Hillary Clinton in Trump impeachment

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.