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FBI
Investigation
of Secretary Hillary Clinton E-Mails
Remarks prepared for delivery at press briefing
FBI Director James B. Comey
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.
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