Comey recommends no Clinton charges despite ‘carelessness’

PRESUMPTIVE DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE Hillary Clinton received a rebuke from FBI Director James B. Comey over her use of a private email server while secretary of state, but he did not recommend any charges be filed against her. / BLOOMBERG NEWS PHOTO/TY WRIGHT
PRESUMPTIVE DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE Hillary Clinton received a rebuke from FBI Director James B. Comey over her use of a private email server while secretary of state, but he did not recommend any charges be filed against her. / BLOOMBERG NEWS PHOTO/TY WRIGHT

(Updated, 1:58 p.m.)
WASHINGTON – The FBI recommended that no criminal charges be filed against Hillary Clinton over her use of private email while secretary of state, even as the bureau found that her careless handling of official communications could have exposed classified information to hackers.

In announcing the recommendations Tuesday, FBI Director James B. Comey said prosecutors would make a final determination on any possible indictments of Clinton or her associates. Still, his findings mark a new turn in an inquiry that has cast a long shadow on Clinton, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.

Comey said “our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case” despite evidence that Clinton and her staff were “extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.”

While Comey isn’t recommending prosecution, his statement amounted to a damning portrayal of sloppiness in handling official information by Clinton and her aides. That’s sure to keep alive the politically sensitive issue that’s become a focus of Republican attacks on her, including by Donald J. Trump, the party’s presumptive nominee.

- Advertisement -

Clinton’s campaign portrayed the issue as settled, with spokesman Brian Fallon saying “this matter is now resolved.”

“We are pleased that the career officials handling this case have determined that no further action by the department is appropriate,” Fallon said in an emailed statement. “As the secretary has long said, it was a mistake to use her personal email, and she would not do it again.”

Trump on Tuesday sharply criticized Comey’s recommendation, tweeting: “FBI director said Crooked Hillary compromised our national security. No charges. Wow! #RiggedSystem.”

House Speaker Paul Ryan said Comey’s announcement “defies explanation” and that “declining to prosecute Secretary Clinton for recklessly mishandling and transmitting national security information will set a terrible precedent.” The Republican leader said “Clinton misled the American people when she was confronted with her criminal actions.”

Hacking risk

Comey said that he didn’t coordinate his statement Tuesday with anyone else in government. The 55-year-old Republican was deputy attorney general under President George W. Bush and was appointed FBI director in 2013 by Democratic President Barack Obama. His announcement came hours before Clinton was to appear in Charlotte, N.C., alongside Obama.

By not using a government server, Comey said, Clinton increased the risk of her communications being intercepted by hostile nations. “Any reasonable person in Secretary Clinton’s position” should have “known that an unclassified system was no place” for the sensitive information she handled as the top U.S. diplomat, he said.

Comey added that “we did not find direct evidence” that Clinton’s email was hacked successfully. He said, though, that “we do assess that hostile actors gained access to the private commercial e-mail accounts of people with whom Secretary Clinton was in regular contact from her personal account.”

Comey said Clinton’s behavior fell short of previous cases pursued by prosecutors because there was no evidence that she intended to mishandle classified information, exposed a vast quantity of materials, or attempted to obstruct justice. He stressed that under similar circumstances, other employees would often be “subject to security or administrative sanctions.”

‘Wide gap’

The outcome of the FBI probe shows “there is a wide gap between that which is stupid and that which is illegal,” said Stephen Vladeck, a professor of national security law at the University of Texas at Austin.

Vladeck said he’d believed all along that the filing of any criminal charges against the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee was “a real long-shot,” even if Comey’s announcement underscored her carelessness in the handling of sensitive information.

“We don’t have a criminal statute that generally prohibits the mishandling of government communications,” or the mishandling of classified information, the professor said in an interview. “Maybe we should, but the FBI can only look at the laws that are on the books.”

The felony-level federal Espionage Act requires a showing of gross negligence, Vladeck said. “Simply using an unsecured system has never been understood to rise to that level,” he said. Charging Clinton under that law “would have been a novel application of an already controversial criminal statute.”

The FBI found that of the more than 30,000 emails turned over by Clinton, some 110 spanning 52 email chains contained information that was classified at the time it was sent. Of those chains, eight contained information classified at the Top Secret level.

Computer searches

Comey said the bureau also found “several thousand” work-related emails that weren’t turned over by her lawyers. Those messages, discovered by searching through a computer she used as a server and scanning the archives of other U.S. officials, included an additional three containing classified material.

About 2,000 of Clinton’s emails were classified during the investigation, as agents flagged their contents for departments and agencies. They didn’t include material that was considered classified at the time they were sent or received by Clinton.

“None of these emails should have been on any kind of unclassified system,” Comey said. That Clinton used a private server without full-time security monitoring was “especially concerning,” he added.

No posts to display