FBI PUBLISHES NOTES

on Clinton email probe.

WASHINGTON — Hillary Clinton told the FBI that she relied on her staff not to send email containing classified information to the private email server she used as secretary of state.

The revelation came Friday as the FBI published scores of pages summarizing interviews with Clinton and her top aides that were held during the recently closed criminal investigation into her use of a private email server in the basement of her Chappaqua, N.Y., home.

The Democratic presidential nominee told the FBI that she never sought or asked permission to use a private server or email address during her tenure as the nation’s top diplomat from 2009 to 2013. A prior review by the State Department’s internal watchdog concluded that the practice violated several policies for the safekeeping and preservation of federal records.

Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon said Friday that the campaign was pleased the FBI had released the documents.

“While her use of a single email account was clearly a mistake and she has taken responsibility for it, these materials make clear why the Justice Department believed there was no basis to move forward with this case,” Fallon said.

GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump countered that Clinton’s “answers to the FBI about her private email server defy belief.”

“After reading these documents, I really don’t understand how she was able to get away from prosecution,” Trump said in a statement.

Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican National Committee, called the documents “a devastating indictment of her judgment, honesty and basic competency.”

He said her responses in the FBI interview “either show she is completely incompetent or blatantly lied to the FBI or the public.”

Clinton has repeatedly said her use of private email was allowed. But over a 3½-hour interview in July, she told investigators that she “did not explicitly request permission to use a private server or email address,” the FBI wrote. Clinton said no one at the State Department raised concerns during her tenure, and she said everyone with whom she exchanged email knew she was using a private email address.

The documents also include technical details about how the private server was set up. It is the first disclosure of details provided by Bryan Pagliano, the staff member who set up and maintained Clinton’s IT infrastructure. Pagliano secured an immunity agreement from the Justice Department after previously refusing to testify before Congress, invoking his constitutional right against self-incrimination.

Much of the FBI documents was censored. The FBI cited exemptions protecting national security and investigative techniques. Previous government reviews of the 55,000 pages of email Clinton returned to the State Department found that about 110 contained classified information.

Clinton and her legal team deleted thousands more email she claimed were personal and private. The FBI report details steps taken by Clinton’s staff that appear intended to hamper the recovery of deleted data, including smashing her old BlackBerry smartphones with a hammer and using special software to wipe the hard drive of a server she had used.

The FBI documents show that an unnamed computer specialist deleted the archive of Clinton’s email weeks after the existence of the private server became public in March 2015.

Days after The New York Times first reported that Clinton had used a private email system exclusively as secretary of state, the House committee investigating the 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya, asked that her email be preserved and subpoenaed those that were related to the attacks.

About three weeks later, however, the unnamed specialist “had an ‘oh s**t’ moment” and realized that he had not destroyed an archive of email that was supposed to have been deleted a year earlier, according to the FBI report.

The specialist then used a program known as BleachBit to delete an unknown number of email, according to the report. Clinton told investigators that she was unaware that the aide had deleted the email.

The FBI focused on whether Clinton sent or received classified information using the private server, which was not authorized for such messages. Clinton told the FBI that she relied on others with knowledge about handling classified files not to send her emails inappropriately.

Clinton said she was unfamiliar with the meaning of the letter “c” next to a paragraph and speculated that it might be “referencing paragraphs marked in alphabetical order.” That particular email had been marked as classified at the confidential level, the lowest level of classification. Clinton said she did not pay attention to the level of classification “and took all classified information seriously,” according to the FBI.

After a yearlong investigation, the FBI recommended against prosecution in July, and the Justice Department closed the case. FBI Director James Comey said that while Clinton and her aides had been “extremely careless” in dealing with sensitive materials, there was no evidence they intentionally mishandled classified information.

The FBI’s review also found no direct evidence that Clinton’s server was hacked, but said her system would be a high-value target for foreign intelligence agencies and a sophisticated attacker would have been unlikely to leave behind evidence of a breach. Clinton told the FBI that she was unaware of specific details about the security, software or hardware used on her server.