Newly Released Documents Reveal More About the FBI's Clinton Email Investigation

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On Friday, the FBI released a 58-page report on its own investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server while she was working as secretary of state from 2009 through 2013. The report also includes excerpts and notes from the Democratic presidential nominee's FBI interviews.

In July, FBI director James Comey recommended against charging Clinton with a crime for her staff's handling of classified material. Despite Clinton and her staff being "extremely careless," Comey said the prosecution would come up short in proving criminal intent, meaning Clinton once again got the better of political opponents who, she had previously said, were "living in a fantasy world" if they expected to see her behind bars. The decision prompted Clinton's opponent Donald Trump to tweet that "the system is rigged."

The FBI report begins with a seemingly exhaustive list of Clinton's communication procedures within the State Department and her relevant shortcomings in terms of record-keeping. It repeatedly paints a picture of Clinton as largely oblivious, rather than malicious. In a section on her treatment of certain sensitive emails, for instance, it says, "Clinton was not aware how other State staff maintained their records and was unaware of State's State Messaging and Archive Retrieval Toolset (SMART)."

In interview notes, Clinton told the FBI that she didn't "remember" or didn't "recall" things literally dozens of times. When asked about her treatment of emails that were marked confidential, the report at one point says she "asked the interviewing agents if that was what 'c' referenced."

But at another point in the report, Clinton does appear to have been worried about an email supposedly sent from a State Department employee's external email account, and the report notes that it "contained a potentially malicious link." The FBI also notes that Clinton's aide Huma Abedin spotted an email from a "known [redacted] associate" that included "a link to a website with pornographic material."

There's also fodder for further speculation. Citing "investigative limitations," the author of the report writes that the FBI couldn't get its hands on "all mobile devices and various computer components associated with Clinton's personal e-mail systems." So the FBI says it couldn't come to a 100 percent definitive determination about whether or not classified documents were ever exposed to any hackers who may have been snooping around.

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