The question of whether Hillary Clinton's server was breached is largely a separate one from whether she or her aides broke the law by mishandling classified information. | Getty Source: Clinton email server logs show no breach

Logs for Hillary Clinton's email server turned over to the FBI by a former aide to Clinton show no evidence of suspicious foreign traffic or hacking from abroad, a person familiar with the investigation said.

The records were provided to the FBI by former Clinton information technology staffer Bryan Pagliano, according to the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Pagliano worked at the State Department but was also involved in setting up the server at Clinton's Chappaqua, New York, home.


The New York Times first reported Thursday that the logs show no indication of foreign hacking.

The FBI has been investigating since last summer whether sensitive information in Clinton's account was compromised by foreign intelligence services, hackers or others. An FBI spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday night.

The lack of evidence of foreign hacking in the server logs will come as a relief for Clinton, who has been pilloried by Republicans and many security experts for using a private email account and server during her four years as secretary of state. However, the question of whether Clinton's server was breached is largely a separate one from whether she or her aides broke the law by mishandling classified information.

While none of the emails on Clinton's server were marked classified at the time, during the Freedom of Information Act review process, the State Department has deemed more than 2,100 of them classified. Of those, 65 are classified "secret" and 22 "top secret." Clinton has disputed the classification decisions and called for release of all the purportedly classified messages.

Critics say Clinton should have recognized the sensitivity of the information even if it was not marked. Several Republican presidential candidates have said Clinton should be prosecuted. In his Super Tuesday night remarks, GOP front-runner Donald Trump repeatedly said Clinton may not be able to run in the general election because she'll be facing criminal charges.

Emails from Clinton's server made public by the State Department last September show that Russian hackers sent at least five messages to her account as part of a phishing scam likely intended to steal personal information. However, there was no indication that Clinton's account was singled out to receive the messages which were widely circulated.

It's difficult to know how many such messages Clinton received because her aides say they deleted most spam messages when sifting the former secretary of state's work-related messages from her personal ones, which were also deleted. The handful of phishing messages that became public appear to have been sent to the State Department due to a fluke relating to the fake addresses used by the spammers.

Records provided to a Senate committee by a cybersecurity firm last year show some suspicious attempts to reach Clinton's server from China, Germany and South Korea. The efforts may have been part of routine mapping or probing of the Internet from abroad. However, Senate Republicans noted that before the equipment was connected to Clinton's system in October 2013, some of the security features were not in place.

Pagliano, who took the Fifth Amendment to avoid providing testimony to the House Benghazi Committee, struck an immunity deal with federal prosecutors. As a result of that arrangement, he turned over server logs and spoke with FBI investigators, a source said.

