FBI Director James Comey Friday revealed the bureau would be reviewing additional emails from Hillary Clinton’s private email server “to determine whether they contain classified information.
The development could be potentially significant just 11 days from November 8 election.
Clinton’s Republican rival Donald Trump welcomed the news, as he seeks to revamp his campaign – rocked by a series of scandals involving women, who alleged that the billionaire businessman made sexual advances and mistreated them.
In the letter explaining his decision, Comey remarked”the FBI cannot yet assess” whether the information is “significant” nor could he offer a timetable for how long it will take investigators to make an assessment.
Comey wrote that the discovery of additional messages had occurred “in connection with an unrelated case,” leading to the decision to resume the probe.
According to The New York Times, U.S. law enforcement officials said Friday that the “new emails uncovered in the closed investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server were discovered after the F.B.I. seized electronic devices belonging to Huma Abedin and her husband, Anthony Weiner.”
The announcement has led to a new focus on Clinton, the front-runner in opinion polls.
Responding shortly after during a speech in New Hampshire, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump gleefully discussed the “breaking news announcement.”
“Hillary Clinton’s corruption is on a scale we have never seen before,” Trump said, and her “criminal scheme” should not be allowed in the Oval Office.
“Perhaps justice will be done,” the Republican nominee said of the development.
Spokespeople for Clinton did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
She has previously apologized for her server, which was set up in her home in Chappaqua, New York. She said the arrangement was a mistake, and that she did not knowingly send or receive classified information.
In July, Comey announced that while Clinton and her aides during her tenure as secretary of State had been “extremely careless” in the way they’d handled classified information, he recommended that no criminal charges be filed.
