A History of Hillary Clinton’s Email Controversy

Clinton’s employees were interviewed by investigators throughout 2016 including the person who set up the server.

File photo of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. (Photo: Reuters)

When, a few weeks ago, the Congress members asked to reopen the investigation of Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server, FBI Director James Comey said that "I haven't seen anything that would come near to that kind of situation."

Comey had announced in July that Clinton had been careless but did not break any laws.

On Friday, FBI decided to review a batch of emails "that appear to be pertinent" to the Clinton case.

The controversy initially started in March 2015 with a New York Times report that Clinton had used a personal email account based on a private server.

Clinton’s staff went through tens of thousands of emails, weeding out those they thought needed to be turned over to the State Department, deeming the rest personal.

A few days later, Clinton told reporters that she used the server because she felt it was "convenient."

By July 2015, the Department of Justice got involved, to assess whether any classified information had been put in jeopardy.

The investigators found four emails with classified information from a sample of 40 emails that they believed should “never have been transmitted via an unclassified personal system”. This contradicted Clinton’s earlier assertion that she hadn’t emailed any classified material.

At campaign events Clinton told reporters that she gave investigators all of her work-related emails, and insisted that she never sent anything marked as classified at the time via email.

Clinton advisers and employees were interviewed by federal investigators throughout 2016 including Bryan Pagliano, who set up the server.

According to notes later released by the agency, during Clinton's interrogation, she said that she did not know that "c" stood for confidential.

A few days after that interview, Comey said that Clinton had not committed a crime but her staff was "extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information."

Soon after that, Donald Trump used the email controversy to argue that the election was rigged.

Comey's announcement on Friday about FBI reviewing a new batch of emails comes less than two weeks before the 8 November election putting Clinton on the defensive.

Only time will tell if the emails would damage Clinton's reputation further.

(With inputs from NBC News)