Hillary Clinton on Friday brushed aside the FBI’s conclusion that she was reckless with classified information, again denying she sent any secrets across her non-secure email system and saying she was merely repeating what others had told her.
She said those she was mailing with originated the information and they didn’t see anything wrong with what they were sending, so she didn’t see any reason to be worried herself.
“Over 300 people were on these email exchanges,” she told CNN. “And these were experienced professionals who have had great years of dealing with classified material. And whatever they sent me, they did not believe and had, in my view, no reason to be at the time, that it was classified.”
FBI Director James Comey this week said Mrs. Clinton and her aides were “extremely careless” with classified information, and he said she should have known better. But he said she was so unsophisticated in her understanding of both technology and classification that he couldn’t prove she intended to break the law.
He said the cases that have been made by prosecutors in the past involved those who knew they were mishandling information, yet did it anyway. Mrs. Clinton, despite her training, didn’t properly identify classification markings, nor did she understand the highly sensitive information she and her aides were mailing about, Mr. Comey testified.
Mrs. Clinton’s comments Friday appeared to bolster Mr. Comey’s judgment, with the former secretary insisting none of the information she emailed was dangerous.
“I just believe that the material that was being communicated by professionals, many with years of handling sensitive classified material, they did not believe that it was,” she said. “I did not have a basis for second-guessing their conclusion. And these were not marked. They were not marked. And in retrospect, some have said well, they should have been, but they were not at the time.”
Mr. Comey, though, said the law does not require information to be marked in order for it to need to be handled carefully.
Mr. Comey also poked repeated holes in Mrs. Clinton’s public explanations for her behavior, said she broke open-records laws, and said someone in her position would face punishment including possibly losing her job or her security clearance if she worked for him.
Republicans said Mrs. Clinton continues to duck responsibility for her behavior.
“Even now, Hillary Clinton is unwilling to tell the American people the truth about her illicit email server that broke the rules and put national security at risk,” said Republican National Committee spokesman Michael Short. “The only thing Hillary Clinton seems to be clarifying is that she is determined to continue misleading voters and obfuscating the facts about her reckless conduct as secretary of state.”
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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