FBI clears Clinton, but not without harsh rebuke
Democratic candidate slammed for ‘extremely careless’ emails
WASHINGTON— A year into the email scandal that has deeply damaged her presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton finally heard the words she insisted would come: “No charges.”
But this was no vindication, not even close. This was another blow.
In declining to recommend a criminal indictment of Clinton, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation simultaneously delivered a scathing indictment of her judgment. Clinton was “extremely careless” in handling “very sensitive, highly classified” information on a home email server, knew better or should have, and may have been hacked by foreign enemies, James Comey said Tuesday.
Comey, critically, also contradicted Clinton’s chief political defence: that none of the emails she sent from the account she set up in her New York basement as secretary of state contained classified information at the time she sent them. In fact,110 emails were classified at the time.
Comey’s self-described “unusual statement,” delivered at FBI headquarters in Washington, lifted the biggest cloud over Clinton’s quest to become the first female U.S. president. But it raised further questions about the honesty and wisdom of a Democratic nominee who is already facing a severe trust problem among independent voters.
The ad-ready censure from a top law enforcement official will probably feature in Republican campaigns through the summer. It blows a deep hole in Clinton’s suggestion that she had made a minor mistake.
“Even if the public doesn’t follow or understand the details of it, it’s a simple enough issue that they’re able to form a judgment over whether they think it’s appropriate. And it’s hard for me to imagine that there are many people out there who think there was absolutely nothing wrong with it,” said Eric Heberlig, a political science professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
Comey’s decision was fraught with political intrigue. It came less than three hours before Clinton boarded Air Force One for her first campaign appearance with President Barack Obama, three days after Clinton was interviewed by FBI investigators, and a week after former president Bill Clinton had a widely criticized impromptu conversation with Attorney General Loretta Lynch at an airport.
The final decision on prosecution lies with the Justice Department, but Lynch is certain to accept Comey’s recommendation. Comey found that Clinton’s actions amounted to a series of egregious decision-making errors that “no reasonable prosecutor” would take to trial — because there was no evidence Clinton “intended” to violate laws on handling classified information or was grossly negligent, as the law requires for a conviction. Even her deletion of some work emails, he said, was not done to conceal them.
“All the cases prosecuted involved some combination of clearly intentional and wilful mishandling of classified information, or vast quantities of materials exposed in such a way as to support an inference of intentional misconduct, or indications of disloyalty to the United States, or efforts to obstruct justice. We do not see those things here,” Comey said.
He suggested, though, that Clinton’s actions would merit consequences if she were still a government employee. And he found that Clinton was not truthful when she repeatedly said she “never sent or received any information that was classified at the time it was sent and received.”
Comey said 52 of her email conversations included material classi- fied at the time, including eight “highly sensitive” chains classified “top secret” and 36 classified “secret.” The FBI found classified material in three emails Clinton didn’t turn over to the State Department for its investigation.
“None of these emails should have been on any kind of unclassified system,” Comey said, especially one he said was less secure than Google’s public Gmail. Clinton used her unprotected email even while travelling in hostile countries, he said, and hackers gained access to the accounts of people she emailed.
Comey, a Republican, was appointed to a 10-year term by Obama in 2013. Mindful of the political optics, he said he did not reveal the contents of his statement with any other branch of the government, including Lynch’s.
Trump, who has declared Clinton “guilty as hell,” was unsatisfied. “The system is rigged,” he wrote on Twitter. “FBI director said Crooked Hillary compromised our national security. No charges. Wow!”
Neither Clinton nor Obama said anything about the matter at their upbeat rally in Charlotte. But a fiery Obama testified at length to Clinton’s character, and he called her a “great secretary of state” — a claim he said was broadly accepted fact until the “political machinery” of the election churned into action.
“There has never been any man, or woman, more qualified for this office than Hillary Clinton. And that’s the truth,” Obama said.
Clinton’s only response to Comey was a terse statement from a spokesman. “As the Secretary has long said, it was a mistake to use her personal email and she would not do it again,” Brian Fallon said. “We are glad that this matter is now resolved.”
It’s not over, of course. Within two hours, a Republican Super PAC had released a YouTube ad compiling clips of Clinton’s dishonesty on classified material. Soon after, Republican congressmen began calling for the case to be referred to an independent special prosecutor.