Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama arrive after traveling together aboard Air Force One for a joint campaign event in Charlotte, North Carolina, July 5, 2016. Lifting a cloud hanging over her presidential campaign, the FBI announced that it would not recommend criminal charges over Clinton’s use of a personal email server while serving as Obama’s secretary of state. (Photo: Doug Mills / The New York Times)
FBI Director James Comey stated on Tuesday his that agency is not recommending for any criminal charges to be brought against Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton for her use of a private email server while Secretary of State.
Though sparing Clinton of formal charges, Comey did put forward a scathing rebuke of her email practices as the nation’s top diplomat.
“Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive information,” the FBI chief told reporters.
He revealed that investigators discovered 52 email chains running through Clinton’s insecure server that contained classified information. That included eight threads with “top secret” information, 36 with a “secret” designation, and eight with classified info.
Another 2,000 messages were later deemed classified after they had been sent and received.
“There is evidence to support a conclusion that any reasonable person in secretary Clinton’s position or in the position of those with whom she was corresponding about those matters should have known that an unclassified system was no place for that conversation,” Comey said.
The findings directly contradict claims made by Clinton herself earlier this year, in response to a probe by an Intelligence Community Inspector General that turned up classified emails on Clinton’s personal server.
“I never sent or received any material marked classified, and that hasn’t…