clock menu more-arrow no yes mobile

Filed under:

Vox Sentences: The FBI hits publish on its Hillary Clinton email investigation

Vox Sentences is your daily digest for what's happening in the world, curated by Dara Lind and Dylan Matthews. Sign up for the Vox Sentences newsletter, delivered straight to your inbox Monday through Friday, or view the Vox Sentences archive for past editions.

The FBI's investigation into Hillary Clinton is revealed in full; the death of an Uzbeki despot leaves a power vacuum; the early release of a Stanford rapist lengthens a furious debate.


Hillary Clinton's plans, FOIL'ed again

Hillary Clinton Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images
  • The FBI released the results of its investigation into Hillary Clinton's private email server on Friday in response to a Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request. [The New York Times / Adam Goldbaum and Eric Lichtbau]
  • The FBI concluded in July that Clinton's use of a private email server had been "extremely careless," but not illegal. [Vox / Andrew Prokop]
  • Republicans immediately pounced on the FBI's report today to say Clinton should be "disqualified" from receiving classified information, which would be difficult if she's elected president. [Politico / Bianca Padro Ocasio]
  • The FBI's investigation shows that Clinton and her team deleted thousands of emails and used special software to wipe them from a private server. [Associated Press / Michael Biesecker and Erick Tucker]
  • In her FBI interview, Clinton claimed she couldn't remember something 39 separate times. That didn't do much to erase suspicions that she'd consciously skirted the law. [The Washington Post / Aaron Blake]

A brutal dictator meets his own demise

Пресс / Wikimedia
  • Uzbekistan's first and only president, Islam Karimov, died Friday after running the country with an iron fist for about 25 years. It's unclear who will succeed him. [CNN / Holly Yan]
  • Karimov was reviled by human rights groups as a despot. His rule in the central Asian country was marked by torture, crushing dissident media and politicians, and election fraud. (Last year, he supposedly won more than 90 percent of the vote.) [The Economist]
  • The violence of Karimov's dictatorship involved the massacre of hundreds of civilian protesters by his security forces in 2005. It's known as the Andijan massacre. [The New York Times / Sarah Kendzior]
  • Karimov's death will also raise new questions for the United States. The country has grown increasingly isolated over the last several decades, and new leadership may change that. [Foreign Policy / Nate Schenkkan]

National debate erupts over new twist in rape case

Brock Turner Brock Turner (Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office, via Diana Prichard)
  • Brock Turner, a former swimmer at Stanford convicted of raping an unconscious woman, will be going home early. Turner was released after three months in prison — half of his initial six-month sentence. [NPR / Bill Chappell]
  • Thousands of critics condemned the decision as far too lenient, and rape survivors and other activists gathered outside the courthouse to protest the ruling. [The Guardian / Sam Levin]
  • The case has become an immediate flashpoint for a much broader debate over universities' inability to handle rampant sexual assault on their campuses. [Vox / Tara Golshan]
  • Of course, the outrage over Turner may overlook just how common sexual assault is. During his jail sentence, 75,000 American women were raped. Colleges seem at a loss for how to reduce the crises playing out across their campuses. [Vox / Liz Plank]
  • But some fear our rush for visceral punishment will fuel the same forces that led to mass incarceration. Isn't our criminal justice system already too draconian? [NY Magazine / Eric Levitz]

Miscellaneous

  • We could cut global poverty by 75 percent right now. Really. [Vox / Andy Sumner]
  • A hurricane barreling down on the East Coast could cause some major havoc. We could be in for "life-threatening inundation" in the massive swath between North Carolina and Connecticut, according to the National Weather Service. [Vox / Brad Plumer]
  • Secretary of State John Kerry is out East this week trying to get China and the Philippines to agree to an international court's ruling about the South China Sea. (No word yet if he sent any emails while there from a private server, though.) [Reuters / Lesley Wroughton]
  • There are only 25 black-owned banks left in the United States. Since police shootings in Dallas and Louisiana there has been an uptick in clientele. In theory, America shouldn't need black-owned versus white-owned banks in this post-segregation era. But reality is that we're not there yet. [The Atlantic / Alexia Fernandez Campbell]
  • Want to volunteer for Donald Trump? You have to sign a 2,271-word nondisclosure agreement, which prohibits you from criticizing Trump or his family for the rest of your life. One problem: Some of it isn't exactly legal. [Vox / Jeff Stein]

Verbatim

  • "Two moms, three children, a grandma and two dogs. A basketball hoop in the driveway. Purple wheelchairs scattered throughout the garage. Sports equipment, and prosthetic legs, stuffed in cramped closets." [New York Times / Kelly Whiteside]
  • "It took 15 days to end the mighty 20-year reign of Roger Ailes at Fox News, one of the most storied runs in media and political history. Ailes built not just a conservative cable news channel but something like a fourth branch of government; a propaganda arm for the GOP; an organization that determined Republican presidential candidates, sold wars, and decided the issues of the day for 2 million viewers. That the place turned out to be rife with grotesque abuses of power has left even its liberal critics stunned." [NY Magazine / Gabriel Sherman]
  • "Ongoing police brutality, increased violence in direct actions, and the wide-availability of videos of black killings are major factors affecting the mental health of black activists, but they aren’t the only reason for the crisis of mental health among organizers. Several organizers spoke about the problem of martyrdom in BLM spaces and the inability to maintain good habits of self-care under such overwhelming circumstances." [Pacific Standard Magazine / Marissa Johnson]
  • "Bannon initially denied making the disparaging comments about Alling, according to court documents reviewed by BuzzFeed News. In the recordings obtained by BuzzFeed News, Bannon referred to her as a 'bimbo,' 'self-centered,' and 'deluded.' In the recordings, he vows to take comments the woman made about the safety of the research facility they worked at and 'ram it down her fucking throat.'" [BuzzFeed / Christopher Massie]
  • "As of early Friday morning, 70 cases of hepatitis A in seven states have been linked to tainted frozen strawberries shipped to the United States from Egypt and served by a popular smoothie restaurant chain." [Washington Post / Travis M. Andrews]

Watch this: Where the “comic book font” came from

So … why does all the writing in comic books look like that? Vox's Phil Edwards looked into it and found an aesthetic shaped by comic culture, technology, and really cheap paper.

[YouTube / Vox]

Sign up for the newsletter Sign up for Vox Recommends

Get curated picks of the best Vox journalism to read, watch, and listen to every week, from our editors.