NEW YORK, Ny. - A Manhattan man is facing federal cyber-crime charges after he allegedly broke into a Best Buy staff room and printed out dozens of emails sent and received by former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, according to documents filed in federal court last week.
Investigators say that on the morning of July 9, thirty-three year-old Douglas Jones visited a Westchester County Best Buy electronics store where he discovered Mrs. Clinton’s personal Yahoo email account logged into a Dell Inspiron 5000 display computer. Jones, who maintained he was shopping for a new dishwasher, told the FBI he was confident he’d found “the smoking gun.”
“During questioning, Mr. Jones said he planned to drive to Washington to hand-deliver the printed emails to Special Counsel Robert Mueller,” FBI spokesperson John Doggett told reporters on Friday. Doggett said Jones, who is being charged under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and faces one count of Unauthorized Access of a Protected Computer and eleven counts of Obtaining National Security Information, later asked authorities if they could deliver the emails for him.
“I think the simplest explanation here is that Mrs. Clinton forgot to uncheck that box that keeps you logged in on a particular computer,” said Dr. Stuart Barry, who serves as spokesperson for the Clinton family. Speaking to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Sunday, Dr. Barry dispelled rumors that Mrs. Clinton’s personal email account had remained accessible on the display computer for months on end, saying, “This is something that happened very recently while Hillary was shopping for a paper shredder. She’s one of those people who isn’t particularly tech savvy. It’s a common mistake.”
Mrs. Clinton, who ran a failed campaign against Donald J. Trump in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, has faced continued scrutiny for her use of a private email server while serving as Secretary of State under former president Barack Obama.
