SHANNON BREAM (HOST): Brit, let's talk about the political fallout. Hillary Clinton has been cleared by the FBI essentially saying, yes, careless, extreme carelessness but no criminal intent, no criminal charges recommended. She says she's relieved.
BRIT HUME: I'm not sure I would use the word cleared. After all, the picture that was painted by Director Comey of her conduct was devastating. And, if you posit any normal year, any normal set of circumstance, and determine that one of the candidates has been extremely careless in the handling of classified information, that by itself would seem to be disqualifying. But in this year and in this moment, it's not for her. So she remains the favorite to become president. It is a striking situation.
Moreover, there is the clear fact that the law that Comey was talking about, or the laws, the book that he was citing in his decision to recommend no prosecution, didn't quite support his claim which involved the question of intent. He said it was absent. Normally that is a factor in decisions whether to prosecute, but there is a section of the law that we've all heard about all week that does, that simply says that gross negligence, which is pretty close to extreme carelessness if you think about it. And I suspect he chose the words extreme carelessness very carefully so that -- to try to draw a distinction, which I don't think the law recognizes, and I think a prosecution would have been a perfectly reasonable decision. Though, he said that no reasonable prosecutor would do it. I think this is damaging to her. I don't think it's over. And, on we go with a set of choices that most Americans now find, for president, unsatisfactory.
