Emails again draw FBI’s attention
Clinton urges full disclosure by the bureau
WASHINGTON — Just as Hillary Clinton appeared to be cruising to Election Day with the wind at her back, the FBI rattled the presidential race Friday by announcing it is again making inquiries about emails that might be related to her private server, rekindling a politically damaging controversy for Clinton and reinvigorating Republicans scrambling to hold on to congressional seats.
The surprise word from FBI Director James Comey came after his agency discovered new communications on a computer jointly used by close Clinton aide Huma Abedin and her estranged husband, Anthony Weiner, a former New York congressman, according to U.S. law
enforcement officials.
Investigators came across the emails while investigating whether Weiner violated federal law when exchanging sexually explicit texts with a 15-year-old girl in North Carolina, the officials said.
Comey wrote in a letter to Congress that the newly discovered messages could be relevant to questions of whether Clinton and her aides mishandled classified information while she was secretary of state.
The emails were not to or from Clinton, but they contained information that appeared to be more of what agents had already uncovered, the official said, but in an abundance of caution, they felt they needed to further scrutinize them.
Because Comey had told Congress that the FBI had finished investigating Clinton’s server, he felt he needed to let lawmakers know that agents were looking into the case again in light of the recent discovery, the officials said.
News of Comey’s letter sent Republican candidates rewriting their stump speeches.
The Clinton campaign was caught off guard, as the letter emerged while the candidate and her entourage, including Abedin, were flying on a campaign plane with no working Wi-Fi en route to a rally in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
Speaking briefly to reporters after an event in Des Moines, Clinton called on Comey to release more information. She said neither she nor her campaign staff was contacted by the FBI and noted twice that the bureau communicated only with Republican congressional investigators.
“The American people deserve to get the full and complete facts immediately,” she said.
Clinton also expressed confidence that whatever might be in the newly discovered emails “will not change the conclusion” Comey reached in July when he announced he would not recommend criminal charges.
Clinton was not alone in demanding Comey disclose more information or questioning such a disclosure so close to the presidential election.
“The letter from Director Comey was unsolicited and, quite honestly, surprising,” said a statement from Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley of Iowa, a Republican. “But it’s left a lot more questions than answers for both the FBI and Secretary Clinton. Congress and the public deserve more context to properly assess what evidence the FBI has discovered and what it plans to do with it.”
Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas asked in a tweet: “Why is FBI doing this just 11 days before the election?”
Comey had written in his letter that he could not assess whether the new messages contained “significant” material or “how long it will take us to complete this additional work.”
He wrote that the FBI would “take appropriate investigative steps designed to allow investigators to review these emails to determine whether they contain classified information, as well as to assess their importance to our investigation.”
The review could take weeks and will not be completed by Nov. 8, a law enforcement official said.
The short note put Comey, a Republican who was appointed by President Barack Obama, back under an unwelcome spotlight.
Democrats who had praised his handling of the email investigation this year, when Comey declared he had reviewed the evidence and found it did not merit criminal charges against Clinton and her staff, are now questioning his judgment.
Republicans who accused Comey of covering up Clinton’s misdeeds then were lauding his courage Friday.
Donald Trump said the political system “might not be as rigged as I thought.”
Trump branded the latest news from the FBI “bigger than Watergate.”