Federal agents grilled Hillary Clinton for 3¹/₂ hours Saturday morning over her use of a private e-mail server while she served as secretary of state.
Clinton voluntarily met with investigators at FBI Headquarters in Washington to answer questions in the probe over whether she communicated classified information through a personal e-mail address.
“She is pleased to have had the opportunity to assist the Department of Justice in bringing this review to a conclusion,” her presidential campaign spokesman, Nick Merrill, said in a statement.
He refused to elaborate on what was discussed.
CNN reported Saturday that sources familiar with the investigation say no charges will be brought against Clinton.
That angered Donald Trump, who tweeted Saturday afternoon: “Like I said, the system is totally rigged!”
Earlier Saturday, after news broke of Clinton’s grilling, Trump expressed hope that the feds would bring charges against his presumptive general-election opponent.
“It is impossible for the FBI not to recommend criminal charges against Hillary Clinton. What she did was wrong! What Bill did was stupid!” he tweeted.
The mogul was referring to former President Bill Clinton’s visit with Attorney General Loretta Lynch at the Phoenix airport last Monday night.
Lynch on Friday said she fully expected to accept the recommendations of the FBI and career prosecutors in deciding whether to bring charges. She was hit with a deluge of criticism for her 30-minute meeting with the ex-president.
“It’s painful to me,” Lynch said. “I certainly wouldn’t do it again.”
Hillary Clinton indicated Saturday that she didn’t even know her husband had met with Lynch.
“I learned about it in the news,” Clinton told host Chuck Todd on MSNBC.
Clinton said she stood by her statement a year ago that she never sent or received classified e-mails over her private server.
“I’ve been answering questions for over a year,” Clinton said.
She wouldn’t go into detail, citing the investigation, but she told Todd, “I was happy I got the opportunity to assist the Department [of Justice] and bring this to a conclusion.”
Trump’s Republican allies joined him in slamming Clinton, accusing her of “creating a culture which put her own political ambitions above State Department rules.”
“We must ask ourselves if this is the kind of leadership we want in the White House,” said Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus.
The interview is expected to be nearly the last step in the FBI’s yearlong probe into whether Clinton and her aides broke the law in setting up the private server while she served in the Obama administration.
Investigators have determined the server relayed classified messages but have offered few clues about what charges the Democratic nominee would face, if any.
Clinton’s private server was in her home in Chappaqua. She used the server instead of the State Department’s secure system for both government and personal e-mails during her four-year tenure as secretary of state.
She left the State Department in February 2013. State employees found correspondence between her account and the government accounts of her staff the following June.
Congressional hearings into the September 2012 attack on the US Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, added more scrutiny to Clinton’s correspondence when Congress members demanded her e-mails in July 2014.
In 2015, more than two years into Congress’ probe, Clinton admitted that she had maintained the personal e-mail system and that she had deleted 32,000 messages she and her aides deemed “personal.”
But the State Department’s inspector general said in May that Clinton had ignored official warnings that her e-mail setup violated federal rules and left classified material vulnerable to hackers.
Dozens of e-mails sent or received by Clinton through her private server were later determined to contain classified information. Clinton has said none of the e-mails was marked classified at the time they were sent or received.
Agents have interviewed Clinton’s top aides, including former Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills and Huma Abedin, the vice chairwoman of Clinton’s campaign, as part of the probe. The staffer who set up the server, Bryan Pagliano, was granted limited immunity for his cooperation.
Two black SUVs drove Clinton and some aides to the interview at the J. Edgar Hoover Building in downtown Washington Saturday.
According to reports, Clinton was accompanied by a cadre of attorneys. They included her lawyer David Kendall and two lawyers from Kendall’s firm, Williams & Connolly. She was also accompanied by Mills and an aide, Heather Samuelson. Mills and Samuelson are also lawyers.
The investigation could put a damper on Clinton’s presidential chances.
Only 30 percent of voters believe Clinton is “honest and trustworthy,” while 58 percent say she is “corrupt,” according to a June Fox News Poll.
Clinton’s next campaign appearance is Tuesday in Charlotte, NC, where she will campaign with President Obama. It’s the first time she and Obama will stump together in the current election cycle.
With Post Wire Services