FBI Director James Comey announced Tuesday former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will not face charges for using multiple private email servers to store, send and receive top secret, classified information. The FBI has been investigating the matter for more than a year and has spent thousands of hours bringing it to a conclusion.
"There is evidence they [Clinton and staff] were extremely careless in their handling of classified information," Comey said. "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 deciding whether to bring charges."
In other words, the FBI believes Hillary Clinton broke the law, but the Department of Justice is highly unlikely to prosecute.
"One hundred-and-ten emails in 52 email 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 of those chains contained secret information and eight contained confidential information at the time," Comey continued.
At the beginning of the announcement, Comey stated the information he was going to present had not been seen by the parties being investigated or by the Department of Justice. He thoroughly explained what FBI investigators did, what they found and what they recommend based on whether prosecutors would be willing to pursue the case. Comey said he included more details about the case and the process used to investigate due to the intense public interest and the right of the American people to know.
"After a tremendous amount of work over the last year, the FBI is completing its investigation and referring the matter to the Department of Justice for a prosecutive decision," Comey said. "Our investigation looked at whether there is evidence classified information was improperly stored or transmitted on that personal system in violation of a federal statue that makes 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. And consistent with our counter intelligence responsibilities, we have also investigated to determine if there is evidence of computer intrusion by nations states or by hostile actors of any kind."
Comey revealed that not only did Clinton inappropriately handle top secret, classified information on a private server, she did so on multiple private servers, not just on multiple email accounts.
"I've so far used the singular term 'email 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 she also used numerous mobile devices to send and read emails on that personal domain," Comey said.
He also stated that although the FBI found no evidence of a foreign hacking, hackers often do not leave evidence on systems with little security like Clinton's.
You can watch the announcement below:
This post has been updated with additional information.