FBI Rebuts Trump’s Claim Clinton’s Email Was Hacked By China
In the supposed email scandal that U.S. President Donald Trump just can’t seem to let go, he has made yet another accusation aimed at his 2016 election rival’s private email server, claiming that the Chinese had hacked into the server and received all of Hillary Clinton’s emails in real-time, based on a right-wing news article.
The Daily Caller claimed that a Chinese company operating in the Washington, D.C., area had set up code and inserted it into Clinton’s computer “throughout her term as secretary of state and obtained nearly all her emails.” According to Fox News, this was discovered in 2015, and FBI officials were warned of the hack.
The Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG) had supposedly found the code in the emails’ metadata, and was “so concerned by the revelation that officials drove over to the FBI to inform agents.” The Chinese company has been touted as a “front for Chinese intelligence.”
The publication reported that the White House had requested the matter be immediately investigated.
Upon hearing about this, Trump also took to his Twitter account to share his thoughts on the matter, mentioning the FBI and the Department of Justice in a thinly veiled threat that their “credibility will be forever gone” if they don’t deal with the breach.
Report just out: “China hacked Hillary Clinton’s private Email Server.” Are they sure it wasn’t Russia (just kidding!)? What are the odds that the FBI and DOJ are right on top of this? Actually, a very big story. Much classified information!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 29, 2018
Hillary Clinton’s Emails, many of which are Classified Information, got hacked by China. Next move better be by the FBI & DOJ or, after all of their other missteps (Comey, McCabe, Strzok, Page, Ohr, FISA, Dirty Dossier etc.), their credibility will be forever gone!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 29, 2018
However, the FBI has made a public statement regarding the report and Trump’s tweets, insisting that “the FBI has not found any evidence the (Clinton) servers were compromised,” according to NBC News.
The FBI extensively investigated Clinton’s emails following Trump’s repeated accusations about her use of the private email server, and issued a report in June this year about their findings.
One forensics agent assigned to look into the case told the investigators that while he was unaware of “any way of determining…100%” whether Clinton’s servers had been compromised, he felt “fairly confident that there wasn’t an intrusion.” Although he conceded it would be possible for a foreign adversary to cover their tracks, he “felt as if we coordinated with the right units at headquarters…for those specific adversaries…. And the information that was returned back to me was that there was no indication of a compromise.”
Speaking back in July 2016, former FBI Director James Comey stated that at that point no evidence of intrusion on her email server had been discovered.
“Given the nature of the system and of the actors potentially involved, we assess that we would be unlikely to see such direct evidence. We do assess that hostile actors gained access to the private commercial email accounts of people with whom Secretary Clinton was in regular contact from her personal account… She also used her personal email extensively while outside the United States, including sending and receiving work-related emails in the territory of sophisticated adversaries. Given that combination of factors, we assess it is possible that hostile actors gained access to Secretary Clinton’s personal email account.”
Following a thorough investigation, which included examining Clinton’s servers for suspicious log-in activity and examining confidential emails to determine whether foreign governments may have been able to access them, the FBI has described their efforts into the supposed scandal as “exhaustive.”
