The Hillary Clinton email controversy was a major news story in 2015 and 2016. The controversy began when it was discovered that Clinton, then the Secretary of State, had used a private email account for official business.
Clinton claimed that she had turned over all work-related emails to the State Department, but an investigation by the FBI found that she had deleted over 33,000 emails from her private server. These emails were later recovered by the FBI.
The investigation, led by FBI Director James Comey, found that Clinton had not intentionally sought to delete or conceal emails, but had used a software program to automatically delete emails older than 30 days.
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Security and Investigation
In September 2015, FBI investigators were engaged in sorting messages recovered from the server, and by November 2015, the FBI expanded its inquiry to examine whether Clinton or her aides jeopardized national security secrets.
The State Department and Intelligence Community (IC) inspector generals' discovery of four emails containing classified information prompted a security referral to the FBI's counterintelligence office in July 2015. Clinton agreed to turn over her email server to the U.S. Department of Justice and thumb drives containing copies of her work-related emails.
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Clinton's IT contractors turned over her personal email server to the FBI on August 12, 2015, as well as thumb drives containing copies of her emails, but emails and all other data stored on the server had been erased prior to the device being turned over to the authorities.
U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan stated that Hillary Clinton's actions of maintaining a private email server were in direct conflict with U.S. government policy in August 2015. Clinton's server was configured to allow users to connect openly from the Internet and control it remotely using Microsoft's Remote Desktop Services.
Threat monitoring software on the server blocked at least five hacking attempts originating in Germany, China, and South Korea in 2014. According to Pagliano, security logs of Clinton's email server showed no evidence of successful hacking.
FBI Director James Comey later stated in a congressional hearing that Guccifer admitted his claim of hacking Clinton's server was a lie. The FBI investigation found that 110 messages contained information that was classified at the time it was sent, including 65 emails classified as "Secret" and 22 classified as "Top Secret".
Clinton personally wrote 104 of the 2,093 emails that were retroactively found to contain information classified as "confidential".
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Encryption and Security
Security experts believe that Hillary Clinton's emails to and from her private server were at risk of hacking and foreign surveillance. Chris Soghoian, a security expert, thinks that her server had "amateur hour" vulnerabilities.
For the first two months after Clinton was appointed Secretary of State, transmissions to and from her server were not encrypted. A digital certificate was obtained on March 29, 2009, which would have permitted encryption.
Former Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency Michael T. Flynn, former United States Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, and former deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency Michael Morell have said that it is likely that foreign governments were able to access the information on Clinton's server.
Michael Hayden, former Director of the National Security Agency, Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence, and Director of the Central Intelligence Agency said "I would lose all respect for a whole bunch of foreign intelligence agencies if they weren't sitting back, paging through the emails."
The State Department and Intelligence Community inspector generals' discovery of four emails containing classified information prompted a security referral to the FBI's counterintelligence office.
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Inspector General Report
The Inspector General Report was a critical part of the investigation into Hillary Clinton's email server.
In July 2015, the Inspectors General of the Intelligence Community and the Department of State made a security referral to the FBI's counterintelligence office, alerting authorities that classified information was being kept on Clinton's server and by her lawyer on a thumb drive.
The referral was not a criminal referral, but rather a security referral made for counterintelligence purposes. Clinton's IT contractors turned over her personal email server to the FBI on August 12, 2015, as well as thumb drives containing copies of her emails.
Clinton's lawyer David E. Kendall stated that emails, and all other data stored on the server, had been erased prior to the device being turned over to the authorities.
The State Department and Intelligence Community (IC) inspector generals' discovery of four emails containing classified information, out of a random sample of 40, prompted them to make the security referral.
The FBI's Midyear investigation, also known as "Midyear Exam", was launched to examine whether Clinton or her aides jeopardized national security secrets.
The investigation found that Clinton's emails did include messages with some paragraphs marked with a "(c)" for "Confidential."
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Senate Probes Lynch Interference
In June 2017, the Senate Intelligence Committee heard testimony from former FBI Director James Comey, who revealed that then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch had asked him to downplay the Clinton email investigation.
Lynch's request was to refer to the investigation as a "matter" rather than an investigation, which concerned Comey.
Several members of the Senate Judiciary Committee opened a bipartisan inquiry into Lynch's potential interference in the FBI probe.
The inquiry was launched on June 23, 2017, to investigate whether Lynch had improperly influenced the investigation.
The State Department resumed its review of the Clinton email case on July 7, 2016, after the Justice Department investigation was completed.
The review found 588 security violations, with 38 current and former State Department officials potentially facing punishment.
The investigation concluded that Clinton's use of a personal email server increased the risk of compromising State Department information.
There was no evidence of systemic, deliberate mishandling of classified information, although Clinton's email practices were still found to be problematic.
FBI Investigation and Findings
The FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton's email controversy began in September 2015, as investigators sorted through messages recovered from the server.
In November 2015, the FBI expanded its inquiry to examine whether Clinton or her aides had jeopardized national security secrets.
The FBI's investigation led to a review of emails from Anthony Weiner's computer, which was complete by November 6, 2016.
FBI Director James Comey issued a letter to Congress on that day, stating that the review did not change the FBI's previous conclusion that there was no prosecutable offense committed by Clinton or her team of advisers.
Clinton campaign communications director Jen Palmieri expressed relief that the matter was resolved, saying she was "glad this matter is resolved."
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Public Response and Reaction
The public response to Comey's announcement was overwhelmingly negative. Democrats and some Republicans were critical of the timing, which was less than two weeks before a presidential election.
Clinton called Comey's actions "unprecedented" and "deeply troubling" at an organizing event in Daytona Beach. Her campaign launched a fierce attack on Comey, accusing him of providing selective information that allowed partisans to distort the truth.
The wider Democratic establishment also weighed in, with four senators demanding a briefing from Comey and nearly 100 former Department of Justice officials and prosecutors, including the former Obama attorney general Eric Holder, signing a letter criticizing Comey's decision.
Public Statements (May–July 2016)
In May 2016, FBI Director James Comey said he was "not familiar with the term 'security inquiry'" as the Clinton campaign was characterizing the probe.
The FBI was indeed conducting an investigation, and Comey noted that he didn't publicly contradict Clinton's characterization of the investigation as a "security inquiry" while it was underway.
It was later revealed that the FBI had opened a criminal investigation on July 10, 2015, after receiving a "criminal referral", although they initially issued a public statement downplaying it as a referral related to the potential compromise of classified information.
In late June 2016, Bill Clinton met privately with Attorney General Loretta Lynch on her private plane, sparking criticism that Lynch should recuse herself from involvement in the FBI's investigation of the email case.
Lynch defended the meeting, stating it was "primarily social" and that there was no discussion of the FBI's investigation, but she also acknowledged that the FBI was investigating whether Clinton or others broke the law by setting up a private email server.
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On July 1, 2016, the New York Times reported that Attorney General Loretta Lynch would accept the recommendation of career prosecutors and the FBI director on whether to bring charges related to Clinton's personal email server.
Clinton maintained she did not send or receive any confidential emails from her personal server, stating in a Democratic debate on February 4, 2016, that "I never sent or received any classified material."
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Democratic Response
The Democratic Response to the Email Issue was quite telling.
Many Democrats, including former governor of Pennsylvania Edward G. Rendell, expressed frustration with Clinton's handling of the email issue, feeling that the campaign should have gotten ahead of it earlier.
Rendell noted that the campaign was "left just playing defense."
Some prominent Democrats, like Governor Dannel P. Malloy of Connecticut, were less concerned, attributing the attacks to the early stage of the campaign.
At the October 2015 primary debate, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont defended Clinton, saying that the American people were "sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails!"
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Sanders later clarified that he thought Clinton's emails were a "very serious issue", but Americans wanted to discuss real issues like paid family and medical leave.
The phrase "But her emails!" became a meme during and following the 2016 election, often used in a joking or mocking way to the perceived damage done by the Trump administration.
Republican Response
The Republican Response to the email releases was swift and vocal. Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus called for Hillary Clinton to release her secret server for an independent investigation.
Trey Gowdy vowed to press the State Department for a fuller accounting of Clinton's emails after the Benghazi panel retrieved 15 additional emails to Sidney Blumenthal that the department had not provided to the committee.
Republican Senators Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson, chairmen of the Senate Judiciary and Homeland Security committees, respectively, said they would seek an independent review of the deleted emails, if they were recovered from Clinton's server, to determine if there were any government-related items among those deleted.
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Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State
The case of Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State was a major development in the Hillary Clinton email controversy.
In 2014, Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group, filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for emails sent and received by Clinton during her time as Secretary of State.
The State Department failed to respond to the FOIA request within the required time frame, prompting Judicial Watch to sue the agency in federal court.
The lawsuit alleged that the State Department was in violation of FOIA by failing to produce documents related to Clinton's emails.
In 2015, a federal judge ordered the State Department to search for and produce Clinton's emails, but the agency claimed it had already done so.
However, further investigation revealed that the State Department had not fully searched for Clinton's emails, leading to a second court order for the agency to conduct a more thorough search.
The State Department ultimately produced 44,000 pages of Clinton's emails in 2015, but many of the emails were heavily redacted.
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Email Content and Analysis
The FBI investigation found that 110 messages contained information that was classified at the time it was sent, with 65 of those emails containing information classified as "Secret" and more than 20 containing "Top-Secret" information.
Clinton personally wrote 104 of the 2,093 emails that were retroactively found to contain information classified as "confidential." Of the remaining emails that were classified after they were sent, Clinton aide Jake Sullivan wrote the most, at 215.
The State Department retroactively marked 2,093 email chains on the server as classified, with 65 as "Secret" and 22 as "Top Secret."
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Domain and Email
The domain names clintonemail.com, wjcoffice.com, and presidentclinton.com were registered to Eric Hoteham, with the home of Clinton and her husband in Chappaqua, New York, as the contact address.
These domain names were pointed to a private email server that Clinton used to send and receive email, which was purchased and installed in the Clintons' home for her 2008 presidential campaign.
The email server was located in the Clintons' home in Chappaqua, New York, from January 2009 until 2013.
The server itself runs a Microsoft Exchange 2010 server with access to emails over the internet being delivered by Outlook Web App.
The web page is secured with a TLS certificate to allow information to be transmitted securely when using the website.
For the first two months of its use, however, the web page was reportedly not secured with a TLS certificate, meaning that information transmitted using the service was unencrypted and may have been vulnerable to interception.
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Email Classified Info
Hillary Clinton's emails contained classified information, with 110 messages found to have information classified at the time it was sent.
The FBI investigation revealed that 65 of those emails contained information classified as "Secret", and more than 20 contained "Top-Secret" information.
Clinton personally wrote 104 of the 2,093 emails that were retroactively found to contain information classified as "confidential."
The State Department marked 2,093 email chains as classified, with 65 as "Secret" and 22 as "Top Secret."
The meaning of "classified" was disputed during the investigation, with some arguing that information acquired and considered "owned" by intelligence agencies was also independently and publicly available through "parallel reporting."
Assistant Secretary of State Julia Frifield noted that the fact that some information may have been available through intelligence channels does not mean it's necessarily classified.
Clinton claimed she didn't send or receive classified material, but the FBI found that three emails were marked as classified, although they lacked classified headers.
It's possible Clinton wasn't aware of the meaning of those markings, given her lack of technical sophistication, according to Comey.
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Timeline and Key Events
In 2014, the State Department asked Hillary Clinton to turn over all her non-personal emails from her time as secretary, and she handed over 55,000 pages of emails late in the year.
The congressional committee investigating the Benghazi attack asked the State Department for all relevant emails, prompting the State Department to request Clinton's non-personal emails.
In mid-February 2014, Clinton handed over more than 300 emails to the House committee investigating the Benghazi, Libya, consulate attack.
In July 2015, the State Department and Intelligence Community inspector generals made a security referral to the FBI's counterintelligence office, alerting authorities that classified information was being kept on Clinton's server.
Clinton agreed to turn over her email server to the U.S. Department of Justice, as well as thumb drives containing copies of her work-related emails.
Clinton's IT contractors turned over her personal email server to the FBI on August 12, 2015, along with thumb drives containing copies of her emails.
The emails, and all other data stored on the server, had been erased prior to the device being turned over to the authorities.
In March 2015, the New York Times reported on Clinton's use of a private email address, which became public knowledge.
Clinton's team insisted she acted in the spirit of the laws governing email use.
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After growing pressure, Clinton asked the State Department to release her emails, but the State Department said the emails would not be released for "several months" due to the labor required to review them.
At a March 2015 news conference, Clinton said she had handed over all her work-related emails, totaling roughly 55,000 printed pages.
Will Events Affect the Election?
As the news about the FBI's intervention in the Hillary Clinton email controversy broke, many people wondered if this event would affect the election result. More than 23 million people have already voted, which is a significant number.
The current polls suggest that Hillary Clinton still has a three-point lead over Trump, according to a Politico/Morning Consult poll conducted after Comey's intervention. This lead might be enough to cushion the impact of the controversy.
However, it's worth noting that the candidate dominating the headlines tends to see their poll ratings go down. This could potentially affect tight races for the House and Senate.
Only 1% of Clinton supporters were less likely to vote for her after the announcement, according to a CBS/YouGov survey of likely voters across 13 battleground states. This is a relatively small number.
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