Clinton told investigators during her July 2 interview she did not recall ever receiving training or guidance on handling classified information during her time as secretary of state and relied on aides’ judgment on what should and should not be transmitted via email.
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Meanwhile, the State Department has been ordered to review for possible release almost 15,000 additional emails and documents uncovered during the FBI investigation that had not been disclosed by her lawyers.
Major news concerning Democrat presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s private email server has tended to come on holiday weekends, a master work of timing which seems too fortunate to be coincidental.
The FBI released the summary to provide context on its recommendation that the Justice Department shouldn’t prosecute Mrs Clinton or her aides for using the private system. “After reading these documents, I really don’t understand how she was able to get away from prosecution”, he said in a statement.
In her interview with FBI investigators, Clinton said she believed “everyone at State” knew she had a personal email address, and she did not recall receiving any emails she thought should not be on an unclassified system.
FBI Director James Comey described Clinton’s handling of classified information as “extremely careless”.
The FBI had already granted Congress access to the documents with the understanding that some of the material would be made public. However, Comey has said the unusually high-profile case warranted more robust public disclosures than is standard. “Clinton responded that she did not pay attention to the “level” of classification and took all classified information seriously”, it added.
Clinton’s correspondence with confidante Sidney Blumenthal has drawn particular scrutiny. One staffer told investigators that he had destroyed two mobile devices “by breaking them in half or hitting them with a hammer”.
Clinton, who is challenging Republican Donald Trump for the White House in the November 8 election, has been dogged by the fallout from her private email account for more than a year.
It goes on to note that in 2009 Mrs Clinton asked former Secretary of State Colin Powell for his advice on email arrangements during his tenure.
Days after President Barack Obama’s inauguration in January 2009, Clinton contacted former Secretary of State Colin Powell “to inquire about his use of a BlackBerry while he was Secretary of State”, the Federal Bureau of Investigation interview notes say.
Cummings and 10 other Democratic committee members invoked an obscure rule to try to push the State Department to release all the email-related exchanges between Powell and Clinton, which Cummings first sought last month after news of them broke.
“I got around it all by not saying much and not using systems that captured the data”, Powell said.
The FBI has published documents relating to its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of private email while serving as Secretary of State. But she told agents there were never so many suspicious emails to cause concerns.
Clinton also told FBI investigators that she wasn’t sure what the “C” meant next to paragraphs in one email that was used to designate classified information.
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Additionally, the Federal Bureau of Investigation notes revealed that Clinton was unaware that the marking “C” meant classified, but instead thought it followed paragraphs with letters listed in alphabetical order, NPR reported. In response to the release, GOP Chairman Reince Priebus said Clinton’s claims suggest she either is “incompetent” or “lied”. State is now working through those emails to make sure they redact any classified information before releasing them publicly by the end of September.
