The FBI director, James B. Comey, said Tuesday that the bureau would not recommend criminal charges in Hillary Clinton's handling of classified information, lifting an enormous legal cloud from her presidential campaign, hours before her first joint campaign appearance with President Barack Obama.
To warrant a criminal charge, Comey said, there had to be evidence that Clinton intentionally sent or received classified information - something that the FBI did not find.
"Our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case," he said at a news conference.
During the investigation, Comey said, the FBI recovered additional work-related emails that Clinton's lawyers had not turned over to the State Department, including some that contained classified information. But he said there was no evidence that she or her lawyers had intentionally deleted or withheld them.
Still, Comey delivered what amounted to an extraordinary public tongue-lashing.
"There is evidence to support a conclusion," he said, that Clinton "should have known that an unclassified system was no place for that conversation."
The State Department turned over to the House committee roughly 800 emails pertaining to Benghazi. Clinton asked the department to release the remaining trove of emails, which set off a complicated, politically charged process of vetting each one to determine whether it contained classified information.
The CIA, the State Department and other agencies reviewed the emails, designating hundreds of them with varying levels of classification.
Clinton has asserted that she did not send or receive any information marked classified at the time it was sent. But about two dozen emails were designated "top secret," the highest level of classification, and Clinton's critics say she jeopardised national security.
Several of those pertained to the CIA's drone program in Pakistan, which is a covert program, though it is widely reported in the Pakistani and US media.
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