HILLARY – I'M SWEET AND INNOCENT – AT 11:28 A.M. ET:  On a Friday, in the midst of a national crisis, Hillary Clinton managed to bring the discussion back to the most important thing in her life – herself.  Why, those nasty comments by the FBI director were just not true.  Little me, I'm an innocent, good person.  From The Hill: 

Hillary Clinton on Friday strongly disputed the FBI’s finding that she and her aides were “extremely careless” in their handling of classified information.

Clinton, giving her first public interviews since the Justice Department’s decision not to press charges against her, said she thought FBI Director James Comey had "clarified that comment, to some extent, pointing out that some of what was thought to be classified apparently was not."

“I think the professionals with whom I communicated were very careful about how they handled classified material — as I was over the course of those four years,” the former secretary of State said on CNN’s “The Lead.”

“I do not believe that all of the professionals that I dealt with in the State Department were careless in handling classified material,” she added moments later, in a separate interview with Lester Holt on MSNBC.

The position is a striking rebuttal of Comey's statements. He twice this week called her behavior “extremely careless,” even while asserting it did not violate the law.

“Certainly, she should have known not to send classified information,” Comey testified before the House Oversight Committee on Thursday.

“I think she was extremely careless. I think she was negligent. That, I could establish,” he added. “What we can't establish is that she acted with the necessary criminal intent.”

In her interviews, Clinton referred to “over 300 people” she communicated with via email, including longtime diplomats and government officials.

“I do not believe that they did anything that they believed was in any way inappropriate,” she said on MSNBC.

“Other agencies have said maybe they should have known at the time, but these are professionals ... they were doing the best job they could. They were not careless. The material they sent to me they did not believe was classified.”

According to Comey, at least 113 email messages Clinton sent or received through her controversial private email setup contained information that was classified at the time it was sent — including eight email threads with information at the highest level of top secret.

An additional 2,000 emails contained information that was upgraded to classified after the fact.

Clinton might be staring down the barrel of a new criminal investigation for lying under oath to Congress. House Republicans have promised to refer questions about Clinton’s truthfulness to the FBI, noting that comments she made during a congressional hearing last year appeared to conflict with the FBI’s conclusions.

The Republican National Committee (RNC) blasted Clinton after the interviews, accusing her of continuing to lie.

COMMENT:  I have no idea why she's doing this.  She must think Comey's charges are going to stick, and will do her damage.  The reality is that any government employee who did what Hillary Clinton did would be in deep trouble. 

Anyone who's ever been in a position to handle classified information – and I've been there – is constantly bombarded with warnings about security.  Hillary Clinton ignored those warnings.  We had a slogan in World War II – "Loose lips sink ships" – and it was accurate. 

July 9, 2016