Category Archives: FBI

To POTUS/FBI: Hillary was not Sloppy, She was Calculated

Posted on by

Media preview

If you think the FBI Director Comey’s press conference about Hillary’s server/email system was bad, well his responses to questions before the emergency session of the Oversight Committee was profoundly epic in a full criminal indictment of Hillary and her actions.

There is a schedule where Attorney General, Loretta Lynch is to testify before the same committee next week. Additionally, it was noted that the FBI wont comment if it is investigating the Clinton Foundation.

It came out too that once a lifelong registered Republican, Comey is no longer. Of particular note, during the Saturday session with 6 agents of the FBI, Hillary was not under oath and Director Comey did not participate.

Directly after the question and answer session with James Comey, the hearing continued with Charles McCullough, he is the Intelligence Community (ODNI) Inspector General and with Steve Linik, Inspector General.

Snippets for your review:

Comey Testifies Clinton Email Claims ‘not true’ at Heated Hill Hearing

FNC: FBI Director James Comey testified Thursday that Hillary Clinton’s claims — some made under oath — about her use of a private email server were “not true,” fueling Republican questions about whether in doing so she committed a felony.

Comey was asked about such claims, which she also made publicly, in a pointed exchange with Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C.

“That’s not true. … There was classified material emailed,” Comey said.

On her claim that she used one device, Comey also said, “She used multiple devices.” More here from FNC

Here is an amazing 6 minute exchange:

Comey: Clinton showed classified intel to people with no security clearance

WashingtonExaminer: FBI Director James Comey said Thursday that Hillary Clinton’s personal server network exposed classified information to people who did not have the security clearances to access that material.

“There’s no doubt that uncleared people had access to the server,” Comey said during a congressional hearing.

While he did not provide an exact number of individuals, he said between two and 10 people with no authority to handle classified information were able to look at classified documents on Clinton’s server.

The exposure occurred when personal attorneys for Clinton were tasked with sifting through the former secretary of state’s emails to select the records that Clinton would turn over to the State Department.

“Did Hillary Clinton give non-cleared people access to classified information?” asked Rep. Jason Chaffetz, chairman of the House Oversight Committee.

“Yes,” Comey said.

*****

Chaffetz: We Will Refer Hillary Clinton to the FBI for Perjury

Breitbart: Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), chair of the House Committee on Government Oversight and Reform, told FBI director James Comey during his testimony on Thursday morning that the committee would refer former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for investigation for perjury, given that she lied under oath before the House Select Committee on Benghazi in October.

“You’ll have one,” Chaffetz said, within “a few hours,” after Comey testified that the FBI would need a referral for Congress before investigating.

As Breitbart News detailed earlier this week, Clinton lied under oath to Congress in at least three ways: first, by stating that she had turned over “all my work related emails” from her private email server to the government; second, by insisting there was “nothing marked classified on my e-mails”; and third, by telling the committee that her attorneys “went through every single e-mail.” FBI director James Comey’s statement Tuesday suggested that none of those sworn statements were true.

Bill introduced to take away Hillary Clinton’s security clearance

KRDO: WASHINGTON, D.C. – Senator Cory Gardner (R-CO) and Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-TX) are introducing a bill to revoke Hillary Clinton’s security clearance, as well as the security clearances of Clinton’s colleagues at the State Department.

The bill is called the Taking Responsibility Using Secured Technologies (TRUST) Act of 2016.

This comes after the FBI investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server during her time as Secretary of State.

This week, FBI Director James Comey announced that he is not recommending any charges in the case.

“The FBI’s investigation into Secretary Clinton’s personal e-mail server confirmed what Americans across the country already know: Secretary Clinton recklessly accessed classified information on an insecure system – establishing a vulnerable and highly desirable target for foreign hackers,” said Gardner. “If the FBI won’t recommend action based on its findings, Congress will. At the very least, Secretary Clinton should not have access to classified information and our bill makes sure of it.”

Lastly:

 

 

Willful Blindness and DHS Policy CVE Grant Program

Posted on by

Philip B. Haney, a founding member, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Customs & Border Protection (CBP) and author of the must-read book See Something, Say Nothing

Last week I testified before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Oversight, Agency Action, Federal Rights and Federal Courts at a hearing entitled, “Willful Blindness: Consequences of Agency Efforts To Deemphasize Radical Islam in Combating Terrorism.”

Philip Haney/Breitbart: I am a recently retired Customs & Border Protection (CBP) agent. I was named a Founding Member of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) at its inception on March 01, 2003. During my 12 years serving inside DHS under two administrations, I witnessed a series of events which ultimately prompted me to become a whistleblower, releasing critical documents to Members of Congress as I felt necessary to comply with my oath to the Constitution.

First, in January of 2008, I received what is now known as the “Words Matter Memo,” which was circulated internally by the Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (CRCL) division of DHS. The full title of the document was “Terminology to Define the Terrorists: Recommendations from American Muslims,” and it read in part:

 [T]he experts counseled caution in using terms such as, “jihadist,” “Islamic terrorist,” “Islamist,” and “holy warrior” as grandiose descriptions.

Collapsing all terrorist organizations into a single enemy feeds the narrative that al-Qaeda represents Muslims worldwide.

We should not concede the terrorists’ claim that they are legitimate adherents of Islam. Therefore, when using the word [Islamic], it may be strategic to emphasize that many so-called “Islamic” terrorist groups twist and exploit the tenets of Islam to justify violence and to serve their own selfish political aims.

Regarding jihad, even if it is accurate to reference the term (putting aside polemics on its true nature), it may not be strategic because it glamorizes terrorism, imbues terrorists with religious authority they do not have, and damages relations with Muslims around the globe.

I submitted a seven-point response listing serious substantive concerns about this memo, but received no response.

On November 24, 2008, a decision came down in the Holy Land Foundation (HLF) trial, the largest terror financing case in American history. During that trial, the federal government had established that a number of organizations were appropriately named as unindicted co-conspirators along with HLF, including the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), and the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT).

Specifically, the judge ruled that federal prosecutors had “produced ample evidence to establish the associations of CAIR, ISNA and NAIT with HLF… and with Hamas.” In addition, the judge ruled that that these organizations had direct links to the Muslim Brotherhood, one of the oldest and largest Islamic fundamentalist organizations in the world, founded in 1928 in Egypt to reestablish the Caliphate, whose motto includes “Jihad is our way, and death in the service of Allah is the loftiest of our wishes.”

I made note of the decision, and explored links between these groups and potential extremist and terrorist activity. But on October 15, 2009, I was ordered by DHS to ‘modify’ linking information in about 820 subject records in the Treasury Enforcement Communications System, or “TECS records” to remove ‘unauthorized references to terrorism.’ I was further ordered not to input any more Memoranda of Information Received, or MOIRs, to create no more TECS records, and to do no further research on the topics I was exploring.

On November 5, 2009, at Ft. Hood, Texas, Nidal Hasan shot and killed 13 people, including one who was pregnant, and wounded 32 others, while calling out “Allahu akbar!” meaning “God is great” in Arabic.

Hassan was a U.S. Army major who had exchanged emails with leading al Qaeda figure Anwar Awlaki – which the FBI had seen and decided not to take action – in which he asked whether those attacking fellow U.S. soldiers were martyrs. He had also given a presentation to Army doctors discussing Islam and suicide bombers during which he argued Muslims should be allowed to leave the armed forces as conscientious objectors to avoid “adverse events.” The Pentagon refused for five years to grant victims Purple Hearts, designating the attack “workplace violence.”

On January 27-28, 2010 an ‘Inaugural Meeting’ occurred between American Muslim leaders and DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano, hosted by DHS CRCL. The Inaugural Meeting created controversy because it included a number of Islamic fundamentalist individuals and organizations.

For instance, the meeting included at least one organization that was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the 2008 HLF Trial and established to have associations with the now-shuttered HLF and with Hamas, namely ISNA. According to the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT), the group’s representative who attended the meeting, Ingrid Mattson, has “an established pattern of minimizing the nature of extremist forms of Islam and rationalizing the actions of Islamist terrorist movements.” Another invited group, the Muslim American Society (MAS), was actually formed as the United States chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1993.

Likewise, in the Spring of 2010, the Administration convened the Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) Working Group under the authority of the Homeland Security Advisory Council (HSAC), again raising questions because of those named to it.

They included Omar Alomari, who once wrote that jihad was “the benign pursuit of personal betterment. It may be applied to physical conflict for Muslims, but only in the arena of Muslims defending themselves when attacked or when attempting to overthrow oppression and occupation,” asserting further that “”Jihad as a holy war is a European invention, spread in the West”; Mohamed Elibiary, who has asserted that it was “inevitable that [the] ‘Caliphate’ returns” and ultimately was let go from the HSAC amid charges he misused classified documents; and Dahlia Mogahed, who has decried “lethal cocktail of liberty and capitalism” and holds that “Islamic terrorism’ is really a contradiction in terms” to mainstream Muslims “because terrorism is not Islamic by definition.”

So by the Spring of 2010, we had come to the point that a CBP Officer was literally removing information connecting the dots on individuals with ties to known terror-linked groups from TECS, while the Administration was bringing the same individuals into positions of influence, to help create and implement our counter-terror policy, in the context of actual terror attacks taking place.

On August 30, 2011, the DHS Chief Council approved a project I initiated looking into Islamic fundamentalist group Tablighi Jamaat (TJ). On November 15, 2011, I began a temporary duty assignment at the National Targeting Center (NTC). A short time later, I was assigned to the Advanced Targeting Team, where I worked exclusively on the TJ Project, which was quickly upgraded to a global-level case.

On March 15, 2012, seven lawyers and three senior executive service (SES) administrators met with management personnel at the NTC to express concern for our focus on TJ, because it is not a designated terrorist group, and therefore the project might be “discriminating” against its members because they are Muslim. On June-July, 2012, the TJ Initiative was ‘taken in another direction,’ (i.e. shut down). The Administration took this action despite the fact that [1] in nine months, we had conducted 1,200 law enforcement actions, [2] I was formally commended for finding 300 individuals with possible connections to terrorism, and [3] 25% of the individuals in Guantanamo Bay had known links to Tablighi Jamaat.

On August 22, 2012, The Institute of Islamic Education (IIE) case that today links both the Darul Uloom Al-Islamiya mosque attended by Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik, the San Bernardino shooters, and the Fort Pierce mosque attended by Omar Mateen, the Orlando shooter, was entered into TECS. But once again, on September 21, 2012, all 67 records in the IIE case were completely deleted (not just ‘modified’) from TECS.

On September 21, 2014, I was relieved of my service weapon, all access to TECS and other programs was suspended, my Secret Clearance was revoked, and I was sequestered for the last 11 months of my career with no assigned duties.

On December 2, 2015, the San Bernardino shootings occurred, and I immediately linked the mosque in San Bernardino to the IIE case (with the 67 deleted records), and to the Tablighi Jamaat case (which was shut down).

On June 09, 2016, the Homeland Security Advisory Council Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) Subcommittee issued an Interim Report and Recommendations. The report recommended in part using American English instead of religious, legal and cultural terms like “jihad,” “sharia,” “takfir” or “umma.”

On June 12, 2016, the shootings in Orlando occurred, and I linked Omar Mateen’s mosque in Fort Pierce, FL to the IIE & TJ case. And on June 19, 2016, Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced that her Department of Justice would release redacted 9-11 call transcripts for Mr. Mateen.

The threat of Islamic terrorism does not just come from a network of armed organizations such as Hamas and ISIS, who are operating ‘over there’ in the Middle East. In fact, branches of the same global network have been established here in America, and they are operating in plain sight, at least to those of us who have been charged with the duty of protecting our country from threats, both foreign and domestic.

The threat we face today, which continues growing despite the willful blindness of those who insist on pretending otherwise, is not “violent extremism,” “terrorism,” or even “Jihad” alone, but rather, the historical and universally recognized Islamic strategic goal of implementing Shariah law everywhere in the world, so that no other form of government (including the U.S. Constitution) is able to oppose its influence over the lives of those who must either submit to its authority, become second-class citizens, or perish.

Ignoring that reality has arguably cost at least the lives of those in Ft. Hood, San Bernardino and Orlando, and will cost many, many more if it is allowed to continue.

FY 2016 Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) Grant Program

Department of Homeland Security: In December, 2015, Congress passed the Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, 2016 (Public Law 114-113). Sec. 543 of the Act and the accompanying Joint Explanatory Statement provided $10 million for a “countering violent extremism (CVE) initiative to help states and local communities prepare for, prevent, and respond to emergent threats from violent extremism.”

The Department of Homeland Security issued a notice of funding opportunity on July 6, 2016 announcing the new Countering Violent Extremism Grant Program, the first federal grant funding available to non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and institutions of higher education to carry out countering violent extremism programs.

These new grants will provide state, local and tribal partners and community groups—religious groups, mental health and social service providers, educators and other NGOs—with the ability to build prevention programs that address the root causes of violent extremism and deter individuals who may already be radicalizing to violence.

This initiative builds on Secretary Johnson’s September 2015 announcement of the creation of the Office for Community Partnerships. This Office has worked to take the Department’s CVE mission to the next level and find innovative ways to support local communities and address the evolving threat environment. This grant program supports that line of effort.

For an overview of the program and eligibility, please consult this Fact Sheet.

Interested applicants can view the Notice of Funding Opportunity and begin the application process.

Frequently Asked Questions can be found here.

Kate’s Law Blocked by Senate Democrats

Posted on by

Unfortunately Senator Toomey’s sanctuary city bill (S.3100) failed to receive the 60 votes needed to invoke cloture and move forward with debate. From 2015:

The Stop Sanctuary Policies Act, a Republican-backed bill that would withhold some federal funding from so-called “sanctuary cities,” failed to reach the 60 votes necessary to advance beyond a test vote.

“Sanctuary cities,” like Philadelphia, ignore “U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) requests to detain any undocumented immigrant arrested by local law enforcement, claiming the aggressive use of detainers prevents immigrants from reporting crimes to police.

Such policies came under scrutiny in July, when an undocumented immigrant and convicted felon allegedly murdered a woman in San Francisco. Congressional Republicans rallied around the case, passing a similar bill in the House of Representatives, while President Barack Obama vowed to veto such legislation. More here.

Senate Dems block sanctuary city, ‘Kate’s Law’ bills

WashingtonExaminer: Senate lawmakers on Wednesday blocked legislation aimed at stopping violent crimes committed by illegal immigrants.

The “Stop Dangerous Sanctuary Cities Act” would revoke federal grants provided to so-called sanctuary cities that refuse to comply with Homeland Security requests to detain illegal immigrants. The bill is meant to put pressure on those cities to cooperate with the federal government on these issues.

The bill is one of the legislative reactions to the death of Kate Steinle, who was killed on a San Francisco pier by an illegal immigrant. After her death, city officials defended their decision not to cooperate with federal authorities on deporting illegal immigrants.

While Republicans say those sorts of incidents show the government needs to put more pressure on sanctuary cities to follow federal guidance, Democrats disagree, and they helped scuttle the bill in the Senate. Republicans needed 60 votes to let the bill advance in a 53-44 vote.

Democrats have said the bill is anti-immigrant and would hurt local communities. Civil rights groups have lobbied Democrats to oppose the bills, arguing they would damage the ability of police to build trust with immigrant communities.

Democrats also blocked a second related bill, the “Stop Illegal Reentry Act,” which would require mandatory minimum sentences standards for those who have been deported and then come back into the United States illegally and are convicted of an aggravated felony.

The bill is named after Steinle, and was introduced by Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas.

“Congress must prevent cities from harboring illegal aliens, and it must hold this administration accountable for its failure, if not its outright refusal, to enforce federal immigration laws and ensure the safety and security of the American people,” Cruz said.

But Democrats disagreed, and again shut down the bill in a procedural vote that failed to get 60 votes, 55-42.

*****

In part from USAToday: Republicans said they were trying to save lives, invoking the one-year anniversary of the shooting of 32-year-old Kate Steinle, who was killed as she walked along a San Francisco pier with her father in July 2015. Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez, an undocumented immigrant from Mexico, has been charged with Steinle’s murder.

The case sparked national outrage when it was revealed that Sanchez had been deported five times for multiple felonies and was released from a San Francisco County Jail without being turned over to federal immigration authorities.

“The shooter should never have been on the pier that day,” Toomey said.

San Francisco and more than 300 other cities, counties and states have policies against keeping undocumented immigrants in custody for federal agents unless agents have a court order or warrant. Police in cities with large immigrant populations say they cannot convince residents to trust them if police are viewed as immigration agents who will help deport them if they come forward to report crimes.

Toomey’s bill would have barred local governments with sanctuary policies from receiving community development block grants, which are used to create jobs, provide housing to low-income and moderate-income families, and help communities recover from natural disasters.

“Senator Toomey’s bill…aims to prevent more families from experiencing the heartache that Kate Steinle’s family has been forced to endure,” said Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said Republicans have been candid about the need for Toomey to have a vote on his “message amendment” to help his re-election campaign.

“So this is a political tactic,” Durbin said. “Senator Toomey’s bill will not pass, but it gives him something to talk about when he goes home and something perhaps to give a speech about at the Republican (National) Convention.” More from USAToday

 

FBI Rewrites Federal Law to Let Hillary Off the Hook

Posted on by

FBI Rewrites Federal Law to Let Hillary Off the Hook

There is no way of getting around this: According to Director James Comey (disclosure: a former colleague and longtime friend of mine), Hillary Clinton checked every box required for a felony violation of Section 793(f) of the federal penal code (Title 18): With lawful access to highly classified information she acted with gross negligence in removing and causing it to be removed it from its proper place of custody, and she transmitted it and caused it to be transmitted to others not authorized to have it, in patent violation of her trust. Director Comey even conceded that former Secretary Clinton was “extremely careless” and strongly suggested that her recklessness very likely led to communications (her own and those she corresponded with) being intercepted by foreign intelligence services. Yet, Director Comey recommended against prosecution of the law violations he clearly found on the ground that there was no intent to harm the United States. In essence, in order to give Mrs. Clinton a pass, the FBI rewrote the statute, inserting an intent element that Congress did not require. The added intent element, moreover, makes no sense: The point of having a statute that criminalizes gross negligence is to underscore that government officials have a special obligation to safeguard national defense secrets; when they fail to carry out that obligation due to gross negligence, they are guilty of serious wrongdoing. The lack of intent to harm our country is irrelevant. People never intend the bad things that happen due to gross negligence. Read more here from National Review, Andrew McCarthy

Does Comey, Director of the FBI really have all the evidence to recommend no prosecution?

Clinton-related State Dept. records delays are mounting up

WASHINGTON (AP) — Just five months before the presidential election, the State Department is under fire in courtrooms over its delays in turning over government files related to Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state.

In one case, the agency warned it needed a 27-month delay, until October 2018, to turn over emails from Clinton’s former aides, and the judge in another case, a lawsuit by The Associated Press, wondered aloud whether the State Department might be deliberately delaying until after the election.

“We’re now reaching a point where there’s mounting frustration that this is a project where the State Department may be running out the clock,” said U.S. District Court Judge Richard J. Leon. The judge said he was considering imposing penalties on the agency if it failed to meet the next set of deadlines he orders. Leon wondered aloud at one point whether he might impose penalties for again failing to deliver records on time. He mused about “a fine on a daily basis” or “incarceration.”

“I can’t send the marshals, obviously, out to bring in the documents, at least they wouldn’t know where to go, probably,” Leon said.

Secretary of State John Kerry and other officials have said they are committed to public transparency, vowing that the State Department will improve its practices under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act. Last year, after an inspector general’s audit harshly critical of the agency, Kerry appointed a “transparency coordinator,” Janice Jacobs, and said the agency would “fundamentally improve our ability to respond to requests for our records.”

But in three separate court hearings last week, officials acknowledged that their records searches were hobbled by errors and new delays and said they need far more time to produce Clinton records. In other cases where the agency has already reached legal agreements with news organizations and political groups, the final delivery of thousands of records will not come until months after the November election — far too late to give voters an opportunity to analyze the performance of Clinton and her aides.

State Department spokesman John Kirby blamed the spiraling delays on mounting requests for more files. “These requests are also frequently more complex, and increasingly seeking larger volumes of documents requiring more time, more resources and frankly, more interagency coordination,” Kirby said.

The State Department said in court that it had miscalculated the amount of material it expected to process as part of a public records lawsuit from Citizens United, a conservative interest group. In basic searches of 14,000 pages of records, officials failed to include the “to” and “from” lines of the messages, missing many possible records.

“These delay tactics by the Obama administration look like nothing more than an assist to former Secretary Clinton,” said the group’s president, David Bossie.

The AP had better luck asking for files about the role Clinton or her aides played in a 2011 decision allowing the British defense contractor BAE Systems plc to avoid being barred from government work and instead pay a $79 million fine. The AP received some records, but last week, the judge said he will likely order the State Department to turn over remaining files in September instead of mid-October, as the agency proposed.

Government lawyers said they need to review thousands of pages and allow the files to be examined by BAE’s lawyers in case the company identifies proprietary material that would need to be censored.

“I’m not going to set them for October, two weeks before the election, that’s ridiculous,” Leon said.

In a third court case, the Gawker.com news site was told by State Department lawyers last week that the agency had failed to provide at least 100 email attachments from Philippe Reines, a Clinton aide who used a private account to send work-related messages. Gawker and the agency agreed that the State Department would turn over the missing material by September.

Also last week, during another legal proceeding involving Huma Abedin, Clinton’s closest aide and her former deputy chief of staff, Abedin said she “was never asked to search my emails for anything related to FOIA when I was at State.”

Logs of requests showed that Abedin’s emails had been sought at the time by reporters for Gawker, Huffington Post and other organizations.

Kirby told the AP that he could not comment on whether Abedin’s files were properly searched during Clinton’s tenure. But he added that “we have acknowledged that historically we did not have a consistent practice for searching emails in the Office of the Secretary.”

FBI: Hillary is Above the Law

Posted on by

FBI Director, James Comey laid out the facts and it is beyond debate that Hillary and her team are official members of the Bill Ayers of guilty but nothing to see here club. The nation of laws is but a distant memory. Comey laid out gross negligence and careless but is not recommending prosecution.

When Loretta Lynch said she would accept the FBI’s and prosecutor’s recommendation, the formal plan was already in play. What say you?

SHE SHOULD LOSE HER SECURITY CLEARANCE FOREVER, but judge for yourself.

Comey’s official statement:

Washington, D.C. July 05, 2016
  • FBI National Press Office (202) 324-3691

Remarks prepared for delivery at press briefing.

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.