Comey: Clinton Tech Suspected of Stripping Email Address from Messages Didn’t Intend to Destroy Evidence

James Comey
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FBI Director James Comey said Hillary Clinton tech Paul Combetta’s suspected post to Reddit asking for assistance in deleting the email address of a “very VIP” does not constitute an attempt to destroy evidence.

Combetta was suspected of posting a question to Reddit in 2014 under the username “Stonetear” which asked users how to delete the contact information on a private email server describing “a very interesting situation where I need to strip out a VIP’s (VERY VIP) email address from a bunch of archived email that I have both in a live Exchange mailbox, as well as a PST file.”

“Basically, they don’t want the VIP’s email address exposed to anyone, and want to be able to either strip out or replace the email address in the to/from fields in all of the emails we want to send out,” the post stated.

It was believed by some members of the House Judiciary Committee that this was an attempt to hide sensitive information from the FBI’s investigation. However, during a House meeting on Wednesday, FBI Director James Comey stated that the FBI believed Combetta was not attempting to destroy evidence but to hide Hillary Clinton’s personal email address so as not to reveal it to the public.

“Our team concluded that what he was trying to do was when they produced emails not have the actual address but have some name or placeholder instead of the actual dot-com address in the ‘From:’ line,” said Comey.

Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) questioned Comey’s decision and stated that it was part of a larger coverup to protect Clinton, saying, “This clearly demonstrates an action to destroy evidence by people operating Clinton’s private server and her staff.”

Comey stated that he did not know if FBI investigators were aware of Combetta’s posting to Reddit when prosecutors granted him immunity in the case. Echoing his statement when announcing that Hillary Clinton would not be prosecuted, Comey claimed that the deletion of these emails would still not necessarily be considered an attempt to delete evidence. “It would depend what his intention was and why he wanted to do it,” the FBI director said.

Lucas Nolan is a conservative who regularly contributes articles on censorship and free speech to Breitbart. Follow him on Twitter@LucasNolan_ or email him at lucas@yiannopoulos.net

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