Democrats kept up their attacks on FBI director James Comey on Monday, accusing him of a double standard after he revealed his agency's inquiry into more material that might relate to the party's presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server.
Ms Clinton’s Republican rival, Donald Trump, has seized on Mr Comey’s announcement on Friday to press his longstanding charge that Clinton lacks integrity, hoping he can make an improbable late comeback and win the November 8th election.
Mr Trump hammered his Democratic rival on Monday as a threat to the country, saying that electing her while the FBI was investigating material possibly related to her email set-up could throw the country into crisis.
“The investigation will last for years. The trial will probably start,” Mr Trump told a rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
“Nothing will get done. I can tell you, your jobs will continue to leave Michigan. Nothing’s going to get done,” he said.
Mr Trump said electing Ms Clinton on November 8th would leave the country “in a constitutional crisis that we cannot afford. Folks, we’ve got to get back to work.
“You can’t take it, I can’t take it, nobody can take it.”
The Clinton campaign and its supporters have furiously attacked Mr Comey for releasing information that raised questions but provided no details so close to the election.
Some party leaders said the agency was concealing damaging information about the Trump campaign.
The FBI spent a year investigating Ms Clinton’s use of a private email server, instead of government systems, while she was secretary of state from 2009 to 2013.
Mr Comey concluded in July that while Clinton and her staff had been “extremely careless“ in handling classified information, there were no grounds for any charges.
But the issue resurfaced unexpectedly on Friday when Mr Comey sent a brief letter to members of US Congress to tell them the agency was looking at new emails.
In the letter, he said: “We don’t know the significance of this newly discovered collection of emails.”
The emails were found during an unrelated inquiry into the estranged husband of a top Clinton aide.
However, Mr Trump, a wealthy New York businessman, used the news to charge that Ms Clinton represents a corrupt political system.
“When we win on November 8th we are going to Washington DC and we are going to drain the swamp,” he said on Sunday night at a rally in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
"Hillary Clinton is not the victim. You, the American people are the victims of this corrupt system."
‘Double standard’
US senator Harry Reid, the Democratic leader in the Senate, accused Mr Comey on Sunday of "a disturbing double standard for the treatment of sensitive information, with what appears to be a clear intent to aid one political party over another".
He said, without providing evidence, that the FBI was keeping “explosive information” under wraps about ties between the Trump campaign and Russian officials.
Democratic representative Elijah Cummings hammered this accusation on Monday, urging the FBI to release information on Mr Trump and his advisers’ dealings with Russia.
“Members of Congress, including myself, have asked for months for the FBI to provide us with information as to whether Mr Trump, Mr Manafort, other associates and the Russian government have any connection with each other,” Mr Cummings told CNN, referring to a former senior Trump campaign official, Paul Manafort.
An FBI spokeswoman said late on Sunday: “When we receive the letter it will be handled through our usual process in responding to members of Congress,” referring to Reid’s accusation.
The US government has accused Russia of a campaign of cyber attacks targeting the Democratic Party, which has led to the release of thousands of illegally obtained emails, revealing the sometimes unflattering inner workings of the party.
The Kremlin has denied this. Mr Trump has declined to implicate Russia in any wrongdoing.
Democrats have demanded that Mr Comey and the FBI work rapidly to make public what they know about the new email trove.
A source familiar with the matter said on Sunday that the FBI had secured a warrant to examine the emails.
Polls
Daily tracking polls should reflect soon whether the controversy is having an impact on the race. Early voting means that millions of Americans have already cast their ballots.
Mr Trump had already narrowed Ms Clinton’s lead in national opinion polls and gone into the lead in a small number of the battleground states where the election is likely to be decided.
Democrats have hoped Ms Clinton’s lead in opinion polls could also translate into gains in congressional races on November 8th that could help them take back control of the Senate and the House of Representatives.
That hope could dissipate if Clinton is damaged by the news about the email probe.
Given that there are several Senate races that are “razor thin”, the fresh email controversy “could have an outsized impact because the margins will be so small”, a senior Senate Democratic aide said on Monday.
The latest emails were discovered as part of a separate inquiry into former Democratic US representative Anthony Weiner, the estranged husband of Huma Abedin, who is Ms Clinton's closest aide and confidante, sources close to the FBI investigation have said.
The FBI is investigating illicit text messages Mr Weiner is alleged to have sent to a 15-year-old girl in North Carolina.
The Wall Street Journal reported that federal agents are preparing to spend weeks examining about 650,000 emails contained on Mr Weiner’s laptop for possible links to Ms Clinton’s email use.
If Ms Clinton wins the election, the controversy could cast a cloud over her White House transition.
Mr Trump said the new email cache could represent a “motherlode“ of emails.
Mr Cummings said on Monday that the FBI’s vague statement on new emails related to the Clinton investigation made it impossible for Ms Clinton to defend herself and “basically gave Donald Trump a softball to hit over the fence”.
On Sunday, Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta and campaign manager Robby Mook questioned the FBI head’s decision to notify Congress of the email review before he even knew whether they were significant or relevant.
Mr Comey was appointed FBI director by Democratic president Barack Obama in 2013.
Mr Cummings, the Democratic representative, said Mr Comey was under intense pressure and scrutiny from Republicans in Congress after his conclusion in July that Ms Clinton had not violated the law, so he released the new information to stave off any accusations from Republicans that he had withheld information.
Reuters