FBI says Clinton Server Investigation Could Become Criminal Probe

The FBI is investigating Hillary Clinton's private email server as a possible criminal case as her lawyer said that all of the information on the server was deleted before it was handed over to government investigators.

Al Jazeera says that a confidential source within the FBI has told one of its reporters that dozens of agents have been assigned to the case in an effort to determine if the law was broken. One of the primary questions is whether emails that were on the server were classified or not.

Clinton and her lawyers have maintained that there was no classified data in the emails at the time she received them. While this may be true, many different types of government information is classified retroactively, meaning that while it may not have been classified at first, a number of emails may indeed have contained classified information.

Importantly, when it comes to legal proceedings regarding classified information, a person can still get in trouble for improperly handling classified information even if that information was retroactively made classified.

Adding to the political damage for Clinton, who many voters view as dishonest or untrustworthy, is the fact that her staff erased all of the information on the servers before handing them over to the FBI, according to the Associated Press.

Earlier in the week while speaking at a press conference, Clinton said she didn't know if the server was fully intact, but the lawyer told Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson last week that the server had been erased, raising more questions about just what Clinton knew and when she knew it.

In addition to these concerns, some have questioned just how secure the server was from hacks by countries like China and Russia, given that each nation has already had success penetrating official U.S. government networks.