Clinton demands details of new e-mail investigation

Hillary Clinton talks to her staff as aide Huma Abedin listens on board their plane at the Westchester County Airport in White Plains, New York. (AFP)

WASHINGTON: Hillary Clinton, on the defensive after the FBI began reexamining her e-mail practices, was headed to the crucial state of Florida on Saturday as her White House rival Donald Trump sought to take advantage of the latest revelation in the long-running affair.
“The American people deserve to get the full and complete facts immediately,” she said.
“We don’t know the facts, which is why we are calling on the FBI to release all the information that it has.”
However the amount of work required to review thousands of e-mail messages makes it unlikely that the FBI will reach any conclusions before the election.
Clinton sought to downplay the impact on the race.
“I think people a long time ago made up their minds about the e-mails. I think that’s factored in to what people think and now they are choosing a president,” Clinton told supporters Friday in Des Moines, Iowa.
Meanwhile, the Clinton campaign worked to tamp down speculation of a voter backlash.
Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook said voters had already “factored” what they knew about the e-mail investigation into their decision-making. “We don’t see it changing the landscape” for undecided voters, Mook said. Sources close to the investigation on Friday said the latest e-mails were discovered as part of a separate probe into Anthony Weiner, the estranged husband of top Clinton aide Huma Abedin.
Weiner, a former US congressman from New York, is the target of an FBI investigation into illicit text messages he is alleged to have sent to a 15-year-old girl in North Carolina.
Vice President Joe Biden told CNN in an interview aired Saturday that he thought “the quicker they release the e-mails for the public to see them, the better off, and I have confidence in Hillary.”
But Republicans are branding the new revelations as just the latest in a larger saga of Clinton corruption, accusing the former secretary of state and her husband, former president Bill Clinton, of repeated lies.
“We’ve seen it for 30 years, the zebra is not going to change its stripes. This is what we can expect out of a Clinton presidency,” Sean Spicer, RNC chief strategist and communications director, told CNN Saturday.
FBI chief James Comey justified his decision to notify Congress in an internal memo sent to employees Friday obtained by The Washington Post.
“Of course, we don’t ordinarily tell Congress about ongoing investigations, but here I feel an obligation to do so given that I testified repeatedly in recent months that our investigation was completed,” Comey said in the message, adding that he did not want to create a “misleading impression.”
However The Washington Post reported Saturday that Justice Department officials had warned the FBI director that the move violated long-standing tradition not to do anything that could influence an election.
Meanwhile on Friday, Trump announced that he had invested an additional $10 million in his campaign, bringing his total contributions to his presidential bid to more than $65 million. He has previously promised to spend more than $100 million on the effort.
While Clinton was targeting voters in Florida, Trump, who appeared headed for certain defeat with just 10 days left in the election, was reveling in the e-mail bombshell and stumping for votes in the western states of Colorado and Arizona.
Clinton holds a 47 percent to 45 percent lead in the latest ABC/Washington Post survey out Saturday, a drastic fall from her 12-point lead in the same poll a week ago.
According to the Real Clear Politics average of multiple polls, Clinton still holds a 44.9 percent to 41.1 percent lead over Trump nationwide.
Trump seized upon the revelation concerning Clinton’s e-mails, alleging it was proof that the former First Lady was “corrupt.”
To the frustration of many in his party, Trump has struggled to consistently drive an attack against Clinton, often turning to personal denunciations of private citizens he feels have wronged him, like the Gold Star family of Capt. Humayun Khan, a Muslim-American soldier killed in action.
But he quickly pounced on the e-mail news, seeing an opportunity to press the argument he’s long tried to make against Clinton: That she thinks she’s above the law and that she put US security at risk by using her personal e-mail.
After weeks of declaring the race “rigged” in favor of his opponent, he declared Friday he has “great respect” for the FBI and the Justice Department, now that they are “willing to have the courage to right the horrible mistake that they made” in concluding the investigation earlier.