Hillary Clinton campaign on defense after FBI reopens email case
With just over a week before Election Day, Hillary Clinton’s campaign is fighting a political firestorm that appeared to be put out in July.
At the time, the Justice Department closed its criminal investigation into her use of a private email server while she was secretary of state.
Now, the FBI is reopening the case after new emails were discovered in an unrelated matter.
At issue: Whether there is classified information on those new emails and if the public will even find out before the election.
CBS News correspondent Errol Barnett reports that with early voting in battleground states already underway and only 10 days until the election this latest move by the FBI has Clinton and her aides on defense. They are in the dark about what these newly uncovered emails could reveal.
“We are calling on the FBI to release all the information that it has,” Clinton said during an emergency press conference late Friday, hours after learning of the political earthquake rocking her campaign. “They need to share whatever facts they claim to have with the American people, and that’s what I expect to happen.”
Clinton was responding to the FBI investigation into her use of a private email server, something she thought was settled.
Back in July, FBI Director James Comey took the unprecedented step of publicly announcing an end to the yearlong investigation.
“Our judgement is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case,” Comey said at the time.
No charges were brought. Still, Comey described Clinton’s handling of classified information as “extremely careless.”
But he stunned Washington Friday, when he sent a letter to Congress acknowledging new emails “pertinent” to the Clinton investigation had been discovered, all while working on “an unrelated case,” and they would be reviewed to “determine to whether they contain classified information.”
In a more surprising twist, the unearthed emails were from the FBI’s investigation into disgraced Congressman Anthony Weiner.
Weiner stands accused of sending sexually explicit messages to a 15-year-old and is married to longtime Clinton aide Huma Abedin, despite their public separation last month.
Sources told CBS News the new trove of potentially thousands of emails was found on a confiscated laptop shared by Weiner and Abedin.
When asked about that possibility, Clinton called them rumors.
“We don’t know what to believe,” Clinton said, “and I’m sure there will be even more rumors. That’s why it is incumbent upon the FBI to tell us what they’re talking about.”
In an internal FBI memo, Comey explained he felt obliged to update Congress because he repeatedly said the case was over in his recent testimony there. This, he wrote, supplements the record even though the timing leaves him open to being misunderstood.