ABC's Pierre Thomas reported Sunday that the Department of Justice is in the final stages of their investigation of Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server and potential criminal mishandling of classified information, saying they are trying to wrap it up before the political conventions begin later this month.
The FBI interviewed Clinton Saturday for three-and-a-half hours. Thomas said the FBI wanted to know why Clinton set up the private server in the first place, who if anyone signed off on it, and if there were discussions about how to keep classified information off that "unusual" system.
"This FBI investigation's gone on for many months, and they want to compare what Secretary Clinton knows to what was found during the investigation," he said.
He said the legal standard for indictment was criminal intent to mishandle classified information, not simply sloppiness.
"I'm told that one of the reasons the investigation took so long is because the FBI went back and looked at the access Clinton aides had to secure computer networks that contained classified information," he said. "They wanted to know if those aides took classified information from the secure locations and then emailed it to the secretary on her non-secure private email system. They dissected everything."
This Week host Martha Raddatz, guessing Clinton was one of the last people interviewed by the FBI, wondered how close the investigation was to being concluded.
"They are clearly in the final stages," he said. "I'm told Justice Department officials want this resolved before the conventions start in just about two weeks. Whether they'll make that deadline remains to be seen. I recently spoke to a former senior Justice official who was critical that this was being resolved so close to the conventions."
The Republican National Convention will be held July 18-21 in Cleveland, Ohio, while the Democrats were hold theirs July 25-28 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.