FBI Report: Clinton Couldn’t Recall Briefings on Handling Emails

Heavily-Redacted Report Finally Sheds Some Light on Timeline

The FBI has released redacted reports on former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on the handling of classified information on her personal e-mail server during her tenure in office, centering around violation of rules regarding the handling of classified materials as well as skirting federal record-keeping requirements.

Clinton, now the Democratic nominee for President, was the subject of a substantial investigation over the emails, though ultimately the Obama Administration decided not to charge her with any crimes related to the violations.

While most of the report is simply data surrounding the history of the email servers and the way in which much of the record-keeping apparatus went missing, Clinton’s defense by which she got around violating standard practices on handling emails was that she simply didn’t remember.

In December of 2012, in the lead-up to an order to testify at the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Benghazi, Clinton feinted, suffering from dehydration, and sustained a concussion, which the State Department insisted at the time was “not severe.” Clinton’s duties were limited for some time after this, with a blood clot later in the month adding to the problems.

That is not to say that the concussion was a direct explanation for why Clinton “forgot” about the briefings, but the FBI report links the two, albeit ambiguously, mentioning the concussion and then declaring that “based on her doctor’s advice, she could only work at State for a few hours a day and could not recall every briefing she received.”

Former President Bill Clinton reported that Hillary took six months to get over the effects of the concussion. She officially ended her tenure at the State Department on February 1, 2013. According to the FBI, she never discussed record-keeping or any sort of email backup with her staff during the lead-up to her departure.

The Clinton campaign insisted that the concussion was not her excuse for not handling the material properly, but was her explanation for why she only worked a few hours a day at the time, not why she forgot so much of what she did at the time.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.