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The FBI has released a report on its investigation and interview with Hillary Clinton over the use of a private email server while she was Secretary of State.




According to the report, Clinton claimed during her interview that she didn’t understand that emails marked with “C” meant that they were classified. Clinton had previously blamed “retroactive classification” as a reason why classified emails were on her server.

The FBI report also states a key fact that the Clinton campaign has been pushing back on, that the Clinton server had 81 emails chains that were classified at the time they were sent. From the FBI report (emphasis ours):

In response to FBI requests for classification determinations in support of this investigation, US Intelligence Community (USIC) agencies determined that 81 e-mail chains,bc which FBI investigation determined were transmitted and stored on Clinton’ s UNCLASSIFIED personal server systems, contained classified information ranging from the CONFIDENTIAL to TOP SECRET/SPECIAL ACCESS PROGRAM levels at the time they were sent between 2009-2013. USIC agencies determined that 68 of these e-mail chains remain classified. In addition, the classification determination process administered by the US Department of State (State) in connection with Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) litigation identified approximately 2,000 additional e-mails currently classified CONFIDENTIAL and 1 e-mail currently classified SECRET, which FBI investigation determined were transmitted and stored on at least two of Clinton’s personal server systems.


The report also shows that Huma Abedin, Clinton’s closest aide asked “Bryan Pagliano, who worked on Clinton’ s 2008 presidential campaign as an information technology specialist, to build the new server system.” Apparently, Pagliano thought the server would be used by President Clinton’s staff, and not for Clinton’s use as Secretary of State.

From the report:

Clinton told the FBI that at some point she became aware there was a server in the basement of her Chappaqua residence.



Also, it seems like hackers made an attempt to access Clinton’s accounts, including via Apple iCloud, but the FBI believed the attempts were unsuccessful:



Following the March 3, 2015 New York Times article publicly revealing Clinton’s use of personal e-mail to conduct government business,536 the FBI identified an increased number of login attempts to the PRN Server and its associated domain controller. Forensic analysis revealed none of the login attempts were successful. FBI investigation also identified an increase in unauthorized login attempts into the Apple iCloud account likely associated with Clinton’s e-mail address during this time period. Investigation determined all potentially suspicious Apple iCloud login attempts were unsuccessful. Additionally, PRN made various network changes to the PRN Server around March 7, 2015, to include disabling the server’ s public-facing VPN page and switching from SSL protocol to TLS to increase security. Staff also discussed the possibility of conducting penetration testing against the PRN Server to highlight vulnerabilities in the network. The FBI interviewed an employee of the company with which PRN had discussed the issue. The employee stated that the topic was broached but that penetration testing against the PRN Server, ultimately, did not happen.




In the report, The FBI says it didn’t get to look at any of Clinton’s blackberries, but were able to check out 3 of her 5 iPads.

Clinton, for whatever reason, used eleven blackberries: