Notes on a scandal

THE former secretary of state and her colleagues were “extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information”. Hillary Clinton, who in August said she “did not send classified material”, in fact used her home-brew IT system in eight e-mail chains containing material that someone in her position should have known was classified top-secret. There was no direct evidence that her own e-mail account was compromised, but she sent and received e-mails in “the territory of sophisticated adversaries” and the accounts of some people with whom she corresponded were indeed hacked, opening a possible route for foreign spies into Mrs Clinton’s in-box. Delivering his verdict on a year-long investigation, the FBI’s director, James Comey, sounded like someone who was laying out the case for the prosecution.It turned out that Mrs Clinton will not be charged—because Mr Comey concluded that her mistakes were neither intentional nor the result of malice towards the United States, and because the attorney-general, Loretta Lynch, said that she would follow the FBI’s lead. In legal terms, the matter is closed.