05 July 2016•Update: 06 July 2016
By Canberk Yuksel
NEW YORK
A federal investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a personal email account while she was secretary of state on Tuesday recommended that no criminal charges be brought against her.
FBI Director James Comey said there was no “clear evidence” the likely Democratic presidential nominee or her aides intended to break the law during her 2009 to 2013 tenure but said they had been “extremely careless” in handling classified information.
“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,” he said in a statement.
He added: “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.”
The FBI found that 110 emails contained classified information. At least eight email conversations contained “top secret” information and 36 were classified “secret”, the agency said.
There was no evidence of successful hacking but the FBI said it was possible that “hostile actors gained access to Secretary Clinton’s personal email account”.
The FBI interviewed Clinton on Saturday about her private emails.
Attorney General Loretta Lynch said last week she would follow the recommendations of FBI investigation, which began last August, to determine whether to press charges against Clinton.
Clinton’s use of private email has become an issue of the presidential election and Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump described the decision not to prosecute her as “very unfair”.
