The FBI rejected president Donald Trump's unfounded allegation Chinese hackers broke into the server of former U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and stole most of her correspondence during the presidential campaign of 2016.
Trump made the astonishing allegation in a tweet Tuesday but offered zero proof China had ordered the cyber crime, or that the crime had occurred at all. The U.S. president's latest display of utter gullibility was triggered by a story he read on a right-wing website.
The story in the Daily Caller alleges an unnamed company allegedly owned by unnamed Chinese with offices in Washington, D.C. hacked Clinton's private server in 2016. The Chinese hackers allegedly added a line of code to the server's operating system that made copies of all Clinton's emails.
This code ordered the server to automatically transmit all of Clinton's correspondence to the Chinese company, which then allegedly forwarded the contents to Beijing. The Daily Caller claims two anonymous sources informed them of this break-in.
Trump tweeted this claim, writing "Report just out: 'China hacked Hillary Clinton's private Email Server.' Are they sure it wasn't Russia (just kidding!)? What are the odds that the FBI and DOJ are right on top of this? Actually, a very big story. Much classified information!"
The FBI yesterday publicly denied the veracity of the Daily Caller report - and in the process Trump's tweet. A spokesman for the FBI said the bureau hasn't found any evidence Clinton's server was broken into by China, which the Daily Caller initially described as a hostile foreign actor.
He referred to a July 2018 report from the Inspector General of the Department of Justice that reviewed the FBI investigation of Clinton's use of a private email server during the election campaign of 2016. A forensic analyst cited in the report told Justice Department investigators he was "fairly confident" Clinton's personal server hadn't been hacked or compromised.
Washington pundits said the line in the tweet blasting the FBI and the Justice Department for not doing anything about the alleged Chinese hack is another of Trump's unrelenting attacks on Attorney General Jeff Sessions. They surmise this loony tweet by Trump is another of his clumsy attempts to goad Sessions into opening an investigation into Clinton's 30,000 erased emails.
Clinton's use of a private email server when she served as Secretary of State was intensely investigated by a high-profile FBI probe spearheaded by former director, James Comey, who was fired from his post by Trump last year.
The FBI's exhaustive investigation ultimately cleared Clinton of any wrongdoing. It did, however, chide her for her handling of official emails on a private server as "extremely careless." Comey was harshly criticized for reopening the inquiry just 10 days before the presidential election. Clinton blamed this action of Comey for her losing the presidency.
