The FBI on Friday released documents related to its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server when she was secretary of state — including its summary of the agency’s interview with Clinton regarding the server in July.
The release comes after the FBI had concluded in July that it would not recommend charges against Clinton for the email server — which has been the target of GOP attacks — even as FBI Director James Comey said the practices of Clinton and her staff were “extremely careless” when it came handling to classified documents. The FBI turned over its investigative materials to various congressional panels, which prompted the Clinton campaign to press for the documents’ full release, rather than see them leaked by GOP lawmakers.
The release includes both the FBI’s notes of Clinton’s interview with the agency, as well as a summary of the broader investigation. Both documents include redactions.
The investigation summary details the FBI’s findings regarding when and how the server was set up, who knew about Clinton’s use of it, what emails were sent from it and what decisions were made regarding deleting emails and cleaning the server.
The summary said that Clinton “never deleted, nor did she instruct anyone to delete, her email to avoid complying with the Federal Records Act, FOIA, or State or FBI requests for information.” The summary added that Clinton had tasked her legal team with seeing to it she complied with official requests to preserve her emails.
It delves into her use of Blackberry phones and other mobile devices to read her email, and also details where and how she used those devices to conduct her official State business.
The summary also examines the considerations Clinton took — or more notably, did not take — in determining whether the use of the private email server was appropriate under State Department guidelines. The investigation summary notes her correspondence with former Secretary of State Colin Powell, in which he suggested she should keep quiet about her use of the private server.
The investigation paid considerable attention to the presence of classified emails on the private server, as well as whether Clinton and her staff knew that the private server was being inappropriately used to handle classified materials.
The summary assess the potential for the server to be compromised, as well as the steps taken to protect it from any attacks. The FBI said it was “aware” of “known vulnerabilities” associated with the protocol that was used, but said it had found no evidence that it had been compromised by a cyber attacks. The agency said it could not make a conclusive determination whether Clinton’s emails were comprised because it did not access to the 13 mobile devices from which the emails could have been sent.
Read the documents below:
