Just three days after investigators interviewed Hillary Clinton about her private email servers, FBI Director James Comey issued his agency’s findings and recommendations. Clinton’s actions, Comey said Tuesday, were “extremely careless” but did not rise to the level of a prosecutable offense.
This no doubt comes as a huge relief to the presumptive Democratic nominee. An indictment would have thrown Clinton's campaign into doubt and the presidential race into turmoil. But both the candidate and voters should consider Comey’s message in its entirety.
No, prosecutors wouldn't have been able to prove willful misconduct, as the law requires to obtain a conviction for mishandling classified information. Even so, Clinton displayed exceptionally poor judgment, endangered national security, and was untruthful when she said she never sent or received anything marked classified.
Of the 30,000 emails returned to the State Department after a slipshod sorting process by Clinton's lawyers, 110 were determined to contain classified information at the time they were sent or received, including eight email chains with top secret information. “Any reasonable person” in Clinton's position “should have known” better, Comey said, and none of the emails classified as secret should have been on “any kind of unclassified system,” let alone on personal servers “not even supported by full-time security staff.” Hardly a ringing exoneration.
Unlike the crassly partisan Benghazi investigation by a Republican-dominated congressional panel, the issues exposed in the email inquiry are real. They represent a major blunder on Clinton's part, perhaps driven by the secretiveness and paranoia of someone who has been in the public eye, and subject to relentless attack, for decades.
I would indict Hillary Clinton: Opposing view
On the other hand, the fact that Comey is not recommending charges is also telling. Clinton's transgressions have to be considered alongside her accomplishments as first lady, U.S. senator and secretary of State. And her complete record should be measured alongside her opponents’ records, particularly that of presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump, who immediately argued that the FBI inquiry was rigged.
Bill Clinton's stupendously ill-advised private meeting at the Phoenix airport last week with Attorney General Loretta Lynch provides plenty of fodder for conspiracy theorists, but the FBI is a non-partisan agency with a non-partisan presidential appointee at its helm. Comey, who is nearly three years into a 10-year term, is a lawyer and career prosecutor with a sterling record. He has accepted appointments from Republican and Democratic presidents and has a reputation for resisting political interference.
This particular inquiry was so free of outside influence that Comey apparently caught the Justice Department and the White House off guard by reaching his judgment so swiftly after the Clinton interview. He didn't give them any notice of what he was going to say or when he was going to say it.
As Comey noted, it’s impossible to find any comparable case in which charges were filed that did not involve willful misconduct, or such large quantities of classified information that an inference could be made of criminal intent.
The case most often cited as a comparison — the prosecution of former CIA director David Petraeus — is instructive. Unlike Clinton, Petraeus purposefully shared classified information with his biographer and lover, Paula Broadwell. And he still was able to get off with a misdemeanor plea agreement.
It is good for the nation that the FBI inquiry was completed before the political conventions and the fall campaign. But if Tuesday was a good day for Clinton, then the bar for good days — escaping indictment — has gotten very low indeed.
USA TODAY's editorial opinions are decided by its Editorial Board, separate from the news staff. Most editorials are coupled with an opposing view — a unique USA TODAY feature.