The FBI doesn’t expect to know whether Hillary Clinton’s private server was ever hacked by a foreign government, Director James Comey told Congress on Thursday.
“We don’t have direct evidence the server was successfully hacked. We wouldn’t expect to see, though, that evidence from sophisticated adversaries given the nature of the adversary and given the nature of the system,” Comey told a panel of the House Homeland Security Committee.
His remarks came in response to a question from committee Chairman Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, about the potential damage caused by the loss of classified information from Clinton’s server. In a press conference last week, Comey noted Clinton had used personal email “extensively” when working outside the country, and said it was “possible” hostile actors had gained access to it.
“The definition of classified information is, it’s information the intelligence agency assesses, the improper release of which would cause some damage to the United States,” Comey told the committee. “I can’t answer the question beyond that without going into the specifics of the emails, which I can’t do in an open setting.”
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Clinton’s server was at least subject to phishing attempts by several foreign governments, including China and Russia. A lone Romanian hacker known as “Guccifer” claimed to have gained access to the server using similar methods, though he has not released the information he claims to have accessed.
