Comey's Statement on Hillary Clinton's Use of E-Mail

FBI Director James B. Comey spoke this morning regarding the FBI's investigation of Hillary Clinton's Use of a Personal E-Mail System.  See his remarks (here), which are unique in many ways:

1.  Most investigations do not receive a formal statement saying that no charges will be recommended.  ("we don’t normally make public our recommendations to the prosecutors"). Most individuals are left hanging without receiving a statement such as this or a statement from DOJ.  Often folks may go through a lengthy investigation and but for the statute of limitations, they may never know it was over.

2.  By not recommending that she be charged, but by stating negative comments about her actions (calling her "careless") she is left without the opportunity to demonstrate the truth or falsity of these statements.  That said, having a statement that their recommendation to DOJ is that she not be indicted, is probably appreciated.

3.   It is important to remember that an investigation such as this is one-sided -  that is, the government is running the show. The FBI has no obligation to review or consider exculpatory evidence and one has to wonder if they shared what they found with defense counsel and gave them the opportunity to respond after they had reviewed the specific documents in question. Government investigations typically are not a give and take with defense counsel - they are the government accumulating as much evidence as they can to indict an individual and one only hears from the defense if and when there is a trial.

4. Is it the FBI's role to speak about hypotheticals when they have no hard facts?  For example, FBI Director Comey stated - "It could also be that some of the additional work-related e-mails we recovered were among those deleted as 'personal' by Secretary Clinton’s lawyers when they reviewed and sorted her e-mails for production in 2014."

5. The accusations about what her lawyers did were unnecessary statements that had no place in this FBI statement.  The statement that the "lawyers cleaned their devices in such a way as to preclude complete forensic recovery,"  seems like a proper  action on the part of counsel - especially since they are dealing with the alleged classified documents.

6.  Their statement about deficiencies in the security culture of the State Department ("While not the focus of our investigation, we also developed evidence that the security culture of the State Department in general, and with respect to use of unclassified e-mail systems in particular, was generally lacking in the kind of care for classified information found elsewhere in the government.") - To rectify this problem clearly takes money -  will Congress authorize money for better technology and security within the State Department?  

My Conclusions - It sounds like FBI Director James Comey's office did an extensive investigation and concluded that criminal charges are not in order - as it should be when a mens rea is lacking. It would be nice if this special instance of telling the individual that they are recommending against indictment were used in all cases when they have a recommendation for no indictment. When they do provide an announced recommendation of non-indictment, the FBI should limit their statement to just that. There is no need to tarnish a person's reputation in the process - especially when there is no concrete evidence to support the hypotheticals. Finally, becoming technologically savvy is difficult as the technology is constantly changing.  Perhaps we need to re-examine our technological infrastructure across the board with the government -something we should have learned post-Snowden.  Perhaps this can be put on the agenda of the next President.

(esp)