Hillary Clinton’s email woes won’t die.
Federal investigators today obtained a fiercely-sought warrant to begin searching a large cache of emails sent to or from Huma Abedin, longtime confidante and senior aide to Hillary Clinton. Federal law enforcement officials told reporters the warrant was in on Sunday, as prosecutors with the Justice Department and agents from the F.B.I. rushed to review as much of the emails as possible before Election Day, which is now only one week away.
From the New York Times:
Earlier this month, agents in an unrelated investigation of the disgraced congressman Anthony D. Weiner discovered emails belonging to his estranged wife, Huma Abedin, the aide to Mrs. Clinton. That prompted a renewed interest among F.B.I. agents who had investigated Mrs. Clinton for her use of a private email server as secretary state and had concluded their case without charges in July.
A federal law enforcement official said agents had discovered hundreds of thousands of Ms. Abedin’s emails on her husband’s computer, but investigators expected to seize only a portion of the total. Agents will have probable cause to search only the messages related to the Clinton investigation.
Some of Ms. Abedin’s emails passed through Mrs. Clinton’s private server, officials said, which means there is a high likelihood that the F.B.I. has already read them.
Since the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, revealed the existence of the emails in a letter to Congress on Friday, senior Justice Department and F.B.I. officials have been under tremendous pressure to review the messages quickly. Both Mrs. Clinton and her Republican rival, Donald J. Trump, have called for the F.B.I. to say publicly what it knows before Election Day.
Can the feds finish their work by then? Who knows. “The process has begun,” a federal law enforcement official told the Times.
It really does seem possible that this poorly-explained mistake could cost the only sane candidate a historic victory in this election.
And why did FBI director James Comey choose this eleventh hour to make an unasked-for public statement about reopening the investigation, or not, or something, just days before the election? Why, indeed. NBC News reports:
Comey’s disclosure of the emails ignited fierce criticism, particularly from Clinton, who called the move an “unprecedented” departure from FBI policy.
On Sunday, Democratic Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid scolded Comey as well, saying in a letter that he “demonstrated a disturbing double standard for the treatment of sensitive information, with what appears to be clear intent to aid one political party over another.”
Reid added that his office determined that Comey may have violated the Hatch Act, which bars government officials from using their authority to influence elections.
The FBI did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the Reid letter.