FBI Director James Comey spokes Tuesday morning regarding the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s misuse of her private emails.
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Comey said that investigators found that at the time, there were 110 emails in 52 email chains that were determined to be classified information at the time. Eight of those chains were determined to be top secret. Two thousand of Clinton’s emails were then up-classified to confidential at a later date.
According to Comey, “The FBI discovered several thousand work-related emails that were not among the group of 30,000 emails returned by Secretary Clinton to State in 2014.” Three of those emails were determined by agencies to be classified.
Comey added that it is likely that there are other work related emails that are now gone and could not be found by the FBI.
Comey added that even though there was no direct evidence that Clinton’s private emails were hacked it is likely that hostile actors could have hacked her private email account. He also said that Clinton and her team were “extremely careless” with highly classified information.
“Seven email chains concerned matters that were classified at the top secret special access program at the time they were sent and received,” Comey said. Clinton or those with she was responding with “should have known an unclassified was no place for that conversation,” he added.
“All of these emails were housed on unclassified personal servers not even supported by full time security staff like those found at agencies and departments of the United States government, or even with a commercial email service like Gmail,” Comey said.
Comey recommended that no charges be brought up against Hillary Clinton over the use of her private email server.
Clinton’s private email scandal draws similar comparisons to that of a case of a Navy Sailor who allegedly mishandled classified information. Petty Officer First Class Kristian Saucier plead guilty to mishandling classified information after using his cell phone to take photographs inside the engine room of the nuclear submarine in which he worked in, the USS Alexandria, and then destroying a laptop, a memory card, and a camera after finding out he was under investigation. His guilty plea could land him up to six years in prison and could face a maximum of 30 years for all of the charges brought up against him.
Hillary Clinton was interviewed for three and a half hours Saturday as a part of the FBI investigation probing into her use of private email accounts while Secretary of State.
