WASHINGTON: The FBI said Wednesday that it has no evidence Hillary Clinton’s private email server was compromised even though President Donald Trump tweeted a news report that alleged the Chinese had hacked it.
Trump tweeted Tuesday evening about a report in the conservative Daily Caller that said a Chinese-owned company operating in the Washington area had hacked the server Clinton had used as secretary of state and obtained nearly all of her emails.
Trump’s tweet stated in part: “What are the odds that the FBI and DOJ are right on top of this? Actually, a very big story. Much classified information!“
“Hillary Clinton’s Emails, many of which are Classified Information, got hacked by China. Next move better be by the FBI & DOJ,” he also tweeted.
China has denied the accusation.
FBI and Justice Department officials have said publicly that there was no evidence Clinton’s server was hacked by a foreign power. Former FBI Director James Comey said at a July 2016 news conference that the FBI did not find direct evidence that the sever had been successfully hacked though he also acknowledged that, “given the nature of the system and of the actors potentially involved,” it would have been unlikely for the bureau to find such direct evidence.
A June report from the Justice Department’s inspector general on the FBI’s handling of the Clinton investigation said FBI specialists did not find evidence that the server had been hacked, with one forensics agent saying he felt “fairly confident that there wasn’t an intrusion.”
An FBI official said Wednesday after the Daily Caller story and Trump tweet that the “FBI has not found any evidence the servers were compromised.”
The White House did not immediately comment on the FBI’s statement.
In Beijing, foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said China is a staunch defender of cybersecurity as it rejected Trump’s finger-pointing.
“We are firmly opposed to all forms of cyberattacks and espionage,” Hua said at a regular briefing Wednesday.
US intelligence agencies have accused Russia of involvement in the hacking of Democratic emails during the 2016 election campaign. The Justice Department has indicted 12 Russian intelligence officers accused of hacking into Clinton’s presidential campaign and the Democratic Party.
Special counsel Robert Mueller is investigating Russia’s role in the election and whether there was any collusion between it and Trump’s campaign.
Hua also denied on Wednesday that China was building a military base in far-eastern Afghanistan after a report published by the South China Morning Post alleged that Beijing was constructing a counterterrorism-focused facility near its border but inside the war-torn Islamic republic.
The report said China’s People Liberation Army could send hundreds of military personnel into Afghanistan after the base is completed.
FBI says no evidence Clinton email server hacked, China denies Trump charge
FBI says no evidence Clinton email server hacked, China denies Trump charge
Migrant charities call on Italy to ID dead washed ashore
- Local news reports in recent days have indicated that approximately a dozen bodies of migrants, many in an advanced stage of decomposition, had been discovered on various southern Italian beaches
ROME: Italian migrant charities called on authorities Friday to promptly identify the dead migrants whose bodies have washed up on Italy’s shores in recent weeks following Cyclone Harry.
The non-profit groups said they had urged national and local authorities to “immediately activate all necessary procedures for the identification of bodies recovered along the Sicilian and Calabrian coasts... in order to provide answers to the many families searching for their loved ones.”
The groups Memoria Mediterranea, the Association for Legal Studies on Immigration (ASGI) and Mediterranea Saving Humans joined with European organization Alarm Phone — whose hotline accepts distress calls from migrants at sea — in calling for swift action.
Local news reports in recent days have indicated that approximately a dozen bodies of migrants, many in an advanced stage of decomposition, had been discovered on various southern Italian beaches.
In a statement, the groups said hundreds of people departed from the eastern Tunisian city of Sfax in January, many of them between January 14 and 21, when Cyclone Harry hit the central Mediterranean.
“According to reports from the organizations Mediterranea, Refugees in Libya, and Alarm Phone, more than ten boats departed during that period, with an estimated total of at least 1,000 people missing at sea,” said the groups.
“To date, only one of the boats is known to have reached (the Italian island) Lampedusa, while there is no news of the others.”
Both Alarm Phone and Memoria Mediterranea have received “numerous reports” from anxious loved ones of migrants believed to have departed from the Tunisian coast during that period.
Many migrants perish while risking the dangerous central Mediterranean crossing from North Africa to Italy. At least 567 lives have been lost so far this year, according to the UN’s International Organization for Migration (IOM).
