Hillary Clinton has been in hot water for quite some time because of her emails. Donald Trump likes to remind the entire world of this whenever he has a chance to do so.
Last week it looked as though the American election was more or less over. Following a string of mishaps and allegations of sexual assault, Donald Trump’s approval ratings were in the gutter.
And then, on Friday the FBI announced that they are reopening an investigation into Clinton’s use of her private email when she was Secretary of State. Now people are saying that this could cost her the election. It all sounds serious but also not serious, right? What’s going on? Does this mean that Hillary used her personal email when she should have been using her work email? That’s something we’ve all done accidentally. Sort of – the thing is, when you’re a senior politician, using the wrong email is actually a pretty big deal because you deal with classified information every day. However, it’s not yet clear whether Hillary’s slip up is a big deal or not.
The emails could turn out to be absolutely everything and they could turn out to be a big fuss about nothing. So, with an FBI investigation underway and less than ten days to go until Clinton and Trump go head to head for the presidency here’s your need to know on the Hillary Clinton’s emails we keep hearing about.
What exactly did Hillary Clinton do?
In 2009, just before she was sworn in as Secretary of State under the newly elected President, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton set up an email server at home in New York.
She relied on this server for both her work and personal electronic correspondence while she held the position for four years.
Clinton did not use or even activate an official government email account, which would have been hosted on the US governments servers and managed by them.
There are really strict rules in the US, as there are in the UK, about what sort of emails politicians can and can’t send from official and personal accounts. It’s for this reason that Hillary’s personal server became a front-page story last year and prompted an FBI investigation.
Wait, so there’s already been an FBI investigation?
Yeah, we know, it’s all getting pretty confusing. There has already been one ‘probe’ into Hillary Clinton’s emails. It took the form of a year-long investigation and resulted in the FBI’s director criticising the presidential candidate and her team for being ‘extremely careless’ in how they handled classified information but, ultimately, no criminal charges.
So, did Hillary Clinton break the law or what?
Donald Trump likes to chant 'lock her up' at every opportunity but technically no, she didn't. Indeed, no criminal charges were brought against her by the FBI. However, the American federal laws that she was seen to potentially have been in violation of include Executive Order 13526 and 18 U.S.C Sec.793 which state that it is unlawful to send or store classified information on personal email.There are also strict regulations when it comes to how official emails are stored and archived which weren’t followed by Clinton and her team because they used a personal email system and not an official one.
Why does this matter anyway?
The Hillary Clinton email scandal is the worst kind of scandal: it’s important and very very boring. Essentially this is all about protocol and paper trails. It matters because politicians and public officials are meant to follow strict codes of conduct and, if their emails need to be called up for investigation, they need to be readily available. If they’re on private servers that’s not so easy. You wouldn't want Theresa May sending confidential top secret Brexit emails from her gmail would you?
How did Hillary explain it? Was there anything shady going on?
According to Hillary Clinton it was more 'convenient' to set up her own email.She has said that she preferred to carry one smartphone with one email address, rather than two with her correspondence split between work and personal.
How many emails are there?
According to the BBC ‘Mrs Clinton, she sent or received 62,320 emails during her time as Secretary of State.She, or her lawyers, have determined about half of those - 30,490, roughly 55,000 pages, were official and have been turned over to the State Department.’
‘Mrs Clinton said the other emails are private - relating to topics like her daughter's wedding, her mother's funeral and "yoga routines".’
Why do people care so much about Hillary Clinton’s emails?
First and foremost, it matters because politicians are supposed to play by the rules but people so often don’t feel like they do. Clinton is asking the people of the United States to put their trust in her and, whether she actually was or not, it looks like she was being shady.
Another big issue is that the use of a non-government server made put the content of her emails at risk from hackers. Given that the United States has recently accusxed Russia of staging cuber attacks and trying to hack computers and influence this election it's a very sensitive subject.
So why are the FBI looking at Hillary’s emails again?
Nobody really knows. At the end of last week, the FBI announced that it had discovered new emails ‘in connection with an unrelated case…that appear to be pertinent to the investigation.’
The FBI’s director, James B. Comey, told US congress in a very vague letter that the investigation would determine whether classified information was involved or not. Some people are now accusing Comey of abusing his power by reopening this investigation so close to the election date because of how it could influence the outcome.
Will there be a verdict on Hillary Clinton’s emails before the election?
It’s very very unlikely that anything will be cleared up in the next week. Whether or not this is a big bureaucratic deal or a massive national security deal is still very unclear.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.