Mr. Comey’s 15-minute announcement, delivered with no advance warning three days after his investigators interviewed Mrs. Clinton in the case, riveted official Washington and is likely to reverberate for the rest of the campaign.
Mr. Comey rebuked Mrs. Clinton as being “extremely careless” in using a private email address and server. He raised questions about her judgment, contradicted statements she has made about her email practices, said it was possible that hostile foreign governments had gained access to her account, and declared that a person still employed by the government [Mrs. Clinton left the State Department in 2013] could have faced disciplinary action for doing what she did.
Of 30,000 emails handed over, 110 contained information that was classified. Of those, Mr. Comey said, “a very small number” bore markings that identified them as classified. This finding is at odds with Mrs. Clinton’s repeated assertions that none of the emails were classified at the time she sent or received them.
The F.B.I. discovered “several thousand” work-related emails that were not in the original trove of 30,000 turned over to the State Department.
In saying that it was “possible” that hostile foreign governments had gained access to Mrs. Clinton’s personal account, Mr. Comey noted that she used her mobile device extensively while traveling outside the United States, including trips “in the territory of sophisticated adversaries.”
Just a thought.
Just a thought.