Hillary Clinton in Higher Loyalty, by James Comey

On Foreign Policy: 2011: Criticized Putin for not counting Russia's votes

First, they sought to undermine confidence in the American democratic enterprise--to dirty us up so that our election process would no longer be an inspiration to the rest of the world.

Second, the Russians wanted to hurt Hillary Clinton. Putin hated her, blaming her personally for large street demonstrations against him in Moscow in December 2011. Putin believed Clinton had given "a signal" to demonstrators by publicly criticizing what she called "troubling practices" before and during the Parliamentary vote in Russia that year. She said, "The Russian people, like people everywhere, deserve the right to have their voices heard and their votes counted." Putin took that as an unforgivable personal attack.

Third, Putin wanted to help Donald Trump win.

On Principles & Values: FBI: Talked about classified topics in non-government email

The facts of the case were straightforward; Hillary Clinton had used her personal e-mail system to conduct her work as secretary of state. She set the server up several months after taking office. For the first few months of her tenure, she used a personal AT&T blackberry email address before switching to ClintonEMail.com domain. In the course of doing her work, she emailed with the other State Department employees; she and they talked about classified topics in dozens of their emails.

The criminal investigation was not centered on the fact that Clinton decided to use nongovernmental email to do her work. Our investigation required us to answer two questions: whether classified documents were moved outside the classified systems [which did not occur], or whether classified topics were discussed outside of classified systems [which did occur].

On Principles & Values: FBI: 36 emails discussed topics classified as "Secret"

In Secretary Clinton's case, there were 36 email chains that discussed topics that were classified as secret at the time. Eight times in thousands of emails exchanged across 4 years, Clinton and her team talked about topics designated as "Top Secret," sometimes cryptically, sometimes obviously. They didn't send each other classified documents but that didn't matter. Even though the people involved in the emails all had appropriate clearance and a need to know, anyone who had ever been granted a security clearance should have known that talking about top secret information on an unclassified system was a breach of rules governing classified materials. Although just a small slice of Clinton's emails, those exchanges of top secret topics were, by all appearances improper.

On Principles & Values: Email scandal: no evidence of obstruction of justice

COMEY: Yeah, the intelligence community raised a concern that there might've been mishandling of classified information on Hillary Clinton's personal email server. I didn't focus on it.

Q: It wasn't your order to open the investigation?

COMEY: Correct. What the inspector general raised was, in doing her work on that unclassified system, did she and those around her talk about classified topics?

Q: President Trump and his allies bring up that her staff smashed Blackberries, also whitewashed the server?

COMEY: Yeah. There was evidence that old Blackberries were destroyed, which I think a fair number of people do. And they used a software program to clean the server to make sure there was nothing on it. They did that. But as investigators, our question is, when they did that, are they trying to obstruct justice in some ways? We could never establish evidence that anybody who did that did it with a corrupt intent.

On Principles & Values: Email scandal: FBI doesn't prosecute carelessness

COMEY: We have a 50 year history of knowing what the Department of Justice will prosecute. They're very unlikely to prosecute a case unless you can show the person clearly knew they were doing something they shouldn't do--evidence of obstruction of justice or disloyalty to the US. Without those, even extreme sloppiness, is handled through administrative discipline. Somebody is not prosecuted. I've gone through 50 years of cases. I don't know of a case where anyone has ever been prosecuted for just being careless, even extremely careless. So the investigators knew that, unless they found something that was a smoking gun, where someone told Secretary Clinton, "You shouldn't be doing this," or where there's an indication of her obstructing justice, the case was unlikely to be prosecuted.

On Principles & Values: Email scandal: October FBI letter lost election to Trump

COMEY: The norm is, "If you can avoid it, you take no action that might have an impact on an election." I can't see a door that's labeled, "No action here." I can only see two doors: one says, "Speak," the other says, "Conceal."

Q: You could try to find out first whether or not there was evidence there of a crime.

COMEY: Well, maybe. And maybe another director might have done that. But the team is telling you, "We cannot evaluate this material before the election." [I concluded] speaking is really bad; concealing is catastrophic.

Q: Hillary Clinton's convinced that your letter defeated her.

COMEY: I hope not. I honestly don't know. But I was operating in a world where Hillary Clinton was going to beat Donald Trump, and if I hide this from the American people, she'll be illegitimate the moment she's elected, the moment this comes out.