The FBI has determined that a new batch of emails linked to Hillary Clinton’s private email server “have not changed our conclusion” that she committed no criminal wrongdoing, FBI director James Comey told congressional leaders in a letter on Sunday.
As campaigning continued ahead of Tuesday’s presidential election, a Clinton spokeswoman said the candidate was “glad this matter is resolved”.
The Democratic nominee’s opponent, Donald Trump, reacted with anger at the news, and cast doubt on whether the FBI had even carried out its work. “You can’t review 650,000 emails in eight days,” Donald Trump told a campaign rally in Sterling Heights, Michigan on Sunday evening.
On 28 October, only 11 days before the presidential election, Comey sent congressional leaders a letter informing them that agents had discovered emails “that appear pertinent” to a prior investigation, into Clinton’s use of a private server while she was secretary of state. It was later reported that as many as 650,000 such emails were in question.
The move, so close to an election, proved tremendously controversial. In July, Comey had announced that Clinton and her aides were “extremely careless” but that “no reasonable prosecutor” would bring a case against them.
“Since my letter, the FBI investigative team has been working around the clock to process and review a large volume of emails from a device obtained in connection with an unrelated criminal investigation,” Comey wrote to Congress on Sunday.
“During that process, we reviewed all of the communications that were to or from Hillary Clinton while she was secretary of state.”
“Based on our review, we have not changed our conclusions that we expressed in July with respect to Secretary Clinton,” he concluded. “I am grateful to the professionals at the FBI for doing an extraordinary amount of high-quality work in a short period of time.”
Clinton was on board her campaign plane when the news broke, as she had been when Comey’s delivered his first letter nine days earlier. As news broke, aides huddled toward the front of the plane, reading from an iPad, and spokeswoman Jennifer Palmieri entered Clinton’s cabin, shielded by a curtain, moments before she spoke to the press.
“We are glad to see that [Comey] has found, as we were confident he would, that he has confirmed the conclusions that he reached in July and we are glad that this matter is resolved,” she told reporters.
Leaving the plane in Cleveland, roughly 30 minutes after Comey’s announcement, Clinton did not respond to a reporter’s question about whether she had seen the letter.
When the letter was released, Trump was speaking in an airplane hangar in Minneapolis, but did not mention the letter to the crowd, instead directing his anger against his Democratic rival.
In Michigan, however, he said: “You can’t review 650,000 emails in eight days. Hillary Clinton is guilty. She knows it. The FBI knows it, the people know it and now it is up for American people to deliver justice at the ballot box on 8 November.”
The Republican nominee also insisted that despite Comey’s actions, “the rank and file special agents at the FBI won’t let her get away with her terrible crimes including the deletion of 33,000 emails after receiving a federal subpoena”.
Trump seemed to be alluding to leaks from within the bureau that revealed acrimony and political rifts within the FBI, after Department of Justice officials expressed surprise that Comey would break with decades of tradition regarding investigations and elections.
Other leading Republicans tried to dismiss the FBI’s new conclusion. “Some things haven’t changed at all. What FBI director Comey said on 7 July under oath to Congress is still the same: That she was reckless and careless in her handling of information,” Trump’s campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, told MSNBC.
“The reason that so many Americans have a problem with Hillary Clinton’s honesty and trustworthiness and veracity does not change.”
Republican House speaker Paul Ryan also insisted that the new conclusion should not change any opinions about Clinton. “Regardless of this decision, the undisputed finding of the FBI’s investigation is that Secretary Clinton put our nation’s secrets at risk and in doing so compromised our national security,” he said in a statement. “She simply believes she’s above the law and always plays by her own rules.”
Although Ryan has endured spats with Trump for months, he urged Americans to vote for the businessman, as he did last week. “Fortunately, the American people have the opportunity to ensure Secretary Clinton never gets her hands on classified information again,” Ryan said. “Let’s bring the Clinton era to an end by voting for Donald Trump on Tuesday.”
The new emails were discovered on a laptop belonging to Anthony Weiner, a disgraced former congressman who is the estranged husband of Huma Abedin, a close aide to Clinton. Weiner is under investigation for allegedly exchanging sexually explicit messages with a minor.
Comey’s first letter surprised both campaigns and cast the FBI into the middle of an bitter and volatile race. Senior Democrats accused Comey of political meddling, Clinton said she found the letter “deeply troubling” and Trump gleefully predicted the emails would reveal a corruption scandal “bigger than Watergate”.
On Sunday, Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee, said Comey’s letter should end “once and for all” accusations that Clinton had committed any crime.
“While the original letter should never have been sent so close to an election,” Schiff said, “the expeditious review of these emails should put to rest the irresponsible speculation indulged in by the Trump campaign and others.”
The FBI said it had nothing to add to Comey’s letter. Yet while the immediate drama has ended, Comey remains in a precarious position.
John Conyers, the ranking Democrat on the House judiciary committee, hinted political battles to come, saying: “We will have many questions about the FBI’s handling of this investigation.”
Senator Dianne Feinstein, usually a staunch ally of the security agencies, said the end of what she called Comey’s “October surprise” made his decision to intervene “even more troubling”.
Feinstein called on the justice department to “look at its procedures to prevent similar actions that could influence future elections”.
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