The story of Hillary Clinton's emails: Controversy explained in 5 points

A primer on the email controversy involving Democrat US Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton

The head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation on Friday (FBI) said the agency would investigate additional emails related to Democrat US Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s use of a personal email server as the secretary of state to determine whether they contained classified information. He added that it was unclear how significant the new materials might be.

In a letter to key Republicans committee chairmen in the House of Representatives, FBI Director James Comey said he “cannot predict how long it will take us to complete this additional work.”

The announcement, an unexpected development less than two weeks before the US Presidential election on November 8, where Clinton is the Democratic Party’s candidate and a front-runner in opinion polls conducted so far. 

Business Standard explains the email controversy in five simple points.

What happened?

Clinton used a private email server rather than a government email during her term as the top US diplomat in the first term of US President Barack Obama from 2009-12.

Why did she do that?

Clinton described her decision to rely on her private account as a matter of “convenience” and a way to avoid carrying two devices – one for work and the other for personal use. This, according to her, was because government BlackBerrys could run only one email address.

Why is it an issue?

Thousands of pages of her emails, released publicly, allegedly showed that Clinton received messages determined to contain classified information – some apparently contained material regarding the production and dissemination of US intelligence.

What has the investigation shown so far?

FBI spent about a year investigating Clinton’s use of an unauthorised private email server for her work as US secretary of state after it emerged that there were classified government secrets in some of her emails.

What’s Clinton’s defence?

“I did not send or receive any information marked classified,” Clinton was quoted as saying in earlier media reports. “I take the responsibilities of handling classified materials very seriously and I did so.”