FBI [official website] Director James Comey announced [press release] Tuesday that he is not recommending that the Department of Justice [official website] bring criminal charges against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Comey stated [WSJ report] that while Clinton was “extremely careless” with her use of private e-mail servers, there is not clear evidence that the secretary or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information. Comey stated that the FBI found more than 110 e-mails on Clinton’s private server containing classified information and seven e-mail chains were classified as “Top Secret/Special Access Program level.” Comey admitted he believed it possible that people hostile to the US had gained access to her personal e-mail address and stated, “[t]here is evidence to support a conclusion that any reasonable person in Secretary Clinton’s position, or in the position of those government employees with whom she was corresponding about these matters, should have known that an unclassified system was no place for that conversation.” During a subsequent review, more than 2,000 e-mails on Clinton’s server were found to have contained information now deemed classified, though they were not marked as such when sent.

The -Clinton “email scandal” came to light in March 2015 when it was reported [NYT report] that she “exclusively used a personal email account to conduct government business as secretary of state.” It was determined that former Clinton never used a government e-mail address during her tenure in the State Department nor were her personal e-mails preserved on department servers, as required by the Federal Records Act [text]. “Under federal law, letters and emails written and received by federal officials, such as the secretary of state, are considered government records and are supposed to be retained so that congressional committees, historians and members of the news media can find them.”