FBI: No Charges Against Hillary Clinton Are Appropriate For Email Server Use

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is recommending to the Justice Department that no charges should be brought against Hillary Clinton for her use of private email servers as secretary of state, FBI Director James Comey announced Tuesday.

"Our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case," Comey said after detailing the FBI's findings in its investigation of Clinton's use of personal email servers. "No charges are appropriate in this case."

Clinton met with FBI officials in Washington for three and a half hours Saturday about her use of the private email server she used while she was secretary of state, her campaign said. Federal investigators also interviewed Clinton's top aides, including Huma Abedin, who was questioned in April.

Clinton had turned over her email server to the FBI in August, and at the time she turned it over, it had been wiped clean.

In May, Clinton told CBS News that she expected a quick conclusion to the FBI probe into whether she mishandled classified information on her server, which Clinton used exclusively to send and receive State Department correspondence.

"I always took classified material seriously," she told "Face the Nation" host John Dickerson. "There was never any material marked classified that was sent or received by me. And I look forward to this being wrapped up."

There has been increased scrutiny of the Justice Department, which oversees the FBI, and Attorney General Loretta Lynch after she had a spontaneous half-hour-long meeting with former President Clinton early last week.The attorney general said Friday of the meeting with Clinton that she "certainly wouldn't do it again," a sentiment seconded by the former president and by Hillary Clinton, who told MSNBC in an interview that "hindsight is 20-20."

Lynch confirmed Friday that she would be accepting the recommendations of the career prosecutors in the email case, though she stopped short of formally recusing herself from the matter.