July 5, 2016

The FBI finally finished their investigation into the Hillary Clinton email server and determined that no criminal charges should be filed for prosecution.

Amid the hyperbolic press and political coverage on this case, FBI Director James Comey held a press conference to deliver the findings of his investigation, and as was expected Comey determined that, "No charges are appropriate in this case."

Comey did scold the former SOS for the 'careless way' she handled her emails, but remarked, "While there is "evidence they were extremely careless in their handling of highly classified information our judgement is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case."

This was all part of the Republicans "Benghazi or bust' attack plan to try and take her out of the presidential race and was always going to end up like this, but that never stopped them or the media for piling on.

I found it kind of weaselly of Comey to say that there was no evidence that her servers were ever hacked, but it was still a possibility. That's supposition, not fact.

And he left room in his report for conservatives can attack her, as if they needed to. The pre-impeachment of Hillary Clinton will go on unabated and with zero facts. But I agree with Kevin Drum: Hillary Clinton Innocent

Bottom line: Hillary Clinton screwed up. She's admitted this repeatedly. Other investigators have come to the same conclusion. If you want to criticize her for this, that's fine. She deserves it. But there was no criminal intent and essentially no chance that a jury would have convicted her. We've known this for months now. Now we know it officially.

I've never understood why any administration wouldn't handle all security matters on all forms of communications, including emails for their cabinet members. Clearly White House procedure needs to catch up with technology.

But any prosecutor could have told you that this case would end this way. Indeed, William Weld, current Libertarian Vice Presidential nominee and former head of the Criminal Division of the Justice Department in Washington UNDER REAGAN, said so a month ago.

"I'm speaking as a former director of the criminal division of the Justice Department. There's no criminal intent, and with no criminal intent there's no indictment."

UPDATE: Here's some transcript from Comey's presser:

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.

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