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Overview

The Hillary Clinton Email Controversy is an ongoing political scandal involving former United States Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and her use of personal email accounts hosted on privately-managed servers, in lieu of official email accounts maintained on secured federal government servers, in conducting official businesses on behalf of the U.S. State Department during her tenure in the Obama administration. The scandal first came to the light of public attention in March 2015, shortly before Hillary Clinton announced her bid for the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Background

Concerns over the U.S. State Department officials' possible violations of federal government record-keeping procedures were initially raised by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in a "diplomatic security" manual for agency employees released in 2009.

Initial Discovery

On March 15th, 2013, the existence of Hillary Clinton's private e-mail address hosted at clintonemail.com was confirmed for the first time when Romanian hacker Marcel Lazar Lehel (better known by his pseudonym Guccifer) released a batch of email correspondences between Sidney Blumenthal, a former senior White House adviser to Bill Clinton during his presidency, and Hillary Clinton, the-then Secretary of State, which contained confidential memos relating to foreign affairs and regional security in Libya, including the 2012 attacks on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi (shown below)

CONFIDENTIAL 2 on September 12, 2012 For: Hillary From: Sid Re: Magariaf and the attack on US in Libya SOURCE: Sources with direct access to the Libyan National Transitional Council, as well as the highest levels of European Governments, and Western Intelligence and security services. 1. During the afternoon of September 11, 2012 new interim President of Libya Mohammed Yussef el Magariaf spoke in private with senior advisors, including the members of the Libyan Muslim Brotherhood, to discuss the attacks by demonstrators on U.S. missions in Tripoli and Benghazi. According to a sensitive source, el Magariaf was shaken by the attacks, and gave permission to commanders on the ground for security forces to open fire over the heads of the crowds irn
an effort to break up mobs attacking the missions. During this session, a senior security officer told el Magariaf that the attacks on that day were inspired by what many devout Libyan viewed as a sacrilegious internet video on the prophet Mohammed originating in America. The Libyan attacks were also inspired by and linked to an attack on the U.S. mission in Egypt on the same day. At the same time, el Magariaf noted in strong terms that the atmosphere that made fostered these incidents in Libya is the product of widespread publicity regarding the security situation in the country between 2004 and 2010 and the cooperation that developed between a number of Western Intelligence services and the regime of former dictator Muammar al Qaddafi. G 2. This source added that el Magariaf's advisors believe that this situation adds to the President's growing concern over the unpredictable effects that will follow

Notable Developments

The New York Times Report

However, the issue didn't come under the national spotlight until March 2nd, 2015, when the New York Times published an article reporting that Clinton never had a government-issued email address during her tenure at the State Department and what is more, she exclusively used her personal e-mail accounts for official communications as the Secretary of State, which may have violated the rules of recordkeeping and archiving federal officials' correspondences as laid out under the Federal Records Act.

Hillary Clinton's Initial Response

On March 10th, Hillary Clinton responded to the New York Times report by defending her use of private email accounts as a benign habit out of convenience and that her actions were in compliance with the federal regulations during a press conference at the United Nations Headquarters. In addition, Clinton stated that her staff would hand over copies of 30,000 email correspondences from her private account that were archived during her service at the State Department, while noting that another 32,000 emails from the same server had been deleted as they were deemed personal and private in nature.

Federal Investigation

In the weeks following the publication of the New York Times article, the focus of scrutiny in the news media began zeroing in on whether Clinton's email correspondences sent via her private, non-secure server during her years at the State Department contained any classified information. Though Clinton initially denied revealing any classified materials in her correspondences, but the subsequent inquiries and reviews of her emails found that classified information had been transmitted in at least four out of the 40 randomly selected samples. By June, the Federal Bureau of Investigations had launched a full-scale investigation to closely examine all 30,000 emails that were voluntarily submitted by Clinton's staff, while issuing a subpoena for Clinton's private server to be turned over as well. On August 12th, the FBI visited the location and seized the server, which they determined had been professionally wiped clean. The accusation was confirmed by Clinton's lawyer in front of Congress on August 19th[5].

Discovery of Classified Satellite Images

On September 1st, The Washington Times[6] reported that several instances of Clinton's emails contained highly sensitive surveillance data and imageries of the North Korean nuclear program gathered by U.S. spy satellites, which were marked unclassified at the time of the transmission but should have been assigned the highest level of secrecy, according to the Inspector General of the United States Intelligence Community.

FBI Recovery of Clinton's Personal Emails

On September 22nd, major media sources began reporting that the FBI had successfully recovered[7] the 30,000 emails Hillary herself had deemed personal and deleted before officials were able to read their content. The recovered emails have not yet been released to the public and the FBI has offered no comment on what they contain, though sources who spoke under the condition of anonymity would say that the emails are being sorted into "work related" and "actually personal" categories, inferring Clinton had deleted emails that were not strictly person in nature as she claimed.

End of investigation

On July 5, 2016 FBI director James Comey held a press conference in which he announced that 110 classied emails were found on Clinton's server. He stated she was "extremely careless" in handling classified intelligence. Comey later advised Attorney General Loretta Lynch not press charges. On June 6, 2016 Loretta Lynch announced no charges would be pressed against Clinton.[11] Some this considered to make Clinton seem "above the law".

Paul Combetta's Suspected Reddit Post

On September 8th, 2016, The New York Times[13] reported that Paul Combetta, the computer specialist who deleted Clinton's emails despite being ordered by Congress to preserve them, had been granted immunity by the Justice Department during the investigation.

On September 19th, a post submitted to the /r/stackexchange subreddit in July 2014 was discovered by users on the /r/The_Donald[14] subreddit, in which a user named "stonetear" asks for advice on removing a "VIP's (VERY VIP) email address from a bunch of archived email" (shown below). Many speculated that Stonetear was Combetta based on his personal email address "stonetear@gmail.com,"[16] a 2011 forum post[17] in which a user named Stonetear identifies himself as Paul, a Stonetear Etsy[19] account which displays the name Paul Combetta and a 2002 Slashdot post in which a user named Stonetear claims he is "contracted to a state government."[20]

图Exchange comments This is an archived post. You won't be able to vote or comment. Questionl Remove or replace to/from address on archived emails? (self.exchangeserver) 4 submitted 2 years ago by stonetear Hello all-I may be facing a very interesting situation where I need to strip out a VIP's (VERY VIP) email address from a bunch of archived email that I have both in a live Exchange mailbox, as well as a PST file. Basically, they don't want the VIP's email address exposed to anyone, and want to be able to either strip out or replace the email address in the to/from fields in all of the emails we want to send out. I am not sure if something like this is possible with PowerShell, or exporting all of the emails to MSG and doing find/replaces with a batch processing program of some sort. Does anyone have experience with something like this, and/or suggestions on how this might be accomplished? 15 comments share save hide give gold report

While the original Reddit post was subsequently deleted, it had already been archived by Google cache.[15] The following day, the Congressional Oversight committed began looking into the Reddit post in relation to their investigation on the deletion of Clinton's email archived. Meanwhile, the Congressional Science Committee threatened to subpoena the author of the Reddit post as part of their investigation into the security of Clinton's private server.[21] Also on September 20th, Redditor ImWithPepe submitted an "I'm Rick Harrison" photoshop with Combetta's face superimposed on to the image (shown below). Within 24 hours, the post gained over 5,300 votes (83% upvoted) and 240 comments on /r/The_Donald.[22]

I'm Stonetear Harrison, and this is my computer shop. I work here with my mom VERY VIP and my son BleachBit. Every time pleading the Fifth Amendment has a story and a price. One thing I've learned after deleting 30,000+ emails you never know how many redditors are gonna come through that door. wonLD

In the coming days, several news sites published articles about the Reddit controversy, including Motherboard,[12] Fortune,[23] New York Post,[24] US News[25] and The Daily Dot.[26]

James Comey Letter

On October 28th, 2016, James Comey sent a short letter[27] to congress "supplementing" his previous testimony that the FBI investigation into the Clinton emails case was closed. The letter states that the FBI had learned of the existence of emails that may be pertinent to the investigation of "an unrelated case," and that Comey had allowed FBI investigators to review the emails to see if they contained classified information and assess if they were important to the investigation. The full text of Comey's letter reads:

In previous congressional testimony, l referred to the fact that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had completed its investigation of former Secretary Clinton's personal email server. Due to recent developments, I am writing to supplement my previous testimony.

In connection with an unrelated case, the FBI has learned of the existence of emails that appear to be pertinent to the investigation. I am writing to inform you that the investigative team briefed me on this yesterday, and I agreed that the FBI should take appropriate investigative steps designed to allow investigators to review these emails to determine whether they contain classified information, as well as to assess their importance to our investigation.

Although the FBI cannot yet assess whether or not this material may be significant, and I cannot predict how long it will take us to complete this additional work, I believe it is important to update your Committees about our efforts in light of my previous testimony.

Sincerely yours,
James B. Comey
Director

The shortness, vagueness, and timing of Comey's letter less than two weeks before the 2016 United States Presidential Election received intense criticism from Democrats. Clinton responded at a rally the following day, calling Comey's decision to send the letter "deeply troubling" and "unprecedented," and called upon Comey to "put everything on the table," asking him to give voters complete information.[28] Attorney General Loretta Lynch disagreed with Comey's decision to send the letter,[29] citing a long-standing practice by the FBI to not comment on on-going investigations, particularly during a politically-charged election year.

It was later revealed that the "unrelated case" Comey was referring to was Anthony Weiner's Sexting Scandal. [30] The emails pertinent to the closed investigation into Clinton’s private email server were discovered on a computer belonging to Weiner, the estranged husband of Huma Abedin, a top Clinton aide. In an email Comey sent to FBI employees, he acknowledged that the FBI did not "know the significance of this newly discovered collection of emails.’’

Official Reactions

In the following week, Comey's decision was met with a wide range of reactions from both Republican and Democrat officials; Donald Trump said “the election might not be as rigged as I thought,”[31] referring to his charges that the election was being rigged against him in response to polls suggesting his chances of winning were very low. Some Republicans lauded Comey for his decision to send the letter, including Republican chairman Jason Chaffetz of the House Oversight Committee who tweeted “Case reopened,” which set off media coverage misrepresenting the issue.[32] Meanwhile, other Republicans, such as former White House ethics lawyer to the Bush administration Richard Painter, criticized Comey for “abuse” of power.[33] He also suggested Comey violated the Hatch Act, which forbids federal employees from “using [their] official authority or influence for the purpose of interfering with or affecting the result of an election.”

News Media Coverage

Comey's reopening of the FBI investigation prompted speculations among Clinton supporters and some news media outlets that the decision may have been heavily influenced by an anti-Clinton bias within the bureau, with Rachel Maddow[36] alleging that the entire investigation was in the first place connected to an anti-Clinton book funded by the conservative news site Breitbart and The Guardian[37] similarly suggesting an extreme anti-Clinton bias within the FBI, citing multiple anonymous accounts from current and former officials in the Justice Department. In addition, Correct The Record tweeted a video clip of former New York City mayor and Trump supporter Rudy Giuliani saying that “we have a couple tricks up our sleeve” during his appearance on Fox News[38] two days before Comey issued his first letter, further fueling the widespread speculations that the FBI's intent to reopen the case had been leaked to the Trump campaign in advance.

Investigation Report

On November 6th, 2016, Comey released a follow up letter informing the Congress that the FBI had completed its review of the emails and determined that the review of the additional documents were in accord with the bureau's earlier conclusion in July that Clinton would not face any charges in connection to her use of the private email servers. Comey thanked FBI officials for working “round the clock” to swiftly come to a conclusion regarding the investigation.

Federal Bureau of Investigation Washington, D.C. 20535 November 6, 2016 Honorable Richard M. Bunr Chairman Select Committee on Intelligence Honorable Devin Nunes Chairman Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Honorable Charles E. Grassley Chairman Honorable Robert Goodlatte Chairman Committee on the Judiciary Committee on the Judiciary Honorable Richard Shelby Chairman Committee on Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Honorable John Culberson Chairman Committee on Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies Science and Related Agencies Honorable Ron Johnson Chairman Committee on Homeland Security and Honorable Jason Chaffetz Chairman Committee on Oversight and Governmental Affairs Government Reform Dear Messrs. Chairmen: I write to supplement my October 28, 2016 letter that notified you the FBI would be taking additional investigative steps with respect to former Secretary of State Clinton's use of a personal email server. Since my letter, the FBI investigative team has been working around the clock to process and review a large volume of emails from a device obtained in connection witlh an unrelated criminal investigation. During that process, we reviewed all of the communications that were to or from Hillary Clinton while she was Secretary of State Based on our review, we have not changed our conclusions that we expressed in July with respect to Secretary Clinton. I am very grateful to the professionals at the FB for doing an extraordinary amount of high-quality work in a short period of time. Sincerely yours, James B. Comey Director ce: See next page

That same day, Pete Williams of NBC,[34] tweeted that nearly all of the additional emails reviewed by the FBI were duplicates or personal emails.
Some Republicans criticized Comey for supposedly prematurely releasing the results. Newt Gingrich tweeted, “Comey must be under enormous political pressure to cave like this and announce something he can’t possibly know.”[35]

Various Examples

THE BEST PART? ITS ALLUN MY PRIVATE EMAIL!
IDONT ALWAYS BREAKTHE LAW AND PUTNATIONAL SECURITY AT RISK BUT WHEN I DO IT'S BECAUSE IT WAS AMATTER OF CONVENIENCE AND I'M ABOVE THE LAW mgtlip:com
47 TH oF TRANSPARENEy MRS. CLINTON, po YOU HAVE A COMMENT ABOUT YOUR PRIVATE EMAIL ACCOUNT YOU USED FOR GOVERNMENT BUSINESS? MRS.CLINTON?ARe YOU THERE? MEDIA

"Since 2009, federal regulations require all e-mails be preserved as part of an agency's record-keeping system." [Delete] CLINTON
IERASED 181/2 MINUTES OF TAPE HILLARY DELETED 30000 EMAILS WHO'S THE CROOK NOW? imgflip.com
UM, 'Top SECRET' SO, 'REPLY ALL,' RIGHT?

Search Interest

External References

[1] The New York Times – Hillary Clinton's Use of Private Email at State Department Raises Flags

[2] Los Angeles Times – Hillary Clinton tries to end controversey over private email account

[3] CNN – Official: Clinton emails included classified information

[4] Daily Mail – EXCLUSIVE: Hillary's email firm was run from a loft apartment with its servers in the BATHROOM

[5] The Blaze – Clinton lawyer confirms her email server was wiped clean

[6] Washington Times – Clinton emails contained spy satellite data on North Korean nukes

[7] New York Times – Investigators Find Emails Hillary Clinton Said Were Erased

[8] Washington Post – Hillary Clinton dusts off the ‘vast right-wing conspiracy’ charge

[9] Wall Street Journal – Will Re-Airing ‘Right-Wing Conspiracies’ Help Hillary Clinton

[10] The United States Department of State – U.S. Department of State Foreign Affairs Manual Volume 12
Diplomatic Security

[11] CNN- How GOP hopes to keep Clinton email scandal alive

[12] Motherboard – It Sure Seems Like Hillary Clintons Tech Guy Asked Reddit for Email Advice

[13] The New York Times – Justice Dept. Granted Immunity to Specialist

[14] Reddit – Breaking This is allegedly a post from Hillarys tech

[15] Archive.is – Remove or replace to/from address

[16] Notendur – zip

[17] Archive.fo – forum post

[18] Etsy – Stonetear

[19] Archive.is – Paul Combettas Profile

[20] Archive.fo – Slashdot post

[21] The Hill – GOP follows clues in Clinton

[22] Reddit – Im Stonetear Harrison

[23] Fortune – Hillary Clintons IT Guy Made This Common Mistake

[24] New York Post – Hillarys IT guy asked Reddit for help

[25] US News – Computer Specialist Who Deleted Clinton Emails May Have Asked Reddit for Tips

[26] The Daily Dot – Did Reddit uncover the smoking gun

[27] James Comey Letter

[28] CBS – Hillary Clinton blasts "deeply troubling" Comey letter to Congress on new emails

[29] CBS – Attorney general disagreed with FBI director's decision to alert Congress to Hillary Clinton-related emails

[30] New York Times – Emails in Anthony Weiner Inquiry Jolt Hillary Clinton’s Campaign

[31] Salon – “It might be not as rigged as I thought, right?”: Donald Trump suggested we cancel the elections then James Comey cheered him up

[32] MediaMatters – Media Freak Out At FBI Letter, Disregard Facts And Run With GOP's False Description Of Clinton Email Review

[33] People – Former Ethics Counsel to Bush Files Complaint Against FBI Director for Latest Disclosures on Clinton Email Probe

[34] Twitter – @KatyTurNBC

[35] Twitter – @Newt Gingrich

[36] Media Matters – Maddow Examines How Fox's Debunked Clinton Report Began With FBI Agents Presenting Breitbart Hit Pieces As Evidence

[37] The Guardian – 'The FBI is Trumpland': anti-Clinton atmosphere spurred leaking, sources say

[38] Huffington Post – Rudy Giuliani Confirms FBI Insiders Leaked Information To The Trump Campaign



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