Hillary Clinton used potentially as many as 13 different Blackberrys to send email from her personal account — and sometimes misplaced them — according to FBI records released on Friday.
The FBI released two documents — a report on the bureau's interview with Clinton and the report on the investigation into her use of personal email and handling of classified information — on Friday, the latest in the unusually transparent aftermath of the Clinton investigation.
Earlier this summer, the FBI did not recommend charges against Clinton. At the time, FBI director James Comey took the unusual step of publicly detailing the results of the investigation and explaining the bureau's recommendation. In those remarks, Comey criticized Clinton's actions at length, however.
While the broad contours of the report follow what Comey told the public earlier this summer, the report provides more details. For instance, the FBI determined that while there was no evidence that Clinton had been hacked, the determination was inconclusive:
On the FBI's determination of whether Clinton's private email server was hacked...
The FBI also reported that someone had breached an email account belonging to an aide to Bill Clinton:
The reports also detail the history of Clinton's email server, her use of multiple email devices and email practices at the State Department, and how individual emails that were found to have contained classified information were handled. In some cases, particularly emails that pertained to the drone program, Clinton and other former State officials defended their emails as already known to the public because of media reports.
The reports also provide a sharper picture of how Clinton operated at the State Department, and handled sensitive information. Notably, Clinton used as many as eight devices during her tenure, many of which could not be recovered by FBI officials.
The FBI found â13 total mobile devicesâ that Clinton potentially used to send emails from her private email address:
The report also provides significantly more insight into how the emails submitted to the State Department were selected by Clinton's staff. After an initial review, performed through keyword searches and a review of recipients and senders, two key Clinton officials — Cheryl Mills and David Kendall — performed a final review to determine what was "work related."
The FBI report also provides insight into the timeline that Clinton's emails were deleted. In late 2014, Mills requested a protocol change for when Clinton's emails would be deleted. After the New York Times broke the story that Clinton had used a personal email account during her tenure at the State Department, according to the FBI, a staffer whose name is redacted began the deletion.
Donald Trump's campaign responded to the contents of the report in a statement on Friday, saying it shows Clinton cannot be trusted with the presidency.
"Clinton’s reckless conduct and dishonest attempts to avoid accountability show she cannot be trusted with the presidency and its chief obligation as commander-in-chief of the U.S. armed forces," said senior Trump adviser Jason Miller.
In a statement released later on Friday, Trump himself said, “Hillary Clinton’s answers to the FBI about her private email server defy belief. I was absolutely shocked to see that her answers to the FBI stood in direct contradiction to what she told the American people. After reading these documents, I really don’t understand how she was able to get away from prosecution.”
House Speaker Paul Ryan said in a statement that the report "cast doubt" on the Justice Department's decision not to press charges against Clinton, adding that Clinton should not be able to access classified information.
According to the report of Clinton's interview with the FBI, Clinton did not know that a parenthetical "c" at the beginning of a paragraph indicated that a piece of information was classified. Comey alluded to this in his testimony before Congress earlier this year, when he said she was "not particularly sophisticated" in her handling of classified information.
FBI doc: Clinton said she didnât know the âCâ marking in emails meant the information was classified
The report also revealed more detail about Clinton's conversations with former Secretary of State Colin Powell about using a private email account while at state.
Colin Powell emailed Hillary Clinton: âBe very careful. I got around it all by not saying much.â
