On at least two occasions when Hillary Clinton changed electronic devices as secretary of state, the outgoing mobile devices met a violent end on the other side of a hammer or got broken in half.

At other moments, two of Clinton’s top aides recalled that the retiring devices’ whereabouts would often be a mystery.


And elsewhere in the FBI's report of its investigation and its interview with Clinton that was released publicly Friday, Clinton demonstrated a willingness to defer to others on matters of classified material, claiming on multiple occasions that she could neither recall receiving training or, in one particular instance, responding that she did not know that “(C)” markings in an email chain denoted confidential material.

From the drones to hammers to Colin Powell, here are 12 of the most remarkable sections from the FBI’s notes related to its investigation and from its July 2 interview with Clinton at its Washington headquarters.

1. The ‘oh shit’ moment

After Clinton’s staff members completed their response to the State Department for her email records in December 2014, Clinton said she told staff that she did not need them anymore.

“In or around this same timeframe the retention policy for her email was changed as part of her move to a new personal office account,” the FBI stated in notes from Clinton’s interview.

Former chief of staff Cheryl Mills said that Clinton in December 2014 decided she did not need access to any of her emails older than 60 days. But, according to a redacted source, another redacted entity did not modify the retention policy on Clinton’s clintonemail.com account until March 2015.

“In his interviews with the FBI, [redacted] indicated that sometime between March 25-31, 2015, he realized” that he did not make the changes requested by Mills the previous December, and in a Feb. 18, 2016, interview with the FBI, [redacted] indicated that he did not “recall conducting deletions based upon this realization.”

Speaking to the FBI on May 3, 2016, “[redacted] indicated he believed he had an ‘oh shit’ moment and sometime between March 25-31, 2015 deleted the Clinton archive mailbox from the PRN server and used BleachBit to delete the exported .PST files he had created on the server system containing Clinton’s e-mails.”

2. Trusting judgment of others

Clinton told the FBI that she relied on the judgment of others at State to determine what should and should not be sent in messages to her private email system.

“Clinton did not recall receiving any emails she thought should not be on an unclassified system,” the FBI’s report on Clinton’s interview states. “She relied on State officials to use their judgment when emailing her and could not recall anyone raising concerns with her regarding the sensitivity of the information she received at her email address.”

3. Breaking and smashing

Longtime Bill Clinton aide Justin Cooper, who helped set up the private email account that Hillary Clinton used as secretary of state, was the person “usually responsible” for setting up her new devices and syncing them to the server. Top aides Huma Abedin and Monica Hanley, as well as another person whose name is redacted, also helped Clinton set up her BlackBerry.

According to Abedin and Hanley, Clinton’s old devices would often disappear to parts “unknown once she transitioned to a new device.”

Cooper, according to the report, “did recall two instances where he destroyed Clinton’s old mobile devices by breaking them in half or hitting them with a hammer.”

4. Powell’s warning

Responding to an email from Clinton asking about his use of a BlackBerry while secretary of state, Colin Powell warned her that should that become “public,” her emails would become “official record[s] and subject to the law.”

"Be very careful. I got around it all by not saying much and not using systems that captured the data," Powell also wrote.

Clinton said that Powell’s comments did not factor into her decision to use a personal email address.

5. Server switch

Clinton was not part of the decision to move from the Apple server managed by Cooper to a server built by Bryan Pagliano, according to the report, which stated that Clinton “had no knowledge of the reasons for selecting it to install it in the basement” of her Chappaqua, New York, home.

Clinton also denied using the server to avoid the Federal Records Act, and did not have any conversations about using the server to avoid the Freedom of Information Act, according to the FBI’s investigation notes.

6. The meaning of (C)

Clinton told the FBI that she did not know what the “(C)” portion markings on an email chain signified, explaining that she thought it meant the paragraphs were marked in alphabetical order.

As far as her knowledge of the various classification levels of U.S. government information, Clinton responded that she took all classified material seriously regardless of the “level,” be it “TOP SECRET,” “SECRET” or “CONFIDENTIAL.”

7. Drone classification

Clinton told the FBI that she was not concerned about email deliberations regarding future drone strikes as far as whether there might be future classification, remarking that she recalled other discussions about strikes that never ended up taking place.

The U.S. treats CIA-conducted drone operations as classified, even though President Barack Obama has previously acknowledged U.S.-directed drone strikes in Pakistan.

8. The suspicious porn email

The FBI said it uncovered multiple instances of phishing or spear-phishing emails sent to Clinton’s account, including one that appeared to be sent from another State official’s account. Clinton responded to the email by trying to confirm that the person actually sent it, adding, “I was worried about opening it!”

But in another incident, the FBI noted that Abedin emailed someone (whose name is redacted) conveying Clinton’s concern that “someone [was] hacking into her email” after receiving an email from a “known [redacted] associate containing a link to a website with pornographic material.”

“There is no additional information as to why Clinton was concerned about someone hacking into her e-mail account, or if the specific link referenced by Abedin was used as a vector to infect Clinton’s device,” the FBI’s report states, and after roughly two lines of redacted text goes on to note that “open source information indicated, if opened, the targeted user’s device may have been infected, and information would have been sent to at least three computers overseas, including one in Russia.”

9. Email security

Clinton told the FBI that she did not recall department employees’ Gmail accounts being compromised when reminded of a June 4, 2011, email warning about the vulnerability of Google accounts and civilian technology in general.

Clinton “did recall the frustration over State’s information technology systems,” the FBI said in its notes from the interview.

In addition, Clinton said she did not remember a State email going out in late June 2011 informing employees of the importance of securing their personal email accounts in correlation with the upgrading of her clintonemail.com server.

Clinton said she did not consider switching over to a State.gov account, as she, according to the report, “understood the email system used by her husband’s personal staff had an excellent track record with respect to security and had never been breached.”

10. Concussion

Clinton also told the FBI that she was not informed about any instruction or direction about the preservation of records from the department during her transition out of office in early 2013. But the report noted that Clinton’s concussion in December 2012 and subsequent blood clot led to limited work at State for only a few hours a day and also that she "could not recall every briefing she received.”

The FBI’s report stated that Clinton did not have any discussions with aides about turning over her email records, nor did anyone at State ask for them.

“She believed her work-related emails were captured by her practice of sending email to the state.gov email addresses of her staff,” the report continued, adding that the secretary of state “was unaware of the requirement to turn over printed records at that time. Her physical records were boxed up and handled by aides.”

11. Blumenthal’s work

Commenting on the foreign policy memos from longtime friend Sidney Blumenthal, Clinton said she “had no concerns regarding the sources of the memos being classified.”

In addition, the report stated that Clinton “viewed the content as journalistic because Blumenthal did not have a clearance and was not in government at that time.”

Clinton said she did not solicit the memos, deeming Blumenthal “a prodigious writer whose information was sometimes accurate and sometimes not.”

12. The work-related email that wasn’t; a ‘difficult time’ at State

Clinton remarked that a Nov. 26, 2010, email with the subject line ‘MbZ call – 7:15 am” would likely fall into the classification of a work-related message and, according to the report, said she did not know why it was classified.

The FBI report said that Clinton recalled that being the time period of the WikiLeaks disclosures “because it was a difficult time at State.”