Hillary Clinton

Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State and the Democratic Party’s 2016 presidential nominee.

2016

The FEC’s official compilation records the national popular vote:

Candidate	Votes	Share
Hillary Clinton (D)	65,853,514	48.18%
Donald J. Trump (R)	62,984,828	46.09%
Gary Johnson (L)	4,489,341	3.28%
Jill Stein (G)	1,457,218	1.07%

She led by 2,868,686 votes and lost the election.

The E-mail Investigation

The FBI’s own statement of 5 July 2016 is the document, and it is worth reading for its form as much as its content. Director James Comey announced the conclusion of the investigation in a press briefing, offering what he called “unusual transparency” about a recommendation the Bureau would not normally make public at all.

The findings, in his words: of the 30,000 e-mails returned to the State Department, 110 in 52 chains contained information classified at the time — eight chains Top Secret, 36 Secret, eight Confidential — with about 2,000 more later up-classified. The FBI “did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information,” but found “evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.”

And the recommendation: “although there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information, our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case.”

Podcasting

In September 2020 Clinton began hosting an interview podcast, You and Me Both, produced as an iHeartRadio Original. The publisher’s announcement of 22 September describes “the 24-episode show” joining the iHeartPodcast Network “beginning September 29,” with guests named as including Sarah Cooper, Gloria Steinem, Stacey Abrams, Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman.

Digital Political Impact

• The 2016 result is the reference case for the divergence between popular vote and outcome in the platform era, with a margin of nearly 2.9 million votes
• The FBI statement is an unusual primary document: a law enforcement agency publicly characterizing the conduct of a candidate it had decided not to charge, four months before an election, in terms — “extremely careless” — that then circulated independently of the finding they accompanied
• The episode is the standing example on this site of how a technical records-management dispute becomes a durable political object once it acquires a name and a phrase

What Is Not Established Here

Removed in the citation audit: her birth year; the “millions of Twitter followers” figure; her tenure dates as Secretary of State; her Senate service; her 2008 campaign; and the description of the e-mail matter as a “controversy” in the project’s voice. The FBI’s own findings are quoted instead, including the parts that cut in each direction. Nothing here characterizes the effect of the investigation on the election, because nothing cited here measures it.

The podcast’s audience, downloads, and influence are likewise unstated. The only source cited for it is the publisher’s own launch announcement, which establishes what was released and when — not how many people listened or what difference it made.