Clinton hits back at the FBI over ‘dirty tricks conspiracy’
HILLARY Clinton’s camp led a furious fight-back against the FBI’s ‘unprecedented’ decision to reopen its email investigation just days before America goes to the polls.
Senior members of the Clinton campaign are convinced the shock announcement by FBI director James Comey is part of a sinister conspiracy to derail her White House ambitions.
Anger over the move was exacerbated by claims last night that the US Department of Justice opposed the FBI’s plan to notify Congress of the latest probe into the former First Lady’s email server.
Justice officials strongly advised the FBI against going public with the decision at such a sensitive time before the election, especially when the emails’ contents were unclear.
Mrs Clinton, running mate Tim Kaine, and campaign chairman John Podesta expressed outrage over the weekend by using the word ‘unprecedented’ in attacks on the timing of Mr Comey’s announcement.
‘It’s pretty strange to put something like that out with such little information right before an election,’ Mrs Clinton told supporters at a rally in Daytona Beach, Florida, on Satur- day. ‘In fact, it’s not just strange, it’s unprecedented and it’s deeply troubling because voters deserve to get full and complete facts.’
Last night an official claimed FBI investigators had known for weeks about the existence of the newly discovered emails. A second law enforcement official told the Associated Press that the FBI was aware for a period of time about the emails before Mr Comey was briefed.
The FBI director has claimed he was briefed only on Thursday about the development.
Mrs Clinton’s howl of outrage message was taken up on US political talk shows yesterday.
Vice-presidential candidate Mr Kaine said Mr Comey owed it to the public to be more forthcoming about the emails under review by the FBI with only nine days remaining before the election on November 8.
Calling the FBI announcement ‘extremely puzzling’, Mr Kaine said that if Mr Comey ‘ hasn’t seen the emails, I mean, they need to make that completely plain’.
‘I just have no way of understanding these actions,’ Mr Kaine said on ABC’s This Week. ‘ They’re a completely unprecedented move.’
Mr Podesta said on CNN’s State of the Union that the FBI chief should have reviewed the information more thoroughly before making the decision public. He said there was no indication the cache of recently discovered emails being reviewed by the FBI was about Mrs Clinton.
Mr Comey’s information is ‘long on innuendo’ and ‘ short on facts,’ Mr Podesta added. He insisted there was ‘no evidence of wrongdoing, no charge of wrongdoing, no indication this is even about Hillary’.
Mr Podesta and campaign manager Robby Mook are calling on the FBI to release more details about the inquiry into emails on a device belonging to Anthony Weiner – the disgraced former New York congressman who is separated from his wife, the longtime Clinton aide Huma Abedin.
Matthew Miller, a former chief spokesman for the Justice department, accused Mr Comey of making a ‘huge blunder’.
The FBI director said the newly discovered emails appear ‘pertinent’ to the Clinton email investigation.
Donald Trump branded the affair ‘bigger than Watergate’.
In an interview on State of the Union, Trump campaign chief Kellyanne Conway claimed Mr Comey would have been accused of interfering in the election if he had not disclosed that Clinton- related emails were under FBI investigation for the second time in a year.
Yesterday, Mrs Clinton did not refer directly to the inquiry.
But addressing a predominantly black church in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, she declared ‘suffering produces endurance and endurance produces character’.
Later she told supporters in the battleground state: ‘We’re not going to be distracted, no matter what our opponents throw at us.’ Top Democrats have also demanded that the FBI release ‘more detailed information’ about its investigation.
Senators Thomas Carper, Patrick Leahy, Dianne Feinstein and Benjamin Cardin gave Mr Comey a deadline of Monday to respond.
They wrote: ‘ This letter is troubling because it is vaguely worded and leaves so many questions unanswered. It is not clear whether the emails identified by the FBI are even in the custody of the FBI, whether any of the emails have already been reviewed, whether Secretary Clinton sent or received them, or whether they even have any significance to the FBI’s previous investigation.
‘ The letter is also troubling because it breaks with the longstanding tradition of Department of Justice and the FBI exercising extreme caution in the days leading up to an election, so as not to unfairly influence the results.’
‘Deeply troubling’