admonished Clinton and her colleagues for being “extremely careless” in handling classified information.
To this day, allies of President Trump, including Hannity, have cried foul over what they argue was preferential treatment favoring Clinton over Trump in the highest levels of the Justice Department and FBI.
“After 30-plus years after our government being hacked, can we please build defenses to be unhackable?” Hannity told his viewers in an opening monologue that comes days after the report for special counsel Robert Mueller’s recently concluded Russia investigation was released to the public with redactions. A central tenet of his investigation focused on election interference.
“We should all be concerned about the integrity of our elections and the fact that this government has been hacked repeatedly for decades by hostile regimes. We need a top-to-bottom killer defense procedure against these hackers,” Hannity said. “That is why Hillary Clinton’s email server is a real threat to our safety and security. And we do believe that place was hacked by six foreign entities.”
Sean Hannity, April 22, 2019: “Hillary Clinton’s email server is a real threat to our safety and security” pic.twitter.com/AqaTC2IRKY
— John Whitehouse (@existentialfish) April 23, 2019
Hannity’s assertion that Clinton’s server was hacked echoes reporting by the Daily Caller last fall, which said a Chinese company succeeded in doing so, and Trump tweeting afterwards, “Are they sure it wasn’t Russia (just kidding!)? What are the odds that the FBI and DOJ are right on top of this? Actually, a very big story. Much classified information!”
The FBI responded by saying there was no evidence that Clinton’s private server was hacked.
Hannity then directed his opening monologue to how information is “weaponized” in the press to attack Trump.
“This was all weaponized in the press, inside the deep state to bludgeon Donald Trump,” Hannity said. “Behind the curtain we got lies. It is time to investigate the investigators. That means Hillary Clinton and the fact that that investigation was rigged, then they try to rig the presidential election and they tried to undo a duly elected president. And the media was all the way there. Let’s stick to the facts and not rush to judgment.”
