The FBI in July closed the agency’s yearlong investigation into whether Clinton and her top aides mishandled classified information that flowed through the private email server located in the basement of her NY home.
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FBI Director James Comey told Congress in July that his agency doesn’t start investigations on activities before Congress unless Congress asks it to, “out of respect for the legislative branch being a separate branch”. Clinton and longtime lawyer and aide, Cheryl Mills, have stated that they had no knowledge about the deletions. After two officials advised that emails she sent would be subject to open-records laws, a Clinton aide dropped the request, citing a bogus concern about migrating data.
Receiving any emails she thought didn’t belong on an unclassified system. Yet, because Americans were gearing up for Labor Day, more likely than not they didn’t hear about how Clinton didn’t know the “C” meant classified, or how she had over a dozen devices she used to send emails, or how her staff destroyed those devices with a hammer.
“Matt, there is no evidence, of course anything is possible, but what is factual is the State Department’s system was hacked”, Clinton said.
Speaking today at an intelligence-related summit in Washington, D.C., Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said USA agencies are “guilty” of labeling too much information as classified, and he said agencies could “somewhat simplify our system” if they would “just not bother” restricting information that’s now classified as “confidential”, the lowest level of classification.
The memo, obtained by The Associated Press, was first reported by CNN.
In a new memo sent from Comey to employees of the FBI, Comey calls out these naysayers and says that the decision not to recommend charges against the Democratic nominee wasn’t a hard one at all.
Comey has said it’s understandable that Clinton did not realize some of this unmarked information was classified.
“All we can say is that she was never provided with a State Department Blackberry”.
If not, she still is in contempt of Congress for trying to erase the emails to avoid turning them over.
She noted that she has years of experience dealing with classified material dating back to her time as a senator.
And on multiple occasions when the Federal Bureau of Investigation showed Clinton an example of one of her emails that contained classified information, Clinton dismissed the email, saying she was “not concerned” about the classified material for one reason or another.
For information to be considered properly marked classified, it must contain a header. The FBI found 81 email chains that contained information determined to be classified, though none of the information was appropriately labeled, so it wasn’t necessarily obvious to the recipients.
But Clinton and her running mate, Tim Kaine, meet neither of those criteria, meaning top employees can contribute to the Democratic ticket.
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Clinton’s carefully worded statement is partially accurate but leaves out important context. A claim she has made ever since.
