Hillary Clinton told federal agents and prosecutors that she did not recall receiving any emails that were too secretive to be handled by her private computer server and did not believe any of her devices had been hacked or compromised, according to FBI records released Friday.
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The documents contain material that will be put to use by Clinton’s political opponents.
Clinton’s use of a private email account and homebrew server during her time as secretary of state from 2009 to 2013 has weighed heavily on her bid over the past year to become America’s first female commander-in-chief.
As the Wall Street Journal points out, several weeks later, Clinton transferred her email address from an AT&T-run service to a private email server, which would eventually transmit and story tens of thousands of emails subsequently determined to be work-related.
“After reading these documents, I really don’t understand how she was able to get away from prosecution”, Trump said in a statement.
Friday’s release of documents involving the Democratic presidential nominee was a highly unusual step, but one that reflects extraordinary public interest in the investigation into Clinton’s server. However, Comey has said the unusually high-profile case warranted more robust public disclosures than is standard. “CLINTON relied on the judgment of the people that worked for her to handle the information appropriately”.
The agency released 58 pages of emails from Clinton, of which 14 were redacted due to their sensitive nature. One staffer told investigators that he had destroyed two mobile devices “by breaking them in half or hitting them with a hammer”. In an ABC News-Washington Post poll last month, 59 percent of those surveyed said they find Clinton to be not honest and trustworthy.
The transcript notes: “In 2011, a notice to all State employees was sent on Clinton’s behalf, which recommended employees avoid conducting State business from personal e-mail accounts due to information security concerns”. Eight of the mobile phones were Blackberries that she used while Secretary of State, and the other five were devices, including four other Blackberries, that she used after leaving office. “I got around it all by not saying much and not using the systems that captured the data”. Comey told lawmakers that Clinton sent and received three emails that bore small markings indicating some of the information was confidential, the lowest level of classification. Clinton told the Federal Bureau of Investigation she was unaware of specific details about the security, software or hardware used on her server and occasionally received odd-looking emails. But she has also said she thought it was allowed by the State Department (it wasn’t) and has pointed out that past secretaries of state used their personal email accounts.
The concussion was widely reported then, and Republicans have since used it to attack the 68-year-old candidate’s health in a way her staff have said is unfounded.
It appears as though only those three phrases (Top Secret, Secret, and Confidential) are designated to mark classified information.
Either way, Clinton said she regarded the content of the email as a “condolence call” and questioned the classification level.
The secretary also mentioned in her interview that she had communicated for former Secretary of State Colin Powell about the use of a non-state email, and he said that anything in writing would be a government record so she wasn’t concerned about bypassing government record-keeping guidelines.
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The statement added that the agency is also releasing a factual summary of the FBI’s investigation into this matter. But it showed that she was warned about the system by one of her predecessors.
