Trump seizes on FBI move
Campaign touts momentum amid emails review
Donald Trump’s presidential campaign expressed optimism Sunday that it has “tremendous momentum” in the final days before the election, with national polls showing him and Hillary Clinton in a dead heat as her team grapples with an announcement that the FBI has discovered emails that could be related to an investigation of Clinton’s private email server.
Trump bragged about his new strength in recent polls Sunday morning, despite repeatedly claiming that polls were “rigged” against him on the campaign trail in recent weeks.
“We are now leading in many polls, and many of these were taken before the criminal investigation announcement on Friday — great in states!” Trump tweeted Sunday.
FBI Director James Comey reignited a political firestorm over the emails Friday when he alerted select members of Congress that FBI officials had detected a batch of emails pertinent to the case during an “unrelated” investigation.
Sources have told The Washington Post that the emails were found on a computer belonging to former congressman Anthony Weiner, who is under investigation for allegedly exchanging lewd messages with a 15-year-old girl. Weiner is the estranged National polls show Democrat Hillary Clinton in a dead heat with her rival. husband of top Clinton adviser Huma Abedin.
Law officials said Sunday the FBI has obtained a warrant to search the emails.
Earlier Sunday, Clinton dropped in on an early voting brunch sponsored by two Democratic groups in Miami.
“These last nine days we can really race to the finish line,” Clinton told a crowd of about 40 people, who she urged to help elect Democrats up and down the ballot.
“If any of you know anyone who is thinking about voting for Trump, I want you to stage an intervention,” Clinton added. “Because friends don’t let friends vote for Trump.”
Trump started the day in Nevada, where he stopped by a nondenominational church in Las Vegas, where he also held a rally.
Trump seized on Comey’s Friday announcement, using it to declare Clinton as being guilty of criminal wrongdoing at campaign events.
Despite the original FBI investigation finding no evidence of criminal wrongdoing by Clinton or her staff and Comey saying the new batch of emails may not be significant, Trump maintained that line of attack on Sunday.
“As you’ve heard, it was just announced on Friday that the FBI is reopening their investigation into the criminal and illegal conduct of Hillary Clinton,” Trump said during his rally Sunday in Las Vegas. “Hillary has nobody but herself to blame for her mounting legal problems. Her criminal action was willful, deliberate, intentional and purposeful.”
“We never thought we were going to say ‘thank you’ to Anthony Weiner,” Trump said.
Also, Trump referred to news that the Justice Department had warned the FBI that Comey’s announcement broke protocol as Justice “trying so hard to protect Hillary Clinton.”
Trump’s running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, said during an appearance on “Fox News Sunday” that he felt “tremendous momentum in this campaign” and that Trump would likely inject more of his personal wealth into his campaign in the remaining days.
During an interview on ABC’s “This Week,” Clinton’s running mate, Tim Kaine, called the FBI announcement “extremely puzzling.” Donald Trump suggested Sunday that his campaign owed Anthony Weiner a “thank you.”
“Why would you release information that is so incomplete when you haven’t even seen the material yourself? Eleven days before an election, why would you talk about an ongoing investigation? I just have no way of understanding these actions. They’re completely unprecedented. And that’s why I think (Comey) owes the American public more information.”
Trump’s campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, characterized the FBI’s announcement as proof that there is something ques- tionable in the new batch of emails. Conway said the announcement feeds into questions about Clinton’s character.
Trump “just sees that there’s this constant cloud of corruption that follows Hillary Clinton around. And for the FBI to make this remarkable move 11 days before the election means there must be something there,” Conway said on ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos.”
Abedin was not seen traveling with Clinton Sunday or Saturday.
Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta defended Abedin during an interview with CNN in which host Jake Tapper asked if Abedin had withheld information from the FBI.
“I think it’s clear that she complied to the best of her ability, turned everything over that she had in her possession. I don’t know anything more than the speculation that’s running wild in the press now about what this is about,” Podesta said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”