Clinton left politically exposed by FBI report on her emails

Trump gets fresh ammunition in making case against Democrat

Sept 3: The FBI report on its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email use gives Donald Trump and other Republicans a new opportunity and more tools to chip away at the Democratic nominee’s core argument to voters: competence and experience.

While there were no startling revelations in the 58 pages of material released by the agency on Friday, the FBI summaries give heft and context to director James Comey’s assessment that the former secretary of state had been “extremely careless” in handling sensitive government communications.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s release of the heavily redacted investigative summary and a July 2 interview with Clinton were quickly seized upon by Trump and Republicans.

“Hillary Clinton’s answers to the FBI about her private email server defy belief,” Trump said in a statement. “After reading these documents, I really don’t understand how she was able to get away from prosecution.”

House speaker Paul Ryan, who’s called for Clinton to be stripped of any security clearance, said the FBI documents show Clinton’s “reckless and downright dangerous handling of classified information during her tenure as secretary of state.”

In a new headache for Clinton, the FBI summary reveals that copies of some of her work emails were deleted after her use of a private email system was disclosed by the New York Times in March 2015. A House committee investigating the September 2011 attack in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans responded a day later by demanding the retention and production of all of Clinton’s documents.

The FBI report said a technician for a company that was hired to help manage the Clinton email system said he deleted an archive of older emails after realising he had failed to act on a request to do so months earlier from Clinton’s State Department chief of staff. According to the FBI report, Clinton said she had told her staff the emails were no longer needed after her lawyers gave the State Department ones they considered work-related in December 2014. Clinton avoided the worst potential outcome of the investigation when the FBI closed the probe in July and recommended she not be prosecuted. But she was left with a lingering wound. As Clinton spent much of the past two weeks courting donors rather than voters, a steady drip of stories about her e-mails and the Clinton Foundation—and concurrent attacks by Trump—took a toll on her campaign for the White House.

Clinton’s lead in the RealClearPolitics average of national polls has narrowed to 4 percentage points from 6 in that period, and her popularity has slumped as well. In an ABC News/Washington Post poll conducted August 24-28, 59% of registered voters viewed her unfavourably, a 7point increase from early August. That about matches Trump’s 60% unfavourable rating, levels that are unprecedented for major-party presidential candidates.

The FBI documents—released under pressure of Freedom of Information Act lawsuits—assure that Clinton will be grappling with the issue of her emails as the presidential campaign enters the final stretch into the November 8 election.

Clinton’s central selling point to voters is that her eight years in the White House as first lady, eight years as a US senator and four years as secretary of state make her one of the most experienced candidates ever to run for president. She’s labelled Trump as unqualified and unfit for the office.

In the examination of how she came to use a private email server while serving as the nation’s chief diplomat, Clinton told the FBI she could not recall any briefing or training by the State Department related to the retention of federal records or handling of classified infor mation.

Hillary Clinton