Former secretary of state and 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton responded to a report that former FBI Director James Comey used a personal Gmail account at points at the FBI by saying, "But my emails."
The FBI's inspector general cited Comey for using a personal email account five times while doing official FBI business.
"We found that ... Comey’s use of a personal email account on multiple occasions for unclassified FBI business to be inconsistent with the DOJ Policy Statement," the report states.
That led to Clinton sarcastically referring to her own use of private email, which she contends critics overreacted to.
But my emails. https://t.co/G7TIWDEG0p
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) June 14, 2018
Comey even gave a speech in October 2016 where he specifically warned against using personal Gmail accounts for classified government business. However, the instances where Comey used Gmail were for unclassified remarks.
Clinton's use of a personal email differs from Comey's in certain key ways, since Comey did not have an unsecured private email server that he conducted classified business on.
Eight email chains on Clinton's private email server had "top secret" information and 36 had "secret" information. Clinton claimed not to realize they contained such information, and Comey criticized her for being "careless" but said he would not recommend charges against her.
Over 14,000 emails were not originally turned over to the State Department but were uncovered by the FBI during its investigation.
The emails from Clinton's server were also deleted despite orders from Congress to preserve them. Comey received no such orders from Congress.