The email scandal that has plagued Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign may soon be resolved. FBI director James B. Comey said Tuesday that the bureau will not recommend criminal charges against Clinton for mishandling of classified information, according to The New York Times.
“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, extremely classified information,” Comey said during Tuesday’s press conference.
Clinton used a personal email address and server for sending and receiving sensitive information, which was discovered during an investigation by the House Select Committee into the September 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya in which four Americans, including Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, were killed.
The discovery made during the Benghazi investigation resulted in a yearlong investigation in which the FBI, CIA, State Department, and other agencies examined multiple servers, read 30,000 emails, and interviewed dozens of people.
Comey said the FBI uncovered additional emails containing classified information during their investigation. However, in order to charge Clinton criminally, they had to find evidence that she intentionally sent or received classified information. Basically, whether or not Clinton meant to do something bad mattered. The FBI didn't find evidence that she did.
Attorney General Loretta Lynch said on Friday that she would accept the FBI’s recommendation to not pursue criminal charges against Clinton. Lynch faced backlash after an impromptu meeting with Bill Clinton in the Phoenix airport, which prompted allegations that she was biased toward Clinton in the email case.
Despite the FBI’s investigation finding no wrong doing by Clinton, the email scandal may continue to follow the presidential hopeful on the campaign trail as she begins campaign appearances with President Obama. A Washington Post-ABC News national poll from March found that just 37 percent of Americans believe Hillary Clinton is honest and trustworthy with 53 percent of those polled having an unfavorable view of Clinton. But the White House may still be within Hillary Clinton’s reach, with a USA Today/Suffolk University poll finding that Hillary Clinton leads Donald Trump by 6 percentage points.
The Washington Post-ABC News poll found that two-thirds of the adults polled believe Clinton "has the right experience to the president." The poll also found that 62 percent of people say they would prefer "someone who has experience in how the political system works."
Will experience trump trustworthiness? We'll have to wait until Nov. 8 to find out.
