QuickTake Q&A: Hillary Clinton’s Use of a Private E-Mail System

Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee for president, chose to use a private e-mail account and servers in her last job, as U.S. secretary of state. Through that personal account, hdr22@clintonemail.com, she sent or received about 60,000 messages from 2009 to 2013, roughly half of them work-related. The FBI investigated whether classified information was included in those emails. After the FBI recommended no charges, the case was closed. For months, Republican blueprints to defeat Clinton had included the hope and belief that she’d be indicted. Now that that’s off the table, Republicans continue to question what was in the roughly 32,000 messages that Clinton deemed personal and deleted before turning her e-mail over to the State Department. The FBI has recovered about half of those.

FBI Director James Comey said that while Clinton and her staff were "extremely careless" in their use of e-mail, and that "there is evidence of potential violations regarding the handling of classified information," his office determined that "no reasonable prosecutor" would file criminal charges. Asked whether Clinton had been truthful in her explanations to the public, Comey said, "That’s a question I’m not qualified to answer." The State Department’s inspector general found Clinton’s use of private e-mail violated rules, but that "longstanding" problems with the department’s electronic communications began before Clinton took office.