Paint chips, and the Republican Spirit…

I doubt I am the only one who noticed this not so subtle display of the Republican spirit.  Those who love to build, remodel, and improve things are familiar with the ubiquitous paint chip.  It is the Republican equivalent of the gay’s Rainbow and the left’s right-facing arrow through a big H.

The paint chip:  Let’s build something together as Home Depot likes to say.

The stage of the Republican National Convention was adorned with what?  Paint chips!

And did you notice how they changed color with every speaker?  Sweet! 

The paint chip:  Symbol of the positive remodeling, improving, building spirit of the Republican Party.  I will bet that this was the idea of one of the Trumps.  If I had to guess which one, I’d say Ivanka.

Dems: The Party of “Not Responsible for Anything” aka “The Irresponsible Party”

And Email Scandal, Act II

The Democrat party has exposed itself to what it has become – as exposed as the Party’s and Hillary’s emails.

The Party has become the “take no blame - take no responsibility” Party.   It assumes no blame and takes no responsibility – for anything.

It began with Obama’s incessant blame of Bush for the economy – a full six years into his own terms of office.

It continues with Obama’s blaming everything about the United States for the violence and unrest in the Middle East – our history, Capitalism, our culture.

Hillary continued the tradition by falsely blaming a home made, but historically accurate video about Muhammad for a planned Islamic terror attack that killed our Ambassador to Libya and others.

Hillary continued being Hillary by lying throughout the “server-gate” investigation – not taking responsibility for exposing dozens if not hundreds of Secret, Top Secret, and even higher classified documents to easy hacking and theft.  She simply ignores the compromised national security that resulted.

Now the Democratic Party’s own security has been compromised through another email breach.  The Party’s “experts” blame it on the Russians – and by inference, Trump.

Why oh why can they not take responsibility for their own failures?  Why can’t they admit, as in Hillary’s case, that they have poorly secured servers and poor and careless email security?  Why do they have to blame someone else yet again?  Of course, this deflects attention away from the nasty content of these Democrat emails that have inflamed members of their own Party.

And here’s a thought:  IF Russia did the hack, why wouldn’t they favor Bernie, the more openly Communist between him and Hillary?

This “take no blame – take no responsibility” policy of the Democratic Party has also become the hallmark of their Party Platform.

• Guns are to blame – the shooters (almost always Democrat) are not responsible.
• Workplace violence is to blame – the Islamic ideology that incites Muslims to violence is not responsible, nor are the Muslims (almost always Democrat) responsible.
• “Blame America First” is the centerpiece of Democrat foreign policy.
• “Blame capitalism” is the centerpiece of Democrat domestic policy.
• “Blame civilization first” is their “climate change/global warming”-based environmental policy.

All of this blame is used to justify the need for bigger governments and less individual responsibility.   Individual freedom and individual responsibility is, after all,  to blame for all of our ills.  Only government can fix it.  Government is NEVER to blame for anything – especially BIGGER government.

The centerpiece of the Democratic Convention – “take no blame – take no responsibility.”

Islamic Terror not mentioned once during first day of Convention.  Its as if these people live in a make believe fantasy land.

****

About the beheading of a Priest in Normandy, France, today…

The beheaded Priest’s boss, the Archbishop of Rouen, called the Muslim beheader a “victim.”

UPDATE 1220 BST — Archbishop of Rouen describes alleged Islamist killers as “victims” in statement
Away from his diocese at the World Youth Day celebrations in Krakow, Poland the archbishop of Rouen has released a statement on the death of one of his priests this morning, which strangely seems to identify both the slain clergyman and his killers as “victims”.

He said: “I have learnt with sadness of the killing this morning at the Church of Saint-Etienne du Rouvray. The three victims: the priest, Father Jacques Hamel, 84, and the perpetrators of the assassination.

The Catholic Church and its ignorant leaders better get a grip on reality.  They, too, apparently live in a fantasy land.

If that Archbishop were in the States, he would be a Democrat.  He wouldn’t even have to be a citizen.

Tim Kaines’ Islamist ties another good reason not to vote for Hillary…

Unless you are totally ignorant of Islam and the aims of the Muslim brotherhood.

It’s enough that Hillary compromised our national security with her unprotected Top Secret emails.

It’s enough that Hillary lied about Benghazi, the emails and a number of other matters to the American public.

It’s enough that Hillary’s principle advisor is a Muslim woman with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.

It’s enough that Hillary and her repeat offender cheating husband persists in their racket of trading national favors for personal enrichment.

But now things are made even WORSE (if that’s possible) with the selection of Tim Kaine for Hillary’s VP.

Tim Kaine has ties to a number of Islamic groups that have vowed to subvert our form of government and which believe in terror as a means to do so.  Hillary has embraced a VP who is as pro-Islam (and as Islamo-ignorant) as she is.

 

Here is the full story from Breitbart:

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s newly-announced running mate, Virginia Senator Tim Kaine, has a history of embracing Islamists. He appointed a Hamas supporter to a state immigration commission; spoke at a dinner honoring a Muslim Brotherhood terror suspect; and received donations from well-known Islamist groups.

Appointing a Muslim Brotherhood Front Leader Who Supports Hamas

In 2007, Kaine was the Governor of Virginia and, of all people, chose Muslim American Society (MAS) President Esam Omeish to the state’s Immigration Commission. A Muslim organization against Islamism criticized the appointment and reckless lack of vetting.

Federal prosecutors said in a 2008 court filing that MAS was “founded as the overt arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in America.” A Chicago Tribune investigation in 2004 confirmed it, as well as MAS’ crafty use of deceptive semantics to appear moderate. Convicted terrorist and admitted U.S. Muslim Brotherhood member Abdurrahman Alamouditestified in 2012, “Everyone knows that MAS is the Muslim Brotherhood.”

Read our fully-documented profile of MAS here.

According to Omeish’s website, he was also President of the National Muslim Students Association (click there to read our profile about its Muslim Brotherhood origins) and served for two years on the national board of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), which the Justice Department also labeled as a U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entity and unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas-financing trial.

His website says he was Vice President of Dar al-Hijrah Islamic Center, a radical mosque known for its history of terror ties including having future Al-Qaeda operative Anwar Al-Awlaki as its imam and being frequented by two of the 9/11 hijackers and the perpetrator of the Fort Hood shooting. Omeish’s website says he remains a board member.

It says he was chairman of the board of Islamic American University, which had Hamas financier and Muslim Brotherhood spiritual leader Yousef Al-Qaradawi as chairman of its board until at least 2006. Omeish was also chairman of the board for the Islamic Center of Passaic County, a New Jersey mosque with heavy terrorist ties and an imam that the Department of Homeland Security wants to deport for having links to Hamas.

Omeish directly expressed extremism before Kaine appointed him. He claimed the Brotherhood is “moderate” and admitted that he and MAS are influenced by the Islamist movement. In 2004, Omeish praised the Hamas spiritual leader as “our beloved Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.” Videotape from 2000 also surfaced where Omeish pledged to help Palestinians who understand “the jihad way is the way to liberate your land” (he deniedthis was an endorsement of violence).

When a state delegate wrote a letter to then-Governor Kaine warning him that the MAS has “questionable origins,” a Kaine spokesperson said the charge was bigotry.

Kaine obviously failed to do any kind of basic background checking in Omeish.

Omeish resigned under heavy pressure and Kaine acknowledged that his statements “concerned” him. But, apparently, they didn’t concern him enough to actually learn about the Muslim Brotherhood network in his state and to take greater precautions in the future.

Speaking at a Dinner Honoring Muslim Brotherhood Terror Suspect

In September 2011, Kaine spoke at a “Candidates Night” dinner organized by the New Dominion PAC that presented a Lifetime Achievement Award for Jamal Barzinji, who the Global Muslim Brotherhood Watch describes as a “founding father of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood.”

He first came on to the FBI’s radar in 1987-1988 when an informant inside the Brotherhood identified Barzinji and his associated groups as being part of a network of Brotherhood fronts to “institute the Islamic Revolution in the United States.” The source said Barzinji and his colleagues were “organizing political support which involves influencing both public opinion in the United States as well as the United States Government” using “political action front groups with no traceable ties.”

Barzinji had his home searched as part of a terrorism investigation in 2003. U.S. Customs Service Senior Special Agent David Kane said in a sworn affidavit that Barzinji and the network of entities he led were investigated because he “is not only closed associated with PIJ [Palestinian Islamic Jihad]…but also with Hamas.”  Counter-terrorism reporter Patrick Poole broke the story that Barzinji was nearly prosecuted but the Obama Justice Department dropped plans for indictment.

Barzinji played a major role in nearly every Brotherhood front in the U.S. and was vice president of the International Institute of Islamic Thought, which came under terrorism investigation also. Barzinji’s group was so close to Palestinian Islamic Jihad operative Sami Al-Arian that IIIT’s President considered his group and Al-Arian’s to be essentially one entity.

The indictment of Al-Arian and his colleagues says that they “would and did seek to obtain support from influential individuals, in the United States under the guise of promoting and protecting Arab rights” (emphasis mine).

The quotes about Brotherhood operative Barzinji’s aspirations to use civil rights advocacy as a means to influence politicians are especially relevant when you consider that video from the event honoring Barzinji shows Kaine saying that it was his fourth time at the annual dinner and thanked his “friends” that organized it for helping him in his campaign for Lieutenant-Governor and Governor and asked them to help his Senate campaign.

Islamist Financial Support

Barzinji’s organization, IIIT, donated $10,000 in 2011 to the New Dominion PAC, the organization that held the event honoring Barzinji that Kaine spoke at. The Barzinji-tied New Dominion PAC donated $43,050 to Kaine’s gubernatorial campaign between 2003 and 2005. That figure doesn’t even include other political recipients that assisted Kaine’s campaign.

The PAC has very strong ties to the Democratic Party in Virginia, with the Virginia Public Access Project tallying almost $257,000 in donations. This likely explains why Barzinji’s grandson served in Governor McAuliffe’s administration and then became the Obama Administration’s liaison to the Muslim-American community.

The Middle East Forum’s Islamist Money in Politics database shows another $4,300 donated to Kaine’s Senate campaign in 2011-2012 by officials from Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). Another $3,500 came from Hisham Al-Talib, a leader from Barzinji’s IIIT organization.

It’s worth noting that Barzinji’s IIIT donated $3,500 to Esam Omeish’s 2009 campaign delegate campaign, tying together the cadre of Muslim Brotherhood-linked leaders who got into Kaine’s orbit.

Conclusion

Kaine has no excuse. If he has an Internet connection, then he and his staff should have known about their backgrounds. They were either extremely careless (something Kaine would have in common with the top of the ticket) or knew and looked the other way in the hopes of earning donations and votes.

Clinton’s choice of Kaine is widely seen as a way of strengthening her campaign’s national security credentials.

How can you trust a candidate on national security who appoints a Hamas supporter to their immigration commission and speaks at a dinner honoring a Muslim Brotherhood terror suspect?

And how can you trust a candidate who picks such a person as their “strong on national security” running mate?

Action Plan: Elaboration on Gingrich plan to defeat Islamic takeover…

In the face of the Islamist attack in Nice, France, Sean Hannity interviewed Newt Gingrich on the topic of “Islam” last night.

I have to say, this is the first time I have heard any public official say so clearly what needs to be done without reservation and without apology.

Here is the essence of the Gingrich plan…

• Vet everyone that comes into this country
• Vet how:  Ask if they believe in Sharia or the Caliphate.
• As a follow up, monitor all social sites (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc.) and every mosque to determine if sharia or the caliphate are being promoted or taught
• First indication of an individual or mosque promoting Sharia or the Caliphate, monitor like glue;  second indication:  Deport and close down.  Gingrich does not believe in “three strikes, you’re out.”
• He realizes this may take years to implement; until then: No Muslims.

This is Trump’s plan writ large and clear.  This is why I prefer Gingrich to Pence as VP, but Pence may do better at getting Trump elected.  Gingrich will advise from the sidelines, which you gotta admit, is light years better than Muslim Huma Abedin advising from the sidelines. 

There will be objections to this plan.  Here they are and here are the counters:

Oh, but Islam is a religion.  You can’t do that to a religion. 

Sharia and the Caliphate are political and legal components of Islam.  They each represent a political philosophy that calls for the undermining and elimination of our governing and legal systems.  Consequently those advocating, implementing or promoting the Caliphate or Sharia are also engaging in sedition.  Sedition is a crime worthy of prison or deportation.

You can’t monitor everybody – that’s infringement of our privacy.

First we need to acknowledge we are at war.  We are being attacked and under continued threat of attack by those who believe in and practice a political ideology that is incompatible with Western civilization in general, and US culture, customs and governance specifically.  We need to take the same measures to counter this threat as we have done during wartime.  Those who wish to deny us the ability to monitor are the ones who would force us to be subject to continuing attack and threat of attack.  That is not acceptable.

There are 1.6 billion Muslims.  That’s too many.  You can’t do that.

Fortunately, only a few million are in the US, constituting fewer than 2% of our population. 5% is generally understood to be the critical mass of population, the “tipping point” when a Muslim population feels freer to commit their Sharia and Caliphate-inspired acts of terror.  If Zudhi Jasser can be believed (unfortunately, I don’t), not all Muslims who practice Islam believe in Sharia or the Caliphate.  The proportions who do or  don’t are not clearly known.

Muslims also believe in taqiyya.  They will lie themselves out of admitting their beliefs to public officials.

That is exactly why there has to be monitoring of our social sites and all Mosques.  Sure, they may speak in code words to hide their true beliefs and intentions, but their duplicity will be figured out quickly.

Sharia, the Caliphate, and jihad are central to Islam.  There is no Islam without these three.

This is true.  Right now mainstream Islam, the Islam promoted and practiced by the vast majority of Islamic leaders and followers believe these three things are doctrine integral to Islam.  Some few minority Muslim like Zudhi Jasser say they don’t believe they are.  Some believe Islam can be “reformed” into excluding Sharia, the Caliphate, and violent jihad from their doctrine.  That’s fine.  I happen to disagree in which case those who practice Islam will be denied access to this country.  If Islam can be reformed in this manner, then those who practice Islam sans Sharia, the Caliphate and violent jihad may remain.  These doctrines have existed within Islam for over 1,000 years.  It will take decades if not centuries for this sort of transformation to take place, if it ever does.  In the meantime, we need to remove the cancer.

We are already too heavily infiltrated with Muslims and Muslim sympathizers in our government, the media, and academia.  It’s too late.

Without hearing clear-minded, rational, unequivocating statements as made by Newt Gingrich, this seems to be the case.  But rational people still exist.  It took a decade or more for Muslims to be placed in positions of power and influence.  Hopefully humans, and I include politicians and bureaucrats in this category, can learn from their stupidity.  We will learn if it is “too late” if those who promise this type of reform are assassinated or run out of office.  We don’t know if its too late if we don’t try.

We know our policies regarding Islam have failed.  If they continue, they will continue to fail.  Why?  Here is a quote from the introduction of the book “See Something – Say Nothing” by Philip Haney and Art Moore:

“Amid pressure from many of the very Muslim Brotherhood leaders he [Philip Haney, founding member of DHS] identified as threats to national security, a policy emerged that forbade mention of Islam in association with terrorism and downplayed supremacist Islam as just one among many violent ideological movements. [bold added for emphasis.]

“The policy, known as Countering Violent Extremism, or CVE, forced Haney into a ten-year adversarial relationship with the agency’s politically appointed officials and their subordinates.”

It is the policy “Countering Violent Extremism” that has failed.  It lumps the Tea Party and single-gender Boy Scouts in with Islamic terrorists and seditionists.  It fails to recognize and acknowledge the single most dangerous ideology to our nation:  Islam and its seditious components. 

We need to de-infiltrate our government.  The rest will take care of itself.  We’ve had too many Foxes in the Henhouse for too long.

I will post the transcript of Newt Gingrich's comments to Hannity on this topic as soon as it is available.

Here is part of it:

“Let me start where I am coming from and let me be as blunt and direct as I can be — western civilization is in a war. We should frankly test every person here who is of a Muslim background, and if they believe in Sharia, they should be deported,” Gingrich said. “Sharia is incompatible with western civilization. Modern Muslims who have given up Sharia — glad to have them as citizens. Perfectly happy to have them next door. But we need to be fairly relentless about who our enemies are.”

Predictably, the “see no evil” Islamic-pandering liberal media is going nuts in their criticism of Gingrich.

Here is the video of the Gingrich interview:

An observation, for the record:

Note that when a black suspect with a record is shot by police because of his arrogant, threatening attitude, the media and President rush to judgment claiming he was a good, decent young man – if Obama had a son, etc.

But when a Muslim yelling Alluha Akbar while he mows down a hundred people with his truck or gun or explosives, he is a deranged man having nothing to do with Islam.  The media and president are doing this very thing with the Nice, France, massacre.

Strange, isn’t it.

New Republican Headquarters: How Serious Can They Be Without a Sign?

The Grand Opening of The Villages Republican Headquarters was celebrated at 3pm on Saturday, July 9, 2016.   A lively crowd of over 100 crammed the roughly 2,000 square foot store front on Canal Street at Sumter Landing, next to the Hallmark store, two doors down from Toojays.

Most if not all of the Republican candidates running for office in Sumter County and beyond were represented, including a table for Donald Trump.

A number of speakers, including Sumter County Commissioner Don Hanfeldt and The Villages spokesman Gary Lester declared how important this election really is – perhaps a turning point toward the destruction of our nation if Hillary is elected.  An epic election – “the most critical in our lifetime” as one speaker warned.

Yet there was one stark omission that no one seemed to care about.  If the efforts of the Republic Party are so existentially critical this go ‘round, why do the lessors and lessees of this facility “for the Republican cause” not have a normal decent, visible sign out front?  Does Gary Lester care there is no sign?  Does anyone else care that we aren’t doing all we can do to win the next election?

I asked the man in charge of the facility if he plans to have a sign put up.  He answered in a rather off-handed way, “there will be signs in the windows, people will see it.”  I asked if there will be a normal sign, like any business occupying this space would have.  He said “no, it’s not allowed.”   I asked “not allowed by whom.  He said “The Villages.”

So I guess this election isn’t such a big deal after all – not important enough to have a decent sign posted in The Villages Republican Headquarters.  Is it that “the Party” doesn’t want to pay for the sign, or is it really The Villages who will not allow one, I don’t know.   Either way, this whole experience may be just another circus act, and not one important enough to have a visible sign in the space designated for one.

Sure, there will be window signs that are too small to see from the street.  Sure, there is a sandwich board sign on the sidewalk, blocked from street view by cars parked in front.  But no sign where any business would be allowed to have it.
Not important enough for a sign in the blank space?

The Republican Party seems to still not care to be run like a business which would certainly fight for decent signage.  Or is the developer of The Villages the one prohibiting a sign that any business would be allowed to have?

A sign isn’t the be all and end all of winning an election.  But the lack thereof represents a loser’s mindset of not caring all that much about the little but important details, when added together, may make a difference.

The message given by this omission:  Maybe this election isn’t that important after all.

Add up the corruption-inspired events…

Here are the most recent events that yell “corruption” at the highest levels of our federal government…

• The two “snakes on the plane” last Friday, July 1 – Billy Boy Clinton, the husband of the suspect and Loretta Lynch, (Attorney General), the FBI Director’s boss.
• The 3.5 hour interrogation/interview/tea between Hillary, the suspect and FBI investigators on Saturday, July 2nd.
• The press conference by Lynch subordinate Comey on Tuesday, July 5th, not recommending indictment despite all evidence that says indictment is justified.
• The political junket on the President’s/taxpayer’s plane with Barack/Hillary on the days following.

And they say the outcome isn’t “political.”  The outcome is not only political; it is criminal.

Comey is said by some conservative allies to be a straight shooter.  I question that portrayal.   I suspect his pension may have been at risk –thus his statement that “no charges are appropriate in this case.”

No charges are recommended despite the following in the words of Comey during his Tuesday press conference:

• 110 e-mails in 52 e-mail chains have been determined by the owning agency to contain classified information at the time they were sent or received.
• Eight of those chains contained information that was Top Secret at the time they were sent; 36 chains contained Secret information at the time; and
• Eight contained Confidential information, which is the lowest level of classification.
• Separate from those, about 2,000 additional e-mails were “up-classified” to make them Confidential; the information in those had not been classified at the time the e-mails were sent.
• There is evidence that  they [Hillary Clinton and those receiving her emails] were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.
• Any reasonable person in Secretary Clinton’s position, or in the position of those government employees with whom she was corresponding about these matters, should have known that an unclassified system was no place for that conversation.
• The security culture of the State Department in general [for which Ms. Clinton was personally responsible during her tenure as Secretary of State], and with respect to use of unclassified e-mail systems in particular, was generally lacking in the kind of care for classified information found elsewhere in the government.
• To be clear, [says Comey] this is not to suggest that in similar circumstances, a person who engaged in this activity would face no consequences. To the contrary, those individuals are often subject to security or administrative sanctions. [Translated, this means that under this particular circumstance, given who the suspect is, we must give her a free pass – but any others should be subject to prosecution.]
• We do assess that hostile actors gained access to the private commercial e-mail accounts of people with whom Secretary Clinton was in regular contact from her personal account.
• [We are not recommending prosecution because] All the cases prosecuted involved some combination of: clearly intentional and willful mishandling of classified information…

No “clearly intentional and willful mishandling of classified information?”  You have got to be smokin’ something, Comey.  What dear Hillary did was indeed willful to keep her emails outside the public record.  Those are facts in the record.

Can you imagine being pulled over by a cop for going 85 mph in a school zone and proclaiming, “But officer, I had no intention of going that fast – it wasn’t convenient for me to go any slower.”

Or,

A bank cashier skimming money from depositors, and then claiming “I didn’t willfully do that – it was just a more convenient way to pay my bills.”

I know someone that worked in the Pentagon who had a secret document visible on top of her work desk in her office who was written up because it wasn’t covered.  And we have careless, irresponsible and above-the-law Hillary who skates on breaches 10,000 times worse.

The events of the past week would cause any clear thinking person to not only be convinced of the need to prosecute and convict Ms. Clinton for misfeasance and malfeasance in office by careless handling national secrets, but to distrust every public official who has the audacity to declare her innocence.  These would include Loretta Lynch, Comey, Bill and Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama – and likely dozens more who are equally complicit.  

People knowledgeable of the prerequisites for earning a security clearance conclude that anyone who did what Ms. Clinton did as reported by Comey in his press briefing could not secure a security clearance and therefore would not be eligible to hold office.

Oh, and I also question the integrity and judgement of anyone who supports Ms. Clinton for the office of US President.  I could not trust such person’s judgement enough to do business with them.

The credibility and trustworthiness of our federal government has reached a new low.  Double standards run rampant.

Here is the entire transcript of the FBI Director’s press briefing  given on July 5, 2016:

Good morning. I’m here to give you an update on the FBI’s investigation of Secretary Clinton’s use of a personal e-mail system during her time as Secretary of State.

After a tremendous amount of work over the last year, the FBI is completing its investigation and referring the case to the Department of Justice for a prosecutive decision. What I would like to do today is tell you three things: what we did; what we found; and what we are recommending to the Department of Justice.

This will be an unusual statement in at least a couple ways. First, I am going to include more detail about our process than I ordinarily would, because I think the American people deserve those details in a case of intense public interest. Second, I have not coordinated or reviewed this statement in any way with the Department of Justice or any other part of the government. They do not know what I am about to say.

I want to start by thanking the FBI employees who did remarkable work in this case. Once you have a better sense of how much we have done, you will understand why I am so grateful and proud of their efforts.

So, first, what we have done:

The investigation began as a referral from the Intelligence Community Inspector General in connection with Secretary Clinton’s use of a personal e-mail server during her time as Secretary of State. The referral focused on whether classified information was transmitted on that personal system.

Our investigation looked at whether there is evidence classified information was improperly stored or transmitted on that personal system, in violation of a federal statute making it a felony to mishandle classified information either intentionally or in a grossly negligent way, or a second statute making it a misdemeanor to knowingly remove classified information from appropriate systems or storage facilities.

Consistent with our counterintelligence responsibilities, we have also investigated to determine whether there is evidence of computer intrusion in connection with the personal e-mail server by any foreign power, or other hostile actors.

I have so far used the singular term, “e-mail server,” in describing the referral that began our investigation. It turns out to have been more complicated than that. Secretary Clinton used several different servers and administrators of those servers during her four years at the State Department, and used numerous mobile devices to view and send e-mail on that personal domain. As new servers and equipment were employed, older servers were taken out of service, stored, and decommissioned in various ways. Piecing all of that back together—to gain as full an understanding as possible of the ways in which personal e-mail was used for government work—has been a painstaking undertaking, requiring thousands of hours of effort.

For example, when one of Secretary Clinton’s original personal servers was decommissioned in 2013, the e-mail software was removed. Doing that didn’t remove the e-mail content, but it was like removing the frame from a huge finished jigsaw puzzle and dumping the pieces on the floor. The effect was that millions of e-mail fragments end up unsorted in the server’s unused—or “slack”—space. We searched through all of it to see what was there, and what parts of the puzzle could be put back together.

FBI investigators have also read all of the approximately 30,000 e-mails provided by Secretary Clinton to the State Department in December 2014. Where an e-mail was assessed as possibly containing classified information, the FBI referred the e-mail to any U.S. government agency that was a likely “owner” of information in the e-mail, so that agency could make a determination as to whether the e-mail contained classified information at the time it was sent or received, or whether there was reason to classify the e-mail now, even if its content was not classified at the time it was sent (that is the process sometimes referred to as “up-classifying”).

From the group of 30,000 e-mails returned to the State Department, 110 e-mails in 52 e-mail chains have been determined by the owning agency to contain classified information at the time they were sent or received. Eight of those chains contained information that was Top Secret at the time they were sent; 36 chains contained Secret information at the time; and eight contained Confidential information, which is the lowest level of classification. Separate from those, about 2,000 additional e-mails were “up-classified” to make them Confidential; the information in those had not been classified at the time the e-mails were sent.

The FBI also discovered several thousand work-related e-mails that were not in the group of 30,000 that were returned by Secretary Clinton to State in 2014. We found those additional e-mails in a variety of ways. Some had been deleted over the years and we found traces of them on devices that supported or were connected to the private e-mail domain. Others we found by reviewing the archived government e-mail accounts of people who had been government employees at the same time as Secretary Clinton, including high-ranking officials at other agencies, people with whom a Secretary of State might naturally correspond.

This helped us recover work-related e-mails that were not among the 30,000 produced to State. Still others we recovered from the laborious review of the millions of e-mail fragments dumped into the slack space of the server decommissioned in 2013.

With respect to the thousands of e-mails we found that were not among those produced to State, agencies have concluded that three of those were classified at the time they were sent or received, one at the Secret level and two at the Confidential level. There were no additional Top Secret e-mails found. Finally, none of those we found have since been “up-classified.”

I should add here that we found no evidence that any of the additional work-related e-mails were intentionally deleted in an effort to conceal them. Our assessment is that, like many e-mail users, Secretary Clinton periodically deleted e-mails or e-mails were purged from the system when devices were changed. Because she was not using a government account—or even a commercial account like Gmail—there was no archiving at all of her e-mails, so it is not surprising that we discovered e-mails that were not on Secretary Clinton’s system in 2014, when she produced the 30,000 e-mails to the State Department.

It could also be that some of the additional work-related e-mails we recovered were among those deleted as “personal” by Secretary Clinton’s lawyers when they reviewed and sorted her e-mails for production in 2014.

The lawyers doing the sorting for Secretary Clinton in 2014 did not individually read the content of all of her e-mails, as we did for those available to us; instead, they relied on header information and used search terms to try to find all work-related e-mails among the reportedly more than 60,000 total e-mails remaining on Secretary Clinton’s personal system in 2014. It is highly likely their search terms missed some work-related e-mails, and that we later found them, for example, in the mailboxes of other officials or in the slack space of a server.

It is also likely that there are other work-related e-mails that they did not produce to State and that we did not find elsewhere, and that are now gone because they deleted all e-mails they did not return to State, and the lawyers cleaned their devices in such a way as to preclude complete forensic recovery.

We have conducted interviews and done technical examination to attempt to understand how that sorting was done by her attorneys. Although we do not have complete visibility because we are not able to fully reconstruct the electronic record of that sorting, we believe our investigation has been sufficient to give us reasonable confidence there was no intentional misconduct in connection with that sorting effort.

And, of course, in addition to our technical work, we interviewed many people, from those involved in setting up and maintaining the various iterations of Secretary Clinton’s personal server, to staff members with whom she corresponded on e-mail, to those involved in the e-mail production to State, and finally, Secretary Clinton herself.

Last, we have done extensive work to understand what indications there might be of compromise by hostile actors in connection with the personal e-mail operation.

That’s what we have done. Now let me tell you what we found:

Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.

For example, seven e-mail chains concern matters that were classified at the Top Secret/Special Access Program level when they were sent and received. These chains involved Secretary Clinton both sending e-mails about those matters and receiving e-mails from others about the same matters. There is evidence to support a conclusion that any reasonable person in Secretary Clinton’s position, or in the position of those government employees with whom she was corresponding about these matters, should have known that an unclassified system was no place for that conversation. In addition to this highly sensitive information, we also found information that was properly classified as Secret by the U.S. Intelligence Community at the time it was discussed on e-mail (that is, excluding the later “up-classified” e-mails).

None of these e-mails should have been on any kind of unclassified system, but their presence is especially concerning because all of these e-mails were housed on unclassified personal servers not even supported by full-time security staff, like those found at Departments and Agencies of the U.S. Government—or even with a commercial service like Gmail.

Separately, it is important to say something about the marking of classified information. Only a very small number of the e-mails containing classified information bore markings indicating the presence of classified information. But even if information is not marked “classified” in an e-mail, participants who know or should know that the subject matter is classified are still obligated to protect it.

While not the focus of our investigation, we also developed evidence that the security culture of the State Department in general, and with respect to use of unclassified e-mail systems in particular, was generally lacking in the kind of care for classified information found elsewhere in the government.

With respect to potential computer intrusion by hostile actors, we did not find direct evidence that Secretary Clinton’s personal e-mail domain, in its various configurations since 2009, was successfully hacked. But, given the nature of the system and of the actors potentially involved, we assess that we would be unlikely to see such direct evidence. We do assess that hostile actors gained access to the private commercial e-mail accounts of people with whom Secretary Clinton was in regular contact from her personal account. We also assess that Secretary Clinton’s use of a personal e-mail domain was both known by a large number of people and readily apparent. She also used her personal e-mail extensively while outside the United States, including sending and receiving work-related e-mails in the territory of sophisticated adversaries. Given that combination of factors, we assess it is possible that hostile actors gained access to Secretary Clinton’s personal e-mail account.

So that’s what we found. Finally, with respect to our recommendation to the Department of Justice:

In our system, the prosecutors make the decisions about whether charges are appropriate based on evidence the FBI has helped collect. Although we don’t normally make public our recommendations to the prosecutors, we frequently make recommendations and engage in productive conversations with prosecutors about what resolution may be appropriate, given the evidence. In this case, given the importance of the matter, I think unusual transparency is in order.

Although there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information, our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case. Prosecutors necessarily weigh a number of factors before bringing charges. There are obvious considerations, like the strength of the evidence, especially regarding intent. Responsible decisions also consider the context of a person’s actions, and how similar situations have been handled in the past.

In looking back at our investigations into mishandling or removal of classified information, we cannot find a case that would support bringing criminal charges on these facts. All the cases prosecuted involved some combination of: clearly intentional and willful mishandling of classified information; or vast quantities of materials exposed in such a way as to support an inference of intentional misconduct; or indications of disloyalty to the United States; or efforts to obstruct justice. We do not see those things here.

To be clear, this is not to suggest that in similar circumstances, a person who engaged in this activity would face no consequences. To the contrary, those individuals are often subject to security or administrative sanctions. But that is not what we are deciding now.

As a result, although the Department of Justice makes final decisions on matters like this, we are expressing to Justice our view that no charges are appropriate in this case.

I know there will be intense public debate in the wake of this recommendation, as there was throughout this investigation. What I can assure the American people is that this investigation was done competently, honestly, and independently. No outside influence of any kind was brought to bear.

I know there were many opinions expressed by people who were not part of the investigation—including people in government—but none of that mattered to us. Opinions are irrelevant, and they were all uninformed by insight into our investigation, because we did the investigation the right way. Only facts matter, and the FBI found them here in an entirely apolitical and professional way. I couldn’t be prouder to be part of this organization.