...she is a criminal
For all this evidence to go unchallenged is in itself criminal but some people are above the law.
For all this evidence to go unchallenged is in itself criminal but some people are above the law.
Video published on Jul 7, 2016
Trey Gowdy GRILLS James Comey On Hillary Clinton Emails. Hillary Clinton Email Investigation FBI Director James Comey testified at a hearing on the FBI’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of private email servers while serving as secretary of state, as well as the decision to not recommend criminal charges against her. Rep. Gowdy Q&A - Oversight of the State Department. At a congressional hearing Thursday, Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) grilled FBI director James Comey about several of Hillary Clinton‘s statements to the public, which the FBI investigation revealed to be untrue. For instance, Clinton had previously claimed that she had never received or sent classified information to or from her private email server; Comey conceded to Rep. Gowdy that that was not true. Another claim of Clinton’s, which the investigation revealed to be untrue, was that she had retained all work-related emails. Comey noted that they had uncovered “thousands” of work-related emails not returned to the State Department. “In the interest of time and because I have a plane to catch tomorrow afternoon,” Gowdy concluded after running through a catalogue of Clinton’s claims, “I’m not going to go through any more of the false statements.” But Gowdy determined that “false exculpatory statements” can be used to determine intention and consciousness of guilt.
___________________________________
Washington,
D.C.
FBI
National Press Office(202) 324-3691
July 5, 2016
Statement by FBI Director James B. Comey on the Investigation of Secretary Hillary Clinton’s Use of a Personal E-Mail System
Remarks prepared for delivery at press briefing.
Good morning.
I’m here to give you an update on the FBI’s investigation of Secretary
Clinton’s use of a personal e-mail system during her time as Secretary of
State.
After a
tremendous amount of work over the last year, the FBI is completing its
investigation and referring the case to the Department of Justice for a
prosecutive decision. What I would like to do today is tell you three things:
what we did; what we found; and what we are recommending to the Department of
Justice.
This will be
an unusual statement in at least a couple ways. First, I am going to include
more detail about our process than I ordinarily would, because I think the
American people deserve those details in a case of intense public interest.
Second, I have not coordinated or reviewed this statement in any way with the
Department of Justice or any other part of the government. They do not know
what I am about to say.
I want to
start by thanking the FBI employees who did remarkable work in this case. Once
you have a better sense of how much we have done, you will understand why I am
so grateful and proud of their efforts.
So, first,
what we have done:
The
investigation began as a referral from the Intelligence Community Inspector
General in connection with Secretary Clinton’s use of a personal e-mail server
during her time as Secretary of State. The referral focused on whether
classified information was transmitted on that personal system.
Our
investigation looked at whether there is evidence classified information was
improperly stored or transmitted on that personal system, in violation of a
federal statute making it a felony to mishandle classified information either
intentionally or in a grossly negligent way, or a second statute making it a
misdemeanor to knowingly remove classified information from appropriate systems
or storage facilities.
Consistent
with our counterintelligence responsibilities, we have also investigated to
determine whether there is evidence of computer intrusion in connection with
the personal e-mail server by any foreign power, or other hostile actors.
I have so far
used the singular term, “e-mail server,” in describing the referral that began
our investigation. It turns out to have been more complicated than that.
Secretary Clinton used several different servers and administrators of those
servers during her four years at the State Department, and used numerous mobile
devices to view and send e-mail on that personal domain. As new servers and
equipment were employed, older servers were taken out of service, stored, and
decommissioned in various ways. Piecing all of that back together—to gain as
full an understanding as possible of the ways in which personal e-mail was used
for government work—has been a painstaking undertaking, requiring thousands of
hours of effort.
For example,
when one of Secretary Clinton’s original personal servers was decommissioned in
2013, the e-mail software was removed. Doing that didn’t remove the e-mail
content, but it was like removing the frame from a huge finished jigsaw puzzle
and dumping the pieces on the floor. The effect was that millions of e-mail
fragments end up unsorted in the server’s unused—or “slack”—space. We searched
through all of it to see what was there, and what parts of the puzzle could be
put back together.
FBI
investigators have also read all of the approximately 30,000 e-mails provided
by Secretary Clinton to the State Department in December 2014. Where an e-mail
was assessed as possibly containing classified information, the FBI referred
the e-mail to any U.S. government agency that was a likely “owner” of
information in the e-mail, so that agency could make a determination as to
whether the e-mail contained classified information at the time it was sent or
received, or whether there was reason to classify the e-mail now, even if its
content was not classified at the time it was sent (that is the process
sometimes referred to as “up-classifying”).
From the group
of 30,000 e-mails returned to the State Department, 110 e-mails in 52 e-mail
chains have been determined by the owning agency to contain classified
information at the time they were sent or received. Eight of those chains
contained information that was Top Secret at the time they were sent; 36 chains
contained Secret information at the time; and eight contained Confidential
information, which is the lowest level of classification. Separate from those,
about 2,000 additional e-mails were “up-classified” to make them Confidential;
the information in those had not been classified at the time the e-mails were
sent.
The FBI also
discovered several thousand work-related e-mails that were not in the group of
30,000 that were returned by Secretary Clinton to State in 2014. We found those
additional e-mails in a variety of ways. Some had been deleted over the years
and we found traces of them on devices that supported or were connected to the
private e-mail domain. Others we found by reviewing the archived government
e-mail accounts of people who had been government employees at the same time as
Secretary Clinton, including high-ranking officials at other agencies, people
with whom a Secretary of State might naturally correspond.
This helped us
recover work-related e-mails that were not among the 30,000 produced to State.
Still others we recovered from the laborious review of the millions of e-mail
fragments dumped into the slack space of the server decommissioned in 2013.
With respect
to the thousands of e-mails we found that were not among those produced to
State, agencies have concluded that three of those were classified at the time
they were sent or received, one at the Secret level and two at the Confidential
level. There were no additional Top Secret e-mails found. Finally, none of
those we found have since been “up-classified.”
I should add
here that we found no evidence that any of the additional work-related e-mails
were intentionally deleted in an effort to conceal them. Our assessment is
that, like many e-mail users, Secretary Clinton periodically deleted e-mails or
e-mails were purged from the system when devices were changed. Because she was
not using a government account—or even a commercial account like Gmail—there
was no archiving at all of her e-mails, so it is not surprising that we
discovered e-mails that were not on Secretary Clinton’s system in 2014, when
she produced the 30,000 e-mails to the State Department.
It could also
be that some of the additional work-related e-mails we recovered were among
those deleted as “personal” by Secretary Clinton’s lawyers when they reviewed
and sorted her e-mails for production in 2014.
The lawyers
doing the sorting for Secretary Clinton in 2014 did not individually read the
content of all of her e-mails, as we did for those available to us; instead,
they relied on header information and used search terms to try to find all
work-related e-mails among the reportedly more than 60,000 total e-mails
remaining on Secretary Clinton’s personal system in 2014. It is highly likely
their search terms missed some work-related e-mails, and that we later found
them, for example, in the mailboxes of other officials or in the slack space of
a server.
It is also
likely that there are other work-related e-mails that they did not produce to
State and that we did not find elsewhere, and that are now gone because they
deleted all e-mails they did not return to State, and the lawyers cleaned their
devices in such a way as to preclude complete forensic recovery.
We have
conducted interviews and done technical examination to attempt to understand
how that sorting was done by her attorneys. Although we do not have complete
visibility because we are not able to fully reconstruct the electronic record
of that sorting, we believe our investigation has been sufficient to give us
reasonable confidence there was no intentional misconduct in connection with
that sorting effort.
And, of
course, in addition to our technical work, we interviewed many people, from
those involved in setting up and maintaining the various iterations of
Secretary Clinton’s personal server, to staff members with whom she
corresponded on e-mail, to those involved in the e-mail production to State,
and finally, Secretary Clinton herself.
Last, we have
done extensive work to understand what indications there might be of compromise
by hostile actors in connection with the personal e-mail operation.
That’s what we
have done. Now let me tell you what we found:
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,
highly classified information.
For example, seven
e-mail chains concern matters that were classified at the Top Secret/Special
Access Program level when they were sent and received. These chains involved
Secretary Clinton both sending e-mails about those matters and receiving
e-mails from others about the same matters. There is evidence to support a
conclusion that any reasonable person in Secretary Clinton’s position, or in
the position of those government employees with whom she was corresponding
about these matters, should have known that an unclassified system was no place
for that conversation. In addition to this highly sensitive information, we
also found information that was properly classified as Secret by the U.S.
Intelligence Community at the time it was discussed on e-mail (that is, excluding
the later “up-classified” e-mails).
None of these
e-mails should have been on any kind of unclassified system, but their presence
is especially concerning because all of these e-mails were housed on
unclassified personal servers not even supported by full-time security staff,
like those found at Departments and Agencies of the U.S. Government—or even
with a commercial service like Gmail.
Separately, it
is important to say something about the marking of classified information. Only
a very small number of the e-mails containing classified information bore
markings indicating the presence of classified information. But even if
information is not marked “classified” in an e-mail, participants who know or
should know that the subject matter is classified are still obligated to
protect it.
While not the
focus of our investigation, we also developed evidence that the security
culture of the State Department in general, and with respect to use of
unclassified e-mail systems in particular, was generally lacking in the kind of
care for classified information found elsewhere in the government.
With respect
to potential computer intrusion by hostile actors, we did not find direct
evidence that Secretary Clinton’s personal e-mail domain, in its various
configurations since 2009, was successfully hacked. But, given the nature of
the system and of the actors potentially involved, we assess that we would be
unlikely to see such direct evidence. We do assess that hostile actors gained
access to the private commercial e-mail accounts of people with whom Secretary
Clinton was in regular contact from her personal account. We also assess that
Secretary Clinton’s use of a personal e-mail domain was both known by a large
number of people and readily apparent. She also used her personal e-mail
extensively while outside the United States, including sending and receiving
work-related e-mails in the territory of sophisticated adversaries. Given that
combination of factors, we assess it is possible that hostile actors gained
access to Secretary Clinton’s personal e-mail account.
So that’s what
we found. Finally, with respect to our recommendation to the Department of
Justice:
In our system,
the prosecutors make the decisions about whether charges are appropriate based
on evidence the FBI has helped collect. Although we don’t normally make public
our recommendations to the prosecutors, we frequently make recommendations and
engage in productive conversations with prosecutors about what resolution may
be appropriate, given the evidence. In this case, given the importance of the
matter, I think unusual transparency is in order.
Although there
is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of
classified information, our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would
bring such a case. Prosecutors necessarily weigh a number of factors before
bringing charges. There are obvious considerations, like the strength of the
evidence, especially regarding intent. Responsible decisions also consider the
context of a person’s actions, and how similar situations have been handled in
the past.
In looking
back at our investigations into mishandling or removal of classified
information, we cannot find a case that would support bringing criminal charges
on these facts. All the cases prosecuted involved some combination of: clearly
intentional and willful mishandling of classified information; or vast
quantities of materials exposed in such a way as to support an inference of
intentional misconduct; or indications of disloyalty to the United States; or
efforts to obstruct justice. We do not see those things here.
To be clear,
this is not to suggest that in similar circumstances, a person who engaged in
this activity would face no consequences. To the contrary, those individuals
are often subject to security or administrative sanctions. But that is not what
we are deciding now.
As a result,
although the Department of Justice makes final decisions on matters like this,
we are expressing to Justice our view that no charges are appropriate in this
case.
I know there
will be intense public debate in the wake of this recommendation, as there was
throughout this investigation. What I can assure the American people is that
this investigation was done competently, honestly, and independently. No outside
influence of any kind was brought to bear.
I know there
were many opinions expressed by people who were not part of the
investigation—including people in government—but none of that mattered to us.
Opinions are irrelevant, and they were all uninformed by insight into our
investigation, because we did the investigation the right way. Only facts
matter, and the FBI found them here in an entirely apolitical and professional
way. I couldn’t be prouder to be part of this organization.
