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NYT Reporter: FBI Statement on Clinton 'Pretty Damning in Any Political Context'

July 6, 2016

New York Times reporter Alex Burns called the FBI's statement on Hillary Clinton's private email conduct "pretty damning in any political context" during an appearance Wednesday on CNN's New Day.

While FBI Director James Comey did not recommend charges against Clinton over her use of an unsecured email server, he called her "extremely careless" and condemned the loose culture she presided over at the State Department regarding classified information.

Host Chris Cuomo said there was a "whole list of things" where Comey showed Clinton had been deceptive.

"Do you think this winds up going into the bucket of 'This Is What They Do,' that baseline criticism of how the Clintons take care of themselves first," Cuomo said.

"I think that's the biggest piece of fallout for this for Hillary Clinton's campaign," Burns said. "I think over the last couple weeks she's been trying really, really hard to win a second look from voters who are just fundamentally distrustful of her ... and just the culture that surrounds them, and this is a giant wild card that kind of blows up that effort, at least for the foreseeable future."

Cuomo wondered if that effort was destroyed as soon as Bill Clinton met privately with Attorney General Loretta Lynch last week, which was slammed by both sides of the aisle as improper given the investigation into Hillary Clinton.

"It certainly doesn't help but, look, I think even if you take Bill Clinton's meeting with Loretta Lynch totally out of the picture, to have the FBI director, who's as above politics as anybody in public life in the country, calling a major presidential candidate extremely careless and saying they had a culture of this kind of extreme careless around them, that's pretty damning in any political context," Burns said.