Hillary Clinton scandal
It has been a great year for Hillary Clinton. The Iowa Caucus, the first of the primaries and caucuses in the US, witnessed Hillary Clinton emerging successful against Democratic rival Bernie Sanders. Some four months and dozens of primaries and caucuses later Hillary Clinton has emerged the presumptive nominee and would face-off Republican nominee Donald Trump on Election Day November 8, 2016.
But as she has been engaged in campaigning across the United States and pocketing one state after the other in the primaries, the e-mail controversy has all along threatened to blow apart her presidential bid.
The controversy
The controversy dates back to the time when Hillary was the Secretary of State, but became known to the public only in March 2015, a month before she declared her candidacy for the 2016 US Presidential elections.
She used a private e-mail rather than the official State Department e-mail account for official communications during her tenure as the US Secretary of State. Around 2,100 of these e-mails were later marked by the State Department as classified. These included 65 e-mails that were deemed “secret” and 22 that were deemed “top secret”. Using private e-mail raised the risk of hackers gaining access to Hillary Clinton’s official communication.
Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) initiated an investigation in context with the handling of classified information on Clinton’s server after allegations were raised that some of the e-mails fell in the secret and top secret category. The investigations to determine whether Hillary Clinton had put America’s interests at risk took 11 months.
An 83-page report was released by the State Department’s Office of the Inspector General in May 2016 regarding the State Department’s e-mail practices, including that of Hillary Clinton’s.
However, Hillary Clinton has revealed that she turned over 30,000 e-mails deemed work-related to the State Department. She also stated that she had deleted another 30,000 e-mails that, according to her, were personal. Hillary Clinton stated that she used just one e-mail account for both personal and work e-mails for convenience.
But, her rivals – Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump – have come down heavily on her with Sanders saying that the American people are sick and tired of hearing about her e-mails, while Trump saying that she should be in jail and calling her “crooked Hillary”.
Though, FBI Director James Comey called Hillary Clinton “extremely careless”, he said that criminal charges against her were not warranted.