Perhaps in another election cycle, the GOP might have been able to use "extremely careless"...

[Tommy_Carcetti]

....to their advantage in campaign ads, irrespective of the lack of an indictment.

But then they look at themselves and they have Donald Trump as their own nominee and it pretty much kills them.

Sucks for them!

[frazzled]

1. For being "extremely careless" ...

One needs to consider that of the 30,000 emails reviewed, the fact that 110 of them contained any top classified content (though not marked as such) doesn't sound all that careless: that is a 0.00366% misjudgment rate, something that verges on being wholly statistically insignificant (especially when considering that many things classified even as top secret are, in the end, either fairly insignificant or known publicly already in the press).

It also doesn't seem all that careless in light of the fact that no known breaches of the system were able to be found. That's better than the official government systems, which are known to have been breached.

Was it truly that careless, or is this just a slap on the wrist statement meant to show that the FBI was being independent, and/or as a governmental defense that protocol should (normally) be followed.

[Lee-Lee]

2. I have to disagree

If I had been found with just one classified email on my unclassified government account, much less a private account, I would have probably lost my security clearance. At a minimum I would have faced some disciplinary action.

The carelessness described by the FBI, if accurate, would have certainly caused my clearance to be revoked.

I am in a pickle here- I absolutely can't defend it because I know what the standards were for me as a clearance holder.

I hope she at a minimum makes a public statement owning the carelessness and admitting fault in that regard and owns her mistakes in that regard. That will make it tons easier to move past.

[anigbrowl]

4. If it was not classified at the time it was sent to you

You would have no way of knowing it was going to be classified at a later date. This is a very normal situation when dealing with restricted documents, and while the predictable nature of this risk mitigates against using a non-official server, we also need to consider this in the light of the 'best practices' that obtained 8 years ago, when information security was a much smaller issue in the public consciousness.

Also, your clearance might well have been revoked, but decisions about security and classification were, I presume, far above your pay grade. Cabinet secretaries, by contrast, are authorized to make those kind of determinations themselves.

[Lee-Lee]

6. The FBI says it was classified at the time

Had it been retroactive classification it wouldn't be an issue.

[anigbrowl]

9. ...which I addressed in the second paragraph. nt

[Tommy_Carcetti]

3. Yeah I have to agree it was the FBI doing a "We're not being political here" CYA.

And that the entire "scandal" was ridiculously overblown, but I'm sure in normal years the GOP could still have used it for leverage nonetheless.

Probably is, the GOP is running a mentally insane proto-fascist as its nominee this year, so basically anything they try in terms of attacking Hillary Clinton's character is going to probably fail, and for good reason.

[Schema Thing]

5. In ANY other election cycle. Because honestly, this is a big deal.

A huge deal. And yet still no where near big enough to choose Trump over Clinton.

[eastwestdem]

7. You also have to look at all the holes in Comey's statement. For example, he said that Gmail has

more safeguards than the personal server, but Gmail only emerged from beta testing in July, 2009...after her server was set up. So you really can't compare...which is the whole problem with this investigation. They are using current knowledge of internet operations and security to judge what happened 8 years ago.

History will see this as a normal example of growing pains that most departments of government experienced in transitioning to the technological world. The only difference is that only Hillary Clinton's activities were examined with excruciating detail.