are watching this very closely. >> i bet they already have their tickets. i bet you do, too. >> i don't yet. going to run out and get one right now. >> christina go! thank you for joining me today. "at this hour with berman and bolduan" starts now. this is cnn breaking news. >> hello everyone, i'm john berman. >> i'm kate bolduan. looking at the podium right there, waiting to hear from fbi director james comey any moment now and we'll be completely transparent, we're not exactly sure what we'll be hearing. we don't even know what topic he plans to address. >> keep in mind this comes three days after an investigator sat down with hillary clinton for 3 1/2 hours discussing her use of a private e-mail server while secretary of state. sat down with means asking questions for more than 3 1/2 hours. loretta lynch, the attorney

general says she will accept the recommendations of the fbi should they choose to indict. if the fbi director is talking about this today, it will have huge implications on the presidential race. we don't know. we're going to find out when you do. in the meantime, cnn political director david shally, it is strange in this type of thing we have no idea what he was going to say. >> not previously scheduled. >> if he does come out today and talk about this, let's just talk about what it means for temperatural race. hillary clinton due to appear with president in north carolina in just a few hours. >> again, one more time on the caveat, we do not know what fbi director comey is coming out to speak about, but you're right. this would be probably the worst timed press conference if indeed the phish director is coming to speak about the clinton e-mail investigation because of what you said. >> david, you see him right

here, the fbi director taking to the podium right now. >> good morning. i'm here to give you an update on the fbi's investigation of secretary clinton's use of a personal e-mail system during her time as secretary of state. after a tremendous amount of work over the last year, the fbi is completing its investigation and referring the matter for department of justice for a prosecutive decision. what i want to do today is three things. i want to tell you what we did, tell you what we found and what we're recommending to the department of justice. this is going to be an unusual statement in at least a couple of ways. first, i'm going to include more detail about our process than i ordinarily would because i think the american people deserve those details in a case of intense public interest. second, i have not coordinated this statement or reviewed it in any way with the department of justice or any other part of the government. they do not know what i'm about to say. i want to start by thanking the

fbi employees who did remarkable work in this case. once you have a better sense of how much we have done, you will understand why i am so grateful and so proud of their work. so first, what we have done. this investigation began as a referral from the intelligence community inspector general in connection with secretary clinton's use of a personal e-mail server during her time as secretary of state. the referral focused on whether classified information was transmitted on that personal system. our investigation looked at whether there is evidence that classified information was improperly stored or transmitted on that personal system in violation of a federal statute that makes it a felony to mishandle classified information either intentionally or in a grossly negligent way. or a second statute making it a misdemeanor to knowingly remove classified information from appropriate systems or storage

facilities. consistent with our counterintelligence responsibilities, we have also investigated to determine if there is evidence of computer intrusion by nation states or hostile actors of any kind. i have so far used the singular term e-mail server in describing the referral that began our investigation. it turns o to have been more complicated than that. secretary clinton used several different servers and administrators of those servers during her four years at the state department, and she also used numerous mobile devices to send and read e-mail on that personal domain. as new servers and equipment were employed, older servers were taken out of service, stored and decommissioned in various ways. piecing all that back together to gain as full an understanding as possible of the ways in which personal e-mail was used for government work has been a painstaking undertaking

requiring thousands of hours of effort. for example, one one of secretary clinton's servers was decommissioned in 2013, the e-mail software was removed. that didn't remove the e-mail content, but it was like removing the frame from a huge unfinished jigsaw puzzle and dumping all the pieces on the floor. the effect was that millions of e-mail fragments ended up in the server's unused or slack space. we searched through all of it to understand what was there and what parts of the puzzle we could put back together again. fbi investigators also read all of the approximately 30,000 e-mails that secretary clinton provided to the state department in 2014. where an e-mail was assessed as possibly containing classified information, the fbi referred that e-mail to any government agency that might be an owner of that information so that agency could make a determination as to

whether the e-mail contained classified information at the time it was sent or received or whether there was reason to classify it now, even if the content has not been classified when it was first sent or received. that's the process sometimes referred to as up-classifying. from the group of 30,000 e-mails returned to the state department in 2014, 110 e-mails in 52 e-mail chains have been determined by the owning agency to contain classified information at the time they were sent or received. eight of those chains contained information that was top secret at the time they were sent. 36 of those chains contained secret information at the time. and eight contained confidential information at the time. that's the lowest level of classification. separate from those, about 2,000 additional e-mails were

up-classified to make them con tenl. those e-mails had not been classified at the time they were sent or received. the fbi also discovered several thousand work-related e-mails that were not among the group of 30,000 e-mails returned by secretary clinton to state in 2014. we found those e-mails in a variety of ways. some had been deleted over the years and we found traces on them on servers or devices connected to the private e-mail domain. others we found by reviewing the archive government accounts of people who had been government employees at the same time as secretary clinton, including high ranking officials at other agencies, folks with whom a secretary of state might normally correspond. this helped us recover work-related e-mails not among the 30,000 produced to state. still others we recovered from the painstaking reviews of the millions of e-mail fragments dumped into the slack space of the server decommissioned in

2013. with respect to the thousands of e-mails we found not among those produced to the state department, agencies have concluded three of those were classified at the time they were sent or received, wurn at that time secret level and two at the confidential level. there were no additional top secret e-mails found. finally, none of those we found have since been up-classified. i should adhere that we found no evidence that any of the additional work-related e-mails were intentionally deleted in an effort to conceal them in some way. our assessment is that, like many e-mail users, secretary clinton periodically deleted e-mails or e-mails were purged from her system when devices were changed. because she was not using a government account or even a commercial account like gmail, there was no archiving at all of her e-mails. it's not surprising that we discovered e-mails that were not on secretary clinton's system in 2014 when she produced those

30,000-some e-mails to state. it could also be that some of the additional work-related e-mails that we've recovered were among those deleted as personal by her lawyers when they reviewed and sorted her e-mails for production in late 2014. the lawyers doing the sorting for secretary clinton in 2014 did not individually read the content of all of her e-mails as we did for those available to us. instead, they relierd on header information and used search terms to try to find all work-related e-mails among the reportedly more than 60,000 that were remaining on hir system at the end of 2014. it's highly likely that their search missed some work-related e-mails and we later found them. for example, in the mail boxes of other officials or in the slack space of a server. it's also likely that there are other work-related e-mails they did not produce to state and that we did not find elsewhere and that are now gone because they deleted all e-mails they

did not produce to state, and the lawyers then cleaned their devices in such a way as to preclude complete forensic recovery. we have conducted interviews and done technical examination to attempt to understand exactly how that sorting was done by her attorneys. although we don't have complete visibility because we're not able to fully reconstruct the electronic record of that sorting, we believe our investigation has been sufficient to give us reasonable confidence there was no intentional misconduct in connection with that sorting effort. of course, in addition to our technical work, we interviewed many people, from those involved in setting up the personal e-mail system and maintaining the various iterations of secretary clinton's server to staff members with whom she corresponded on e-mail, to those involved in e-mail production to state and finally secretary clinton herself. last, we have done extensive work to try to understand what indications there might be of

compromise by hostile actors in connection with that personal e-mail system. so that's what we've done. now let me tell you what we found. although we did not find clear evidence that secretary clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is information that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information. for example, seven e-mail chains concerned matters classified at the top secret special access program at the time they were sent and received. those chains involve secretary clinton both sending e-mails about those matters and receiving e-mails about those same matters. there is evidence to support a conclusion that any reasonable person in secretary clinton's position or in the position of those with whom she was corresponding about those matters should have known an unclassified system was no place

for that conversation. in addition to this highly sensitive information, we also found information properly classified as secret by the u.s. intelligence community at the time it was discussed on e-mail. that is excluding any later up-classified e-mails. none of these e-mails should have been on any kind of unclassified system. the presence is especially concerning because all these e-mails were housed on unclassified personal servers, not even supported by full-time security staff like those found at agencies and departments of the united states government or even with a commercial e-mail service like gmail. i think it's also important to say something about the marking of classified information. only a very small number of the e-mails here containing classified information bore markings that indicated the presence of classified information. even if information is not marked classified in an e-mail, participants who know or should know that the subject matter is

classified are still obligated to protect it. while not the focus of our investigation, we also developed evidence that the security culture of the state department in general and with respect to the use of unclassified systems in particular was generally lacking in the kind of care for classified information that's found elsewhere in the u.s. government. with respect to potential computer intrusion by hostile actors, we did not find direct evidence that secretary clinton's personal e-mail domain in its various configurations since 2009 was hacked successfully. but given the nature of the system and of the actors potentially involved we assess we would be unlikely to see such direct evidence. we do assess that hostile actors gained access to the private commercial e-mail accounts of people with whom secretary clinton was in regular contact from her personal account. we also assessed that secretary

clinton's use of an e-mail domain was known by a large number of people and readily apparent. she also used her personal e-mail extensive li while outside the united states including sending and receiving work-related e-mails in the territory of sophisticated adversaries. given that combination of factors, we assess it is possible that hostile actors gained access to secretary clinton's personal e-mail account. so that's what we found. finally, with respect to our recommendation to the department of justice, in our system the prosecutors make the decisions about whether charges are appropriate based on evidence that the fbi helps collect. although we don't normally make public our recommendations to the prosecutoprosecutors, we fr make recommendations and engage in productive conversations with prosecutors about what resolution may be appropriate given the evidence. in this case, given the importance of the matter, i think unusual transparency is in order. although there is evidence of

potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information, our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case. prosecutors necessarily weigh a number of factors before deciding whether to bring charges. their obvious considerations like the strength of the evidence, especially regarding intent, responsible decisions also consider the context of a person's actions and how similar situations have been handled in the past. in looking backality our investigations into the mishandling or removal of classified information, we cannot find a case that would support bringing criminal charges on these facts. all the cases prosecuted involved some combination of clearly intentional and willful mishandling of classified information or vast quantities of information exposed in such a way as to support an inference of intentional misconduct or

indications of disloyalty to the united states or efforts to obstruct justice. we do not see those things here. to be clear, this is not to suggest that in similar circumstances, a person who engaged in this activity would face no consequences. to the contrary, those individuals are often subject to security or administrative sanctions, but that's not what we're deciding now. as a result, although the department of justice makes final decisions on matters like this, we are expressing to justice our view that no charges are appropriate in this case. i know there will be intense public debate in the wake of this recommendation as there was throughout the investigation. what i can assure the american people is that this investigation was done honestly, competently and independently, no outside influence of any kind was brought to bare. i know there were many opinions expressed by people not part of the investigation including people in government, but none

of that mattered to us. opinions are irrelevant, and they were all uninformed by insight into our investigation because we did our investigation the right way. only facts matter, and the fbi found them here in an entirely apolitical and professional way. i couldn't be prouder to be part of this organization. thank you very much. >> director comey, people say you're making this announcement -- >> you eve been listening to fbi director james comey, an extraordinary moment in washington. no one knew what he was going to say. the headline -- >> he said that. he said the justice department does not know what i'm about to say. >> he said no charges are appropriate in this case when it comes to hillary clinton and her use of a private e-mail server while secretary of state. no charges are appropriate. he said no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case. that's the good news for hillary clinton. >> the bad news, though, he said

while there's no clear evidence they intended to violate the law, they were extremely careless in the handling of classified information. he also said any reasonable person, meaning hillary clinton herself, in her position should have known that this place was no place for these conversations, meaning the e-mails, the e-mail server was no place to be having many of these conversations. he's talking about classified information being discussed. 110 e-mails and 52 e-mail chains have been determined to contain classified information at the time that these e-mails were transmitted. >> and eight considered top secret at the time they were transmitted. want to bring in cnn political director david chyanne. no charges appropriate in this case. there are several subhead lines as well. hillary clinton extremely careless in how she used her e-mail. certainly security or

administrative sanctions would be in order if this were someone else or if she was still in her post. >> pretty unbelievable moment. >> this is a little bit of everything here for everyone that wants to take something away here. there is no doubt, to go back to that headline, the biggest thing here that hillary clinton wanted to do was move beyond this with no criminal charges, and that is what the fbi director is recommending. if we take attorney general loretta lynch that she'll accept the recommendations of the career investigators and prosecutors that look into this, one might assume when it gets the final stamp from doj, it will end up with what comey is saying. huge sigh of relief that there will be no criminal charges. jim comey basically cut an ad for hillary clinton's opponent if they want to use it by talking about extremely careless in her handling of this and, by the way, the two things that hillary clinton has talked the most about throughout this entire process of the last year is that she never sent or

received anything classified at the time. jim comey just said that there were some e-mails sent or received that contained markings of classification, then added the extra layer that, even if it didn't contain markings, that hillary clinton and others around her in the position of dealing with this information should have known it was classified. that is one comment hillary clinton has said again and again and again that jim comey and his investigation, the fbi investigation disagrees with. the other comment that hillary clinton has said time and again throughout this process is that she handed over every work-related e-mail. that is something that comey said his investigators found not to be the case. again, he didn't find any intentional reason that her legal team kept e-mails away, but that there were a couple thousand, what they deemed work

related e-mails that did not get turned over in 2014. again, that's at odds with something that hillary clinton has said throughout this entire process. those two fact patterns will have old tape of her going back and forth with what james comey said. nothing can take away the fact that this is a huge burden lifted off hillary clinton's back, the recommendation from the fbi is no criminal charges. now she can begin to look forward to november without this hanging over her head. it will remain this political problem with her previous words. >> it's amazing. it's known the fbi was wrapping up their investigation. there really was no suggestion that today was going to be the day that the fbi director was coming out. let's talk more about what the fbi director said and what this means going forward. jeffrey toobin is on the phone with us now. i know you were listening to this. your big takeaway? >> it's an enormous relief for hillary clinton and her

campaign. this was a dagger aimed at the heart of her campaign, and she has avoided being charged, simple as that. i also think it's worth focusing on what director comey said about the nature of these sorts of charges. it is only -- these cases have only been brought when there has been knowing and intentional violation of the rules of classified information. there have only been these cases when documents clearly marked classified have been intentionally disclosed, or documents that the discloser knew were classified. here the issue of intent is critical. she has said publicly undoubtedly she said in her interview, she never intentionally disclosed classified information. the fbi found nothing to refute that, and that's why she wasn't

charged. >> no evidence that hillary clinton -- to be clear, james comey said no indication that hillary clinton or others intended to violate the law. i didn't mean to interrupt. go ahead. >> that's exactly right. that's the difference between reckless and irresponsible behavior and criminal behavior. here clearly this was a terrible system that was set up in an incompetent way. the people involved did not behave appropriately, but that's not why we have criminal charges. criminal charges exist for knowing and ichb tenl violations of the law. that's not what the fbi found here. >> so that's the legal angle on this. fbi director recommending no charges in this case. there was also a clear political angle. i want to bring in david axelrod. >> the fbi director himself acknowledged that in his

statement. >> david axelrod is with us. cnn's reporting leaving up to this had been that charges were not expected there. in a way that's not a surprise. i think it is a surprise if for 14 minutes the fbi director james comey laid out this case for just how careless hillary clinton and the state department was, and her staff was in the use of e-mails during her time there and the personal servers, multiple servers and devices that she used. he essentially said they should have known better. they thould have been better here. your takeaways, david? >> well, i think this is probably the best result that she could have gotten. there was never going to be an elegant resolution to this matter because, in fact, it was reckless and careless and she, herself, acknowledged the fact that it was a mistake. i think comey had to lay those facts out because he, more than anything i think, wants to assure people that this was a

thorough and fair and well considered investigation, and i think his statement was very assiduous for that reason. as a political matter, what hillary clinton needed was a resolution, and she got it today. there's no doubt that for those who oppose her and for those who want to raise questions there was material that they can use. but the headline is still the headline which is that this matter -- now the justice department has to act on it. i think given the events of the last few days, it's hard to imagine that they wouldn't follow comey's recommendation. this is what she needed. and the fact that she got it now is probably very, very important because it won't be hanging over her at the democratic national convention in a few weeks. >> david, it's an extraordinary day that comey came out to make this announcement. we talked about it at the top of the show when we were going into

it. this is the day president obama is hitting the trail for the first time officially with hillary clinton with their big campaign event. that is kind of hanging over this as well. >> well, you guys as trained professionals probably recognize that this is known as stepping on the story, but i don't think that's comey's concern. comey i think was eager to, having completed his investigation, to report out on it and probably didn't care much about the political calendar or how it would affect the story. but there's no doubt that when newscasts, yours and others, continue throughout the day and when that event happens, this will be -- this will super seed that as the news of the day. >> wolf blitzer joins us now. wolf, it's going to be a strange flight down on air force one with president obama and hillary clinton going down to north carolina as the phish director, his fbi director just lit in to the state department while she

was serving as secretary of state, discussing how they used or misused her private server there, despite the fact that no charges are coming. >> despite the fact no charges, very, very awkward at a minimum. the fact that he would say she was extremely careless in her use of these private e-mail servers, and he pointed out there was more than one server, a very sensitive, highly classified information. even if it had not been marked highly classified, sensitive or deeply classified information, anyone seeing that information should have known it was classified. it shod not have appeared there. it was very vulnerable to outside negative elements if you will. he was very blunt in all of this. statement, as you've been pointing out, he said our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case even though that is extremely damning of the way the secretary of state at that time

operated for four years using this private server for all her information to communicate with her aides. there were other opportunities out there. she continued to do it. she shouldn't have done it. she acknowledges she shouldn't have done it. she now ak najs it was a mistake. at the same time he's not going to recommend charges which is, of course, what she wanted. at the same time it is very, very damning to put it mildly. >> absolutely right. do we still have jeffrey toobin on the phone, guys? >> yes, you do. >> jeff, i just had a question. it is amazing when you look at the timeline here. we cannot forget that it was just saturday the fbi sat down for the 3 1/2 hour interview with hillary clinton and now monday they have wrapped this whole thing up. that seems pretty fast to me. >> well, undoubtedly the core of this investigation was seeing the documents, seeing what other people said.

i'm sure the fbi who are nothing, if not savvy investigators, recognize it was extremely unlikely for hillary clinton to implicate herself in a crime. so if she was going to be charged in a crime, it would have come from other evidence that they had assembled over time. you never call in the subject of an investigation until the very end. frankly, it's unusual for a subject of an investigation to participate in an interview. they usually take the fifth and don't talk. but in the event that they do talk, you always want to bring that person in. if you're going to prosecute someone, you almost certainly are going to do it with evidence that comes from other people. that's what the fbi spent all its months doing, getting the evidence from other people that either did or did not support criminal charges according to director comey, it did not

support criminal charges. but it was always going to be very unlikely that hillary clinton, well prepared by her lawyers, was not going to incriminate herself. her interview was the climax of the investigation but certainly the evidence was not the key turning point. we have evan perez on the phone with us, our justice department reporter. you've been reporting for some time, your sources have been telling you, that no charges were likely, it all depended on the three-hour meeting which just took place this saturday. i want to get your reporting on this in a second, but i also want to get to the fact that just the specifics here, the fbi director is recommending no charges be filed. the final decision is that the final decision comes from the justice department and the attorney general who says she's going to accept the recommendation. is this a fait accompli? >> reporter: apparently it is. we have to wait for the

prosecutors across the street at the justice department to make that final call. comey's investigators spent a year looking at this server. he described it as putting together a jigsaw puzzle because there were so many pieces, so many servers, so many devices sk tear clinton used during the time she was secretary of state and carelessness with which they used it. the carelessness with which they treated the security of the classified information that was on their systems. one of the key parts of this, though, was at the top of jim comey's statement in which he says, referring to people across the street, the political leaders across the street at the justice department. he says they do not know what i'm about to say. that was his signal to the public really to reassure them that the fbi has been doing its investigation on its own independently obviously. they've had the over siert of the justice department all along, but it was very important

for him to come out given the swirl of speculation and given the fact that the secretary was here on saturday. he wanted to assure the public that what he found was an independent finding, something that the political people across the street aren't going to be able to change, so to speak. now we wait for the justice department to make its official announcement. >> evan, do you get the sense that the fbi director caught people off guard with this announcement today? >> reporter: yes, he did. i think that was very much unexpected. folks across the street i think were expecting the fbi would spend at least a week reviewing what mrs. clinton said in her interview on saturday here at fbi headquarters, that it would take a little while to go through all that, compare it to all the other evidence they've collected. it appears that work was going on during the weekend and they were able to make that conclusion now, kate. >> we're watching former secretary of state hillary clinton. she is speaking right now in washington, not about this. as far as we know, she has not

brought up the investigation and what the fbi director said. we do know she was delayed, she waited for some time to begin the address. we can only imagine that she and her aides and the entire campaign were watching us very carefully to find out what would happen. as the fbi director said, no one knew what he was going to announce. i want to bring in national security correspond jim sciutto. jim, based on that 15 minutes from the fbi director, we learned a lot about how e-mails were handled during secretary clinton's time during secretary of state or, as the fbi director said, mishandled, it was extremely careless with mao than 100 e-mails marked classified being sent on the private server and eight marked top seek cret the time they were sent. >> reporter: absolutely. none was either marked classified or deemed classified at the time and was deemed later. why does it matter? what are the big questions is

when you mishandle classified information, who then has abscess to it. as director comey said, one of the key questions they were trying to get answered, did foreign governments, did foreign actors get access to this classified information? his answer was there was no direct evidence that her servers, plural, not just one, were hacked successfully. he went on to say because of the actors we're talking about here, russia, china, others, they would not likely see direct evidence that it was. he went on to say they do know the servers and e-mail of people hillary clinton was corresponding with, other foreign leaders, former u.s. officials, et cetera, were compromised by foreign actors. he was all but saying that this classified information was exposed to foreign actors, they didn't see direct evidence but they wouldn't likely see it because these guys were very good at covering their trabs. they do know people she was in

touch with and thereby sharing some of this information or exposing some of this classified information, they were compromised. almost saying we have to assume that some of this information was compromised because of the servers she used, the private servers she used. it's a really key part of this because it gelts to why classified information has to be handled correctly by all people with security clearance. >> we want to welcome our viewers around the united states and the world. fbi director james comey coming out to say they are not recommending charges against hillary clinton following their investigation into her use of private e-mail server. with that, let's bring in wolf blitzer once again. at the end of his remarks, wolf, the fbi director took time to try to drive home the point that he said their investigation was conducted honestly, competently, independently and without any influence from the outside.

he went to lengths to try to make that case, almost to the extent that the press said, his announcement caught a lot of people off guard. you know how washington works. not knowing the theme of a press conference is not something that's very typical. >> and he is highly respected. people have to appreciate that james comey, former u.s. attorney, he is highly respected by democrats and republicans, liberals and conservatives, because he has an outstanding record over the years of going where the law tells him to go. now he's the fbi director. he's got a long term there as the fbi director. he doesn't have to worry about another president coming in. he can serve out his term as fbi director. when he says there was classified information on that server, even if it had not been formally marked classified, anyone in a position of government should have known it was classified. it wasn't just low level confidential information which is classified. that's the lowest level of classification. but then there's secret, then

there's top secret and then a category above top secret. there were some e-mails that were there at that top level above top secret. when he says that information was there, it was potentially available for foreign hostile powers or anyone for that matter to go into those private servers and compromise that kind of information, that is a severe, severe slap at the way hillary clinton was running that server while she was secretary of state for four years and her aides were obviously very well aware all this information was on this private server. when she says that no information was marked classified when it was september or received, she may be precise in those words. but he says anyone reading that information should have known it was secret, top secret or even a secure compartmented information which is even more sensitive. >> in fact, we know more than 100 were marked classified, eight marked top secret.

even those that weren't, wolf, as you point out correctly, they should have known they were classified, the fbi director said. by "they," his implication was that the secretary of state should have known. however, the fbi not recommending charges against fbi. i want to bring in shawn spicer, chief strategist for the republican national committee and communications director. thank you for being with us. i want to get your reaction to the news today. >> i think these findings by the fbi are a clear indictment on hillary clinton's judgment and fitness to be president. the office she is seeking requires the highest level of judgment, making sure our nation's secrets are protected, but also creating a culture where people understand the importance of that. what the fbi director laid out today was clearly someone who doesn't understand the importance of our national security, puts themselves ahead of the rules. i think this is a major problem when it comes to the judgment she would exhibit as president of the united states.

this is a true indictment on her judgment and fitness to be president. >> indictment on her judgment and fitness. however, not an indictment. you heard from james comey that no reasonable prosecutor -- no reasonable prosecutor would bring this case. you accept that, right? you trust they conducted this in an apolitical fashion. you trust this investigation was conducted honestly? >> i think if you look at the first 14 minutes of what the fbi director laid out, as wolf and others have said before, you had thousands of e-mails that were not turned over. she signed a document under the threat of perjury that said she turned over every i mail. that was not true. she sent hundreds of e-mails at the highest level . the director made it clear people are penalized for this and this is not acceptable. another important factor, the culture at the state department she oversaw, the director made

it very clear, was one that did not understand the importance -- >> sean, do you trust that the fbi -- >> this is someone that wants to be president, kate. >> thank you. i know. but do you trust that the fbi conducted a fair investigation? do you trust that? >> well, it sounds like it. again, it sounds like the findings they made are clear, she did exhibit poor judgment, reckless by their account, and it is not their job to decide whether or not it formally is prosecuted which he made clear. i think any reasonable person who hears these charges, however, can't conclude anything otherwise, that this is a clear violation of the law and that it should be. whether or not -- past history, somebody who created this culture out of their own desire to protect themselves, own desire not to follow the rules baz they wanted to be clear they had a set of rules for themselves, a, i think the bigger issue is, is she fit to

be president of the united states? clearly the answer is no. >> sean, your candidate, donald trump, the presumed republican nominee said the system is rigged, general petraeus got in trouble for far less. very, very unfair. as usual, bad judgment. just to be clear, fbi director james comey, he said there is no evidence here that hillary clinton or others intended to violate the law. he said other times and other cases, including presumably david petraeus. he says when there is prosecution brought, they found willful intention to violate the law or the sheer amount of material that was transmitted was of such a huge amount that they had to bring charges. he said in this case neither were evident. >> i'm not a lawyer, but the entire reason she set up this secret servers, which we are now learning was multiple, is because she wanted to avoid detection, want add system for herself. if she followed the law like

everybody else and used a state department account or used even a private system like the director pointed out like gmail, this wouldn't be a problem. she chose to set up a system for herself around the rules that were established for everybody else for a reason, and that reason is because she didn't want people to know what she was doing. just this weekend we found out huma abedin testified she burned daily schedules. secretary clinton went into this position and set up this server clearly intending to avoid detection, clearly trying not to be transparent and clearly trying to set up rules for her that were different than what everyone else has to follow. any other employee that works at the state department that did what she did would have their security clearance pulled and would be facing charges. this is absolutely ridiculous. >> one thing i want to clear up because donald trump in his tweet called this very, very unfair. do you think the investigation was fair, or do you agree with your candidate who thinks it was

very, very unfair? >> i think the investigation and the facts laid out by the director sound very thorough. they went through everything and the evidence he laid out sounds like unequivocally a clear violation. there's two issues here. one, the investigation and two the conclusion. i think the investigation sounds thorough. >> you have to accept them together. don't you also have to accept the recommendation of the fair investigation, that he says we're -- >> no, because i also think -- as the fbi director made clear, that's not their job. their job is to do the investigation, hand it over to the prosecutors at the department of justice. i think the point that mr. trump is making, you have general petraeus who gets a fine and faces penalties. we have yet to see what the department of justice does. we already know that hillary clinton -- the formerment met with loretta lynch. you're turning this evidence over to the department of justice that you have to question what going on here.

they had a private meeting last week. what happened in the meeting, what really was said between president clinton and attorney general lynch. the system looks like when the fbi turned it over, the department of justice has made it clear what they're going to do. the fact that she won't face penalties is ridiculous. >> remember loretta lynch who had a meeting with bill clinton says she's removing herself from the process and will accept the recommendation from the fbi director who recommends no charge also be brought. we have to get the find word from the justice department on that. i presume that will come soon. i want to bring in david axelrod. you've been listening to rnc strategist sean spicer clearly making clear that republicans do intend to use this as a political issue going forward saying it is an indictment on the judgment of hillary clinton. how is it not such? >> it's interesting was the juxtaposition of donald trump's statement and sean spicer's

statement. sean spicer took the words of the fbi director and used them, as you would expect the opposition to use them and honed in on what comey called the carelessness and recklessness and so on. that's to be expected. i think it's dangerous to do what donald trump did, which is to say the system is rigged, to say that -- to suggest the thing was fixed. this delegitimization of our institutions, particularly the investigative justice system is very, very -- it's a very irresponsible thing to do. jim comey is widely respected as a guy of integrity. he's proven it not just recently as fbi director but when he was in the justice department and

took some very courageous stands against the white house on some matters. it was interesting to me that sean spicer didn't color out of those lines. he tried, after you read him trump's statement to circle around a little and square the circle. but it is fair game for republicans to question hillary clinton based on the words of the fbi director. it's not fair game to say, well, petraeus -- trump has said repeatedly petraeus got in trouble for far less. general petraeus gave classified information to his biographer with whom he was having a relationship knowingly and he pled guilty to charges related to that. what he did was far different than what the fbi director suggested. so to say she should have been treated the way he was, it's

just flat out wrong. i thought spicer was very -- he colored within the lines of what is responsible political discourse. what donald trump is doing is not. >> david, hold on one second. let's talk more about those comparisons between general david petraeus and what happened in his circumstance and what we're seeing with hillary clinton. let's bring back evan perez. you know both cases very well. donald trump's tweet, one of them saying for our viewers again, the tweet said, this is his reaction to what was announced, the system is rigged, general petraeus got in trouble for far less. very, very unfair. as usual, bad judgment. how are these cases similar? more importantly, how are they very different? >> reporter: he's right this is bad judgment on the part of hillary clinton and david petraeus. the cases are far, far different. we're talking about in the case of david petraeus, he took classified information, things about troop movements and things

that really had no business leaving a safe. he had a safe at his home where he kept this information, and he provided it to his lover, to his girlfriend he was having an affair with. that's a far different thing from being careless about setting up a pry sat server in your home. obviously as jim comey pointed out, this is something that secretary of state clinton should never have done. and the fact that she and her aids and her colleagues all knew about the security levels that they had put in place for this server, they knew that they were taking chances with classified information. the issue of the intent is what jim comey really centered on in his comments. he said it's clearly not willful or intentional, and that's one reason why he said no reasonable prosecutor would choose to bring charges in a case like this. obviously there's plenty here for you to criticize secretary

of state clinton. as he pointed out, as jim comey pointed out, people who do this kind of thing, who mishandle classified information like this, typically have some kind of administrative or security sanction. that means they might have their security clearance pulled. obviously if she becomes president, if she gets elected as president, she'll be the ultimate authority on classification and security clearance. it's going to be hard for a person serving in the white house to not have a security clearance. >> that is one interesting part of this. evan perez, stand by. i want to go to charlotte, north carolina, where we find white house correspondent michelle kosinski. why? that's where hillary clinton will appear in a few hours with president obama. this will be the first public appearance side by side with president obama and hillary clinton as the presumed democratic nominee. now, michelle, it comes just hours after this stunning moment in washington where the fbi director announced his findings in this investigation. >> yes. look at the timing of this for

the white house. two hours away from the time that president obama is going to get on a plane on air force one with his former secretary of state, arrive here at this rally in north carolina, his first day on the campaign trail. can you imagine the difference this would make, him getting on that stage with secretary of state rebuked by the fbi and facing criminal charges. i mean, at the same time, though, look at this, this is still a rebuke by the fbi saying that that information has no business being on her private server, that she should have known better, and that her state department was extremely careless in handling this extremely sensitive information. so obviously the other side says even the possibility that this could have been criminal charges says a lot and this is still a mark with political legs that not only she but the white house is going to have to deal with.

so this has to be addressed today. i think what the white house will do is focus on what they have on the past, focus on the fact that the fbi says there was no evidence of this being intentional and also make mention of the fact that clinton herself has said in the past that this was a mistake. almost humanizing it, saying that everyone makes mistakes, she realized this was a mistake, she said it was a mistake and now it's time to move on. the white house isn't jumping out right now with a statement or reaction to this. we're going to have to wait a little while. there's going to be a statement on board that plane, likely around 1:30 this afternoon, when the white house will respond to all of the questions about this. i mean, a big sigh of relief for everyone involved that this is not a situation where we're talking about criminal charges. but, again, a big issue that is going to need to be addressed. >> a sigh of relief but then it's not over, really, when you look at the political sense.

michelle kosinski in charlotte for us, thanks so much. we're going to discuss this much more but there are plenty of important moments that we heard from james comey as he said there are no charges that are appropriate. but then there was this. listen. >> although we did not find clear evidence that secretary clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws handling classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in the handling of their highly classified information. for example, seven e-mail chains concerned matters that were classified at the top secret special access program at the time they were sent and received. those chains involved secretary clinton both sending e-mails about those matters and receiving e-mails about those same matters. there is evidence to support a conclusion that any reasonable conclusion in secretary clinton's position or in the

position of those with whom she was corresponding about those matters should have known that an unclassified location was not the appropriate place for that conversation. >> should have known. joining us, a donald trump strategist and errol lewis, hilary rosen. guys, thanks for joining us. errol lewis, you know a strange thing is afoot when an fbi director tells you you were extremely careless and should have known better. >> and the people who worked for you should have known better and this is a huge problem and it's not a crime. if that's the best that you can get away with, believe me, if you're on clinton's team, you'll take it and try to move on to the next thing. you'll try to move on with the

president and give your stump speech and try to move on and do what hillary clinton has often said that, number one, this is behind us and, number two, this is old news. she's going to try to turn this into old news as quickly as she can. of course, the people who never believed her, we've already seen the trump tweet. the people who have never believed her and have a political interest in making this a crime of the century will continue to do so. >> we heard a preview of the republican position coming from sean spicer when he said the first 14 minutes of the entire thing was james comey condemning the actions of how hillary clinton and those around her handled that information. but still, a sigh of relief and hillary clinton will want to put this behind her as quickly as possible. what does that mean for republicans now? >> she's not going to be able to put this behind her. we now know that she lied about classified information being sent and received. we know she lied when she said that there was -- that she got approval from the state

department to have that. and now we know that she lied that she did not hand over every single e-mail. that's what donald trump should be focused on. he doesn't have to focus on the rigged system. all he has to do is say she lied, she lied, she lied and keep it in that message. i don't know what he was trying to do by going after comey. >> he poked holes in the story that she's been saying on the campaign trail. she did send classified e-mails, more than 100. he told a different story than she's been telling on the campaign trail, didn't he? >> first of all, he said she didn't knowingly do it. here's the most important thing that director comey said. the people who want to find reason to disbelieve her will disbelieve her.

the most important piece, though, of this day is that hillary clinton has already apologized for sort of the carelessness, the stuff that comey was talking about. she's owned it and admitted it and apologized 100 times for it. what he clearly said today was that there was no mal intent, there was no desire and they found no evidence that she did this to get around rules and that, importantly, there was no attempt to cover anything up. so what susan just said that she lied about turning overall of the e-mails, what he specifically said was she turned overall of the e-mails she had but they found other e-mails that they didn't -- that they probably didn't have but they found them other ways. >> because she deleted them. come on. >> excuse me. they also found that there was no mal intent from the people who cleaned and evaluated her

surveyed those e-mails. if they thought that there was, if they agreed with the bull that susan just said, they would have said that there was mal intent. so hillary clinton supporters and, most importantly, independent voters trying to decide what is true and what matters in terms of judgment and honesty, here's what the fbi said. she didn't intend to do this and when it was discovered, she didn't hide anything. those are two very transparent and important comments for hillary clinton's -- -- >> hilary rosen, bob beckel, says that they will go the side of hillary clinton. but we know one thing, she herself has acknowledged in recent weeks that she has a trust issue and what is often lost in politics is nuance.

so if voters are needing to listen to the nuance that you're hearing from the fbi director and republicans are going to say she lied, she lied, she lied, does hillary clinton still have a trust problem? >> of course she has a trust problem. the other thing that donald trump needs to change his tactic from crooked hillary to careless hillary. and the other thing i'd say, ironically, bill clinton meeting with the attorney general at the airport caused such a furor and the secretary general would say, all right, i'm going to take the fbi recommendations. they got the recommendations today and i think that's fine. as far as -- i don't agree with people and the birther people are going to jump on hillary clinton but it's not going to

matter because called the fbi director and a system rigged by donald trump is another example of what this guy just is stone-cold blind when it comes to political nuance, if you will. >> we have about a minute left. what about that, james comey issued a scathing indictment of hillary clinton, laying out evidence that he thought no charges should be filed but do you think he did a fair investigation? i'm sure the investigation is fair. as an attorney, i do disagree there was an intent. in just setting up the server, there was clear intent. i don't see that gap in saying that reasonable people should have known this was against the law. as far as what donald trump said, it's brilliant. he's not talking to the lawyers or politicians. he's talking to the american people. he's saying, if this were any other human being, that person probably would have been indicted. >> so you think this is still very unfair? >> i think the result is unfair. it's important to know that what comey stated is that hillary

clinton should have been fired from her job, by, who, president obama, as secretary of state if she were still in that position. it's quite off base. a lot more coming up, including president obama on the stage with hillary clinton later on. >> an extraordinary day in politics let's go to ashleigh banfield with "legal view" right now. hello, everyone. i'm ashleigh banfield. welcome to "legal view." we begin with legal breaking news. the fbi not recommending charges against hillary clinton over her use of personal e-mail servers while she was the secretary of state for the united states. the fbi director james comey spoke just a short time ago and characterized secretary clinton and her aides as, quote, extremely careless but also said that this fell short of criminal intent. he