INTRODUCTION
I. Background
The Department of Justice (Department) Office of the Inspector General (OIG) undertook this review of various actions by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Department in connection with the investigation into the use of a private email server by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Clinton served as Secretary of State from January 21, 2009, until February 1, 2013, and during that time used private email servers hosting the @clintonemail.com domain to conduct official Department of State (State Department) business.
In 2014, in response to a request from the State Department to Clinton for “copies of any Federal records in [her] possession, such as emails sent or received on a personal email account while serving as Secretary of State,” Clinton produced to the State Department 30,490 emails from her private server that her attorneys determined were work-related. Clinton and her attorneys did not produce to the State Department approximately 31,830 emails because, they stated, they were personal in nature, and these emails subsequently were deleted from the laptop computers that the attorneys used to review them.
In 2015, at the State Department’s request, the Office of the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community (IC IG) reviewed emails from Clinton’s private email server that she had produced to the State Department and identified a potential compromise of classified information. The IC IG subsequently referred this information to the FBI.
The FBI opened an investigation, known as “Midyear Exam” (MYE or Midyear), into the storage and transmission of classified information on Clinton’s unclassified private servers in July 2015. Over the course of the next year, FBI agents and analysts and Department prosecutors conducted the investigation. Their activities included obtaining and analyzing servers and devices used by Clinton, contents of private email accounts for certain senior aides, and computers and email accounts used to back up, process, or transfer Clinton’s emails. The investigative team interviewed numerous witnesses, including current and former State Department employees.
On June 27, 2016, while the Midyear investigation was nearing completion, then Attorney General (AG) Loretta Lynch and former President Bill Clinton had an unscheduled meeting while their planes were parked on the tarmac at Phoenix’s Sky Harbor Airport. Former President Clinton boarded Lynch’s plane, and Lynch, Lynch’s husband, and the former President met for approximately 20 to 30 minutes. Following the meeting, Lynch publicly denied having any conversation about the Midyear investigation or any other substantive matter pending before the Department. Nevertheless, the meeting created significant controversy. On July 1, 2016, Lynch publicly announced that she would accept the recommendation of the
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