Hillary Clinton Into The Woods

Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton attends the premiere of the Hulu documentary “Hillary” in New York on March 4, 2020. Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP, File

Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton said Tuesday that the “right is trying to make this about me again,” as Republicans increasingly make comparisons between how she was not charged in a 2016 FBI investigation into her use of a private email server and the ongoing probe into former president Donald Trump’s handling of sensitive government documents.

“I can’t believe we’re still talking about this, but my emails. . .” Clinton tweeted. “The fact is that I had zero emails that were classified.”

She said in another tweet, “That’s right: ZERO.”

The string of tweets from the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee was a rare public response against Republican talking points. “I’m more tired of talking about this than anyone,” she wrote, “but here we are.” Clinton has in recent days been on a publicity tour to promote “Gutsy,” an Apple TV Plus show that she is making with her daughter, Chelsea.

As Republicans scrambled in recent weeks to defend Trump after FBI agents searched his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida, finding highly sensitive documents, some have brought up Clinton as an example of sloppiness in dealing with government affairs that was ultimately not punished by the judicial system.

Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) said on Fox News last month that “if there’s a prosecution of Donald Trump for mishandling classified information after the Clinton debacle . . . there’ll be riots in the streets.”

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“If they try to prosecute President Trump for mishandling classified information after Hillary Clinton set up a server in her basement,” Graham said, “there literally will be riots in the street. I worry about our country.”

Trump appeared to signal approval of the remarks by subsequently posting a video of the GOP senator’s Fox appearance. Graham did not immediately return a request for comment early Wednesday.

Days before the 2016 election, then-FBI Director James B. Comey announced a renewed investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server.

The FBI ultimately decided not to prosecute Clinton, and she said on Tuesday that “Comey admitted he was wrong after he claimed I had classified emails.”

Of the tens of thousands of emails that the FBI reviewed from her private server, 113 contained classified information, but many were not marked as such, and the ones that were marked were not marked clearly, Comey said in the summer of 2016. He also said in 2018 that while Clinton’s management of the emails was “more than just the ordinary mistake . . . it’s not criminal behavior.” (A subsequent State Department probe found that its employees did not deliberately mishandle classified emails found on Clinton’s server.)

A photo released by the Justice Department of documents found at Mar-a-Lago showed a handful of cover sheets marked “Top Secret/SCI.” SCI stands for “sensitive compartmented information,” meaning that access to the file is restricted to an even smaller subset of officials with the relevant security clearance.

Trump lawyer James Trusty said on Fox News that the Comey investigation “may not have been the most respectful precedent,” but that he would “take it in terms of the result.”

Trump’s situation was “not the stuff of an urgent, nuclear-based, espionage-type investigation.” Instead, it was “the stuff of an overdue library book,” Trusty said.

The Washington Post reported Tuesday that a document describing a foreign government’s military defenses – including its nuclear capabilities – was found during the FBI search last month.

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