It takes a lot for the FBI to reopen an investigation. It takes even more for the FBI to reopen an investigation of a presidential candidate eleven days before the election. But that’s exactly what happened.
Early this afternoon it was announced that the FBI was reopening the Criminal Investigation of Hillary Clinton’s conduct as secretary of state, with regards to her email server and America’s secrets (and don’t listen to any Clinton surrogates who say it’s not a criminal investigation…the FBI doesn’t do any other kind of investigation).
The first inkling of the news was a tweet from Rep. [score]Jason Chaffetz[/score]
FBI Dir just informed me, “The FBI has learned of the existence of emails that appear to be pertinent to the investigation.” Case reopened
— Jason Chaffetz (@jasoninthehouse) October 28, 2016
About ten minutes after Chaffetz’s tweet came this letter from FBI Director Comey to congressional leaders:
The new information didn’t come from Wikileaks, according to the NY Times, it came from Huma Abedin (thanks to the Weiner sexting investigation scandal).Federal law enforcement officials said Friday that the new emails uncovered in the closed investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server were discovered after the F.B.I. seized electronic devices belonging to Huma Abedin, an aide to Mrs. Clinton, and her husband, Anthony Weiner. Federal law enforcement officials said Friday that the new emails uncovered in the closed investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server were discovered after the F.B.I. seized electronic devices belonging to Huma Abedin, an aide to Mrs. Clinton, and her husband, Anthony Weiner.
We don’t know when this new criminal investigation will be over, nor what exactly the new material is. However in this highly charged political year less than two weeks before election day, Comey would not reopen the criminal investigation of Hillary Clinton and do it so publicly, unless he thought it was significant. Whether or not this will have any effect on people’s votes is also unknown. It may be that this kind of news is already baked in to people’s attitudes about Clinton…we shall see. Either way if you are a Trump supporter, it can’t hurt.
