Fact Check—Did Hillary Clinton Use Hammer to Destroy Email Server Evidence?

With Donald Trump facing a second criminal indictment over the alleged mishandling of presidential records, comparisons have been drawn between the investigation's handling and the conclusions reached by the FBI over then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's handling of classified information.

The former Democratic Secretary of State turned 2016 presidential nominee was investigated by the agency in the run-up to the election that year after being found to have used a personal email server for official communications, including some which the FBI said contained classified information.

On Thursday, a federal grand jury indicted Trump on 37 counts including wilful retention of national defense information, conspiracy to obstruct justice, withholding a document or record, and corruptly concealing a document or record. The former president has maintained his innocence.

The charges relate to classified documents that the FBI discovered at his Mar-a-Lago, Florida, residence in a raid last summer. He is also facing separate felony charges in Manhattan, New York, over allegations of hush money payments during the 2016 election—which he also denies.

The Claim

"Hillary Clinton used a hammer to destroy evidence of a private email server and classified information on that server and was never indicted," Nancy Mace, a Republican representative for South Carolina, wrote in a tweet on Sunday, which, as of 10:30 a.m. ET Monday, had been viewed 3.5 million times.

She added: "The same standard should apply to everyone, including Donald Trump."

The Facts

Mace's claim appears to be a modified reiteration of a claim in a June 15, 2017, tweet by then-President Donald Trump that Clinton "destroyed phones w/ hammer."

This claim seems to originate from a 47-page document released by the FBI in September 2016—two months before the presidential election that year—concerning the agency's investigation into the matter.

On Page 9, the FBI states that Justin Cooper, a senior aide to Clinton, "did recall two instances where he destroyed Clinton's old mobile phone devices by breaking them in half or hitting them with a hammer."

The FBI documents also said that it had found a total of thirteen devices associated with Clinton's phone numbers and personal email addresses. Eight of these had been used while secretary of state during Barack Obama's first term in the White House.

Clinton's lawyers told investigators that they were "unable to locate any of these devices" and, as such, the agency could not examine them as part of its investigation. Cooper said that aides would obtain new BlackBerry devices when the old ones malfunctioned, and would dispose of her old SIM cards.

In July 2016, then-Republican representative for South Carolina Trey Gowdy asked then-FBI director James Comey whether Clinton or her staff had deleted work-related emails from her personal account.

While Comey said there was "no doubt that the work-related emails were removed electronically from the email system," the FBI could not conclude whether they had been intentionally deleted or had been lost when servers were switched out.

After Comey said a series of public statements Clinton had made were not true, Gowdy made Comey admit that false, exculpatory statements would be used "either for the substantive prosecution or for evidence of intent in a criminal prosecution."

Comey had announced on July 5 that year that the controversial investigation had concluded, and that it had found no evidence of intentional misconduct tantamount to criminality, though said Clinton and her aides had been "extremely careless" in their handling of classified information.

He re-opened the investigation on October 28, 2016, after new emails came to light, before concluding the investigation again on November 6 with no change in outcome.

When the truth of Mace's claim was contested by Keith Olbermann, a sports and political commentator, she cited a September 5, 2016, fact-check by CNN's Evan Perez, who said: "They did, in some cases, just destroy them with hammers when they were done using them."

"A hammer was used to destroy [government] devices," Mace clarified in a later tweet.

"Her original tweet said hammers were used to destroy evidence (the phones being evidence) of a private email server that contained classified information, all of which has been reported as true," William Hampson, a spokesperson for Mace, told Newsweek when asked to comment.

"She then references those phones in another tweet as government devices, which they were, which in no way changes that they were evidence destroyed by hammers according to Clinton's own staffers."

Contact details for Clinton could not be immediately found.

The Ruling

Needs Context.

It is not true that Clinton herself was found by the FBI to have used a hammer to destroy electronic devices; this was done by aides of hers on at most two occasions, documents show.

While the FBI found that the former secretary of state had been "extremely careless," it did not find she or her aides acted in a way that amounted to intentional misconduct—from which it can be concluded that it found no evidence of intent to destroy evidence, including with a hammer.

FACT CHECK BY NEWSWEEK

Update 06/12/23, 12:45 p.m. ET: This article was updated to include comment from William Hampson, a spokesperson for Nancy Mace.