Clinton aggressively tries to shape public opinion on latest FBI email review
Seventy-one percent of voters in our latest CBS News Battleground Tracker poll say FBI director James Comey’s disclosure about a new review of Hillary Clinton-related emails will not change their vote. Some of those people in 13 battleground states have already cast their ballots, and just five percent of Democrats say it makes them less likely to vote for Clinton.
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The FBI obtained a search warrant to review newly-discovered emails on the laptop of Anthony Weiner, the estranged husband of longtime Clinton aide Huma Abedin.
With many Americans voting right now, the Clinton camp couldn’t afford to dwell on what they saw as an unfair move by the FBI, reports CBS News correspondent Nancy Cordes. They are moving aggressively to shape public opinion, calling on the FBI director to explain himself, with the assumption that the best defense is a good offense.
“It’s pretty strange to put something like that out with such little information right before an election,” Clinton said Saturday in Florida.
She came down hard this weekend on Comey’s move.
“It’s unprecedented and it is deeply troubling,” she said.
Her campaign followed that up with a Facebook video which has already been viewed more than a million times.
“The more information that has come out, the more overblown this all seems,” said Brian Fallon, Clinton’s press secretary. “You’re probably just as puzzled and outraged as we are.”
Vice presidential candidate Tim Kaine argued that outrage might even be helping the campaign.
“It has kind of revved up some enthusiasm, a little bit of righteous indignation and righteous anger. It’s revved it up a bit,” Kaine said Sunday in Michigan.
Donald Trump also sought to take political advantage of the news. “Huma. They just found a lot of them. We never thought we were going to say thank you to Anthony Weiner,” the GOP nominee said in Las Vegas Sunday.
Huma Abedin is Clinton’s longest-serving aide and was with Clinton on the campaign trail when the news broke Friday. But she stayed home over the weekend. She separated from Anthony Weiner in August.
Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta said there will be no changes to Abedin’s duties in these final eight days.
“She’s played a central and vital role in this campaign and she continues to do that,” he said.
At a church in Fort Lauderdale, Clinton said the Bible had taught her about resilience.
“No matter what is thrown our way, we are not going to back down, we are not going to give up,” Clinton said.
One thing giving the Clinton camp hope right now is the fact that so many Americans, more than 20 million, had already voted before the FBI took this step. The campaign has been careful to use words like puzzling and confusing to describe Comey’s move, relying on other Democrats, like Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, to go a lot further.