The FBI won’t recommend criminal charges against Hillary Clinton for her<\/p>\n
use of a private email server while secretary of state, agency Director
\nJames Comey said Tuesday, lifting a major legal threat to her presidential
\ncampaign.<\/p>\n
Comey’s decision almost certainly brings the legal part of the issue to a
\nclose and removes the threat of criminal charges. Attorney General Loretta
\nLynch said last week that she would accept the recommendations of the FBI
\ndirector and of career prosecutors.<\/p>\n
“No charges are appropriate in this case,” Comey said in making his
\nannouncement.<\/p>\n
But Comey made that statement after he delivered a blistering review of
\nClinton’s actions, saying the FBI found that 110 emails were sent or
\nreceived on Clinton’s server containing classified information. He said
\nClinton and her aides were “extremely careless” and added that it was
\npossible that people hostile to the U.S. had gained access to her personal
\nemail account.<\/p>\n
Yet he added that after looking at similar circumstances, the agency
\nbelieved that “no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case.”<\/p>\n
The announcement came three days after the FBI interviewed Clinton for
\nhours in a final step of its yearlong investigation into the possible
\nmishandling of classified information.<\/p>\n
Though his recommendation apparently ends the legal threat, it’s unlikely
\nto wipe away many voters’ concerns about Clinton’s trustworthiness. And it
\nprobably won’t stop Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, who
\nhas called for criminal charges, from continuing to make the server a
\ncampaign issue.<\/p>\n
Clnton’s personal email server, which she relied on exclusively for
\ngovernment and personal business, has dogged her campaign since The
\nAssociated Press revealed its existence in March 2015.<\/p>\n
She has repeatedly said that no email she sent or received was marked
\nclassified, but the Justice Department began investigating last summer
\nfollowing a referral from the inspectors general for the State Department
\nand the intelligence community.<\/p>\n
The scrutiny was compounded by a critical audit in May from the State
\nDepartment’s inspector general, the agency’s internal watchdog, which said
\nthat Clinton and her team ignored clear warnings from department officials
\nthat her email setup violated federal standards and could leave sensitive
\nmaterial vulnerable to hackers. Clinton declined to talk to the inspector
\ngeneral, but the audit said that she had feared “the personal being
\naccessible” if she used a government email account.<\/p>\n
The Clinton campaign said agents interviewed her this past Saturday for
\nthree and one-half hours at FBI headquarters. Agents had earlier
\ninterviewed top Clinton aides including her former State Department chief
\nof staff, Cheryl Mills, and Huma Abedin, a longtime aide who now is the
\nvice chairwoman of Clinton’s campaign.<\/p>\n
Lynch on Friday said that she would accept whatever findings and
\nrecommendations were presented to her. Though she said she had already
\nsettled on that process, her statement came days after an impromptu
\nmeeting with Bill Clinton on her airplane in Phoenix that she acknowledged
\nhad led to questions about the neutrality of the investigation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The FBI won’t recommend criminal charges against Hillary Clinton for her use of a private email server while secretary of state, agency Director James Comey said Tuesday, lifting a major…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":50926,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50925","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\n