Yesterday’s Justice Department report on the FBI’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server — the issue that likely decided the 2016 election — contained an ironic tidbit: As FBI director, James Comey used Gmail for FBI business “on numerous occasions.”
Clinton had a quick response. “But my emails,” she tweeted.
It was a reference to the phrase “but her emails,” a refrain used by Trump supporters during the campaign to rebut arguments against the eventual president.
But my emails. https://t.co/G7TIWDEG0p
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) June 14, 2018
The tweet had more than 570,000 likes by Friday afternoon.
The FBI investigation into Clinton’s email use, which was reopened and closed by Comey days before the election, found that Clinton committed no wrongdoing.
In addition to Comey, several officials in the Trump administration have been found to be conducting unsecured government communications — the exact complaint relentlessly leveled against Clinton — including President Trump himself.
In late May, Politico reported that as president, Donald Trump uses unsecured devices for his communications, shunning the usual presidential security protocol because it’s “too inconvenient.” Experts say the president is leaving himself wide-open to foreign hackers.
In March 2017, the Indianapolis Star reported that Vice President Mike Pence used a private AOL account to conduct business as governor of Indiana, and was hacked.
In November 2017, Newsweek found that White House senior advisers Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner used at least three private email accounts to conduct government business for months after officially joining the White House.
Thursday’s Justice Department report found that Comey had been “insubordinate” in his handling of the Clinton investigation and did not follow FBI guidelines. But inspectors determined that he wasn’t motivated by bias.
Although President Trump has argued that the FBI is biased against him, inspectors found that the only improper actions taken by the agency during the 2016 election were damaging to Clinton, not Trump.
