Hillary Clinton has demanded immediate release of more information about the latest FBI probe related to her private emails as secretary of state and criticized timing of the development days ahead of November 8 election.
At a campaign rally in Daytona Beach, Florida, Clinton said it was “pretty strange” for FBI Director James Comey to “put something like that out with such little information right before an election.”
“In fact, it’s not just strange; it’s unprecedented and it is deeply troubling,” said Clinton, who is locked in a tight White House race with Republican rival Donald Trump. The latest public opinion polls show a close fight between Clinton and Trump.
According to The Washington Post, a Department of Justice official says the FBI was told that revelation of such a probe to Congress on the eve of election would be “inconsistent” with previously followed policies during an election campaign.
Earlier, in a memo to FBI employees soon after he sent his letter to Congress, Comey said he felt “an obligation to do so given that I testified repeatedly in recent months that our investigation was completed.”
“Of course, we don’t ordinarily tell Congress about ongoing investigations, but here I feel I also think it would be misleading to the American people were we not to supplement the record,” Comey wrote to his employees, explaining the decision.
But for Democrats, FBI’s move was also deeply worrying. Mrs. Clinton’s advisers expressed concern that the F.B.I.’s renewed attention to emails relating to the nominee would turn some voters against her, hurt party candidates in competitive House and Senate races, and complicate efforts to win over undecided Americans in the final days of the election.
Earlier Saturday, her two top campaign staffers, John Podesta and Robby Mook, slammed the FBI decision.
“No one can separate what is true from what is not because (Director FBI ) Comey has not been forthcoming with the facts,” Podesta said, calling on Comey to release additional information.
Citing reports that the emails could be duplicates and may not have actually been from Clinton herself, Podesta said, “There’s no evidence of wrongdoing, no charge of wrongdoing, no indication that this is even about Hillary.”
Meanwhile, several top Democratic senators, including the ranking members on the committees with oversight of the Justice Department, sent a scathing letter Saturday to Comey and Attorney General Loretta Lynch, likewise demanding more information from the FBI director.
“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 senators complained.
As per reports, the emails were discovered during a separate investigation into the sexting of Anthony Weiner, the now-separated husband of top Clinton aide Huma Abedin, Michigan-born Muslim-American raised in Saudi Arabia by a Pakistani mother and an Indian father. FBI officials reportedly found what are said to be thousands of emails from Abedin’s account on devices belonging to Weiner.
Podesta defended Abedin on the call, saying she had “completely and voluntarily” complied with the FBI investigation.
“We, of course, stand behind her,” Podesta said.
On the other hand Trump, at a rally Saturday in Golden, Colorado, weighed in at length about the FBI’s move, calling it “the biggest political scandal since Watergate” and accusing Clinton of “criminal action” that was “willful, deliberate, intentional and purposeful.”
Trump also speculated that Comey’s action was made under pressure from his own employees. “I’ll bet you without any knowledge there was a revolt in the FBI,” he said.
And he went beyond what Comey wrote to declare that the newly discovered email batch must be damning. “Now the evidence as I would imagine is so overwhelming because they wouldn’t have done this if it wasn’t overwhelming,” Trump said.
As for Clinton, Trump said: “Hillary has nobody to blame but herself for her mounting legal troubles. Her criminal action was willful, deliberate, intentional and purposeful.”
The Democrats’ attacks on Comey — Podesta accused him of “providing selective information” — represent a sharp departure from the rhetoric used by Democrats over the summer when Comey held a press conference to announce he would not charge Clinton with any wrongdoing over the use of a private-email server.
Clinton herself then had said she was grateful for “the professionalism of the FBI and the Department of Justice.”
The development has caused rounds of incessant discussion and debate in the American media about the extent the latest news and controversy over FBI probe could impact the campaign and possibly the election outcome.
