Analysis: For Clinton, character questions likely to persist
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The FBI may have spared Hillary Clinton the worst in wrapping up its investigation into her use of email as secretary of state. But the way in which Director James Comey did so makes it unlikely criticism of her judgment and character will fade before Election Day.
Giving little indication he was about to clear Clinton of wrongdoing, Comey on Tuesday delivered a blistering assessment of the Democratic nominee’s missteps in using a personal email account run on private servers.
The FBI determined Clinton sent and received classified information on her private email set-up, he said, contradicting her months of public assurances she had not. He added that agents found “several thousand work-related emails” that Clinton’s attorneys failed to turn over, and went on to raise the prospect that people hostile to the U.S. had snooped on her account.
“Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of the classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information,” Comey said Tuesday in a rare public airing of a months-long investigation.