The issue of Clinton’s use of private email servers during her tenure as secretary of state has cast a cloud over her presidential campaign for the November 8 election, raised questions among voters about her trustworthiness and given presidential rival Donald Trump an avenue of attack.
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“Hillary Clinton can’t keep her emails safe, and you know what, folks, she sure as hell can’t keep our country safe, ‘ Trump told a recent rally in Raleigh, North Carolina, charging that the investigation was ‘rigged” in Clinton’s favor. “Is she going to be brought before Congress or something?”
The Justice Department will not file any charges against Hillary Clinton or anyone “within the scope of the investigation” into her use of personal email while Secretary of State.
Even so, it officially closes out an FBI investigation that had dogged Clinton for the previous year and proved a major distraction on the campaign trail as she emerged as the Democratic presidential front-runner.
Republicans questioned the decision not to charge Mrs Clinton and said she is being held to a different standard.
The FBI’s announcement created instant backlash from congressional Republicans, who said they felt Comey had laid out a sufficient basis for criminal charges.
Most administrative sanctions, anything from a reprimand to a dismissal, can’t be imposed on Clinton and three of her closest aides Cheryl Mills, Jake Sullivan and Huma Abedin as they have already left government, experts of the government’s classified information regime said.
“There is evidence to support a conclusion that any reasonable person in Secretary Clinton’s position … should have known that an unclassified system was no place” for sensitive conversations, Comey said.
Comey was wrong to recommend no prosecution of Clinton for her email practices, since some of her own State Department employees, as well as employees of the CIA and other agencies have been charged with and convicted of felonies for the same and even lesser infractions. Ms Lynch is scheduled for an oversight hearing next week on Capitol Hill.
Seeking to move past the controversy, Clinton on Wednesday appeared in Atlantic City, New Jersey, where Trump developed casinos that went out of business.
“With the AG accepting Director Comey’s recommendation, this case is resolved, no matter Republicans’ attempts to continue playing politics”, campaign spokesman Brian Fallon said on Twitter.
Federal Bureau of Investigation agents spent the a year ago investigating the matter following a referral from the intelligence community’s inspector general.
As part of the investigation, investigators pored through tens of thousands of State Department emails and interviewed top Clinton aides – and finally, Mrs Clinton herself this past weekend. The FBI spent months looking into whether Clinton intentionally mishandled any classified information and whether her private email server had been compromised.
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Next Tuesday, Lynch will testify before the House Judiciary Committee about Clinton’s emails and her private meeting with Bill Clinton.
