FBI Clear Clinton One More Time-Can The Damage be Fixed?
FBI Director James Comey told lawmakers Sunday the agency hasn't changed its opinion that Hillary Clinton should not face criminal charges after a review of new emails.
“Based on our review, we have not changed our conclusions that we expressed in July," Comey wrote in the new letter to congressional committee chairmen.
Comey dropped a bombshell on the presidential race last month when he sent a letter to Congress saying the FBI had discovered emails in a separate investigation that could be connected to the now-closed probe of whether Clinton mishandled classified information. The move infuriated Democrats and emboldened Republican nominee Donald Trump.
It's impossible to know before results are tallied what impact Comey's actions -- first raising a vaguely worded red flag 11 days out, and then lowering it two days from the election -- will have on the contest. But the news could help Clinton put to rest a controversy that has dogged her in the 2016 race's closing days, helping Trump narrow a polling gap nationally and in key battleground states.
Dianne Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, blasted Comey’s handling of the review.
"Today's letter makes Director Comey's actions nine days ago even more troubling," Feinstein said in a statement. “There's no doubt that it created a false impression about the nature of the agency's inquiry."
She added: "The Justice Department needs to take a look at its procedures to prevent similar actions that could influence future elections."
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‘As fast as we could'
Comey’s letter was the culmination of a fast-paced review of the newly discovered email, law enforcement sources said Sunday.
"We went through this as fast as we could," a senior law enforcement official told CNN.
The FBI found the new emails as part of its separate investigation into a sexting incident by Anthony Weiner, the estranged husband of top Clinton aide Huma Abedin.
The thousands of new emails were mostly personal and duplicates of what had already been seen, law enforcement officials said in explaining how the conclusion was reached so quickly. The laptop which was found was about a decade old with lots of personal content on it not relevant to the investigation, according to one source.
Comey sent the letter as soon as possible, the senior law enforcement official said. He was "very careful" about how the letter was crafted given the sensitivities.
Attorney General Loretta Lynch was informed ahead of time that the FBI director was sending the updated letter to Congress informing them of that there would be no change in the FBI stance on Hillary Clinton, a Justice official told CNN on Sunday.
Lynch and Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates disagreed with Comey's earlier decision to notify Congress. The attorney general backed Comey's move Sunday.
“Everyone is on the same page," the source said.
Since there is no change to the original findings, the Justice Department has no need to weigh in further, the official said.
"The Department of Justice and the FBI dedicated all necessary resources to conduct this review expeditiously," the Justice Department said in a brief statement released Sunday afternoon.
Campaigns weigh in
Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon said her campaign is validated in its belief that nothing would change.
"We were always confident nothing would cause the July decision to be revisited. Now Director Comey has confirmed it,” he tweeted.
The Trump campaign quickly slammed Comey.
“We thought that Director Comey and the FBI were wrong when they made their initial recommendation in July, and we think that they're wrong now," Trump spokesman Jason Miller told CNN's Wolf Blitzer on "The Situation Room."
GOP vice presidential nominee Mike Pence sought to keep the pressure on Clinton.
"Mishandling classified information is a crime," he said at a rally in an airport hanger in Hickory, North Carolina. “Hillary Clinton said that she never sent or received any classified information and the director of the FBI told the Congress classified information was sent."
Trump himself did not directly address the FBI's latest announcement as he took the stage at a rally in Minneapolis more than 20 minutes after news of Comey's letter to Congress surfaced. He continued to argue that Clinton “will be under investigation for a long, long time."
But the Republican nominee, who has expressed hope in the last week that the FBI’s review of new emails might yield an indictment, emphasized to his supporters Sunday that Clinton is "protected" by powerful forces.
“Well, you have to understand it's a rigged system and she's protected," Trump said, though he offered no evidence to back up his theory.
‘It opened a wound'
A senior Democrat close to Clinton’s campaign told CNN that "it's impossible to fully undo the damage of the last nine days."
Internal campaign polling, the source said, found that some independents and Republican women fled Clinton after the original Comey announcement, robbing her of a constituency that she’d hoped would turn her contest with Trump into a blowout.
"It opened a wound that cannot be quickly healed," the Democrat said.
However, the Democrat called it a relief that the “matter is resolved" and said Clinton's campaign plans to "make everyone know about" Comey's Sunday letter.
Comey's last-minute announcement gives Clinton an opportunity for an I-told-you-so moment.
"We have seen Director Comey's latest letter to the Hill," said Jennifer Palmieri, Clinton's communications director, speaking with reporters after the news broke. "We are glad to see that he has found, as we were confident that he would, that he had confirmed the conclusions he reached in July and we are glad that this matter is resolved."
Trump and his allies have seized on that announcement, using it claim Clinton is likely to face criminal charges.
"If she were to win, it would create an unprecedented constitutional crisis," Trump claimed Saturday night in Reno, Nevada. "In that situation we could very well have a sitting president under felony indictment and ultimately a criminal trial. It would grind government to a halt."
Political benefit
The political benefit for Trump has been that Republicans who’d been skeptical of their party's nominee have largely followed vice presidential nominee Mike Pence's calls to "come home" to the party -- finding Trump less objectionable than Clinton.
It's not just Trump's campaign that seized on Comey's actions. Down-ballot Republicans -- particularly Senate candidates who had been forced to answer for Trump's statements for months -- used the moment to change the topic, shifting to the more comfortable ground of attacking Clinton.
The last-minute Sunday move from Comey could also provide new fuel for Trump’s claims of a "rigged" system -- allowing him to cast the FBI director's intervention in the presidential election in a new light.
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Comey and the FBI went from Trump's scapegoat to the Republican nominee's hero, with Trump claiming Comey had redeemed himself just in time.
Newt Gingrich, a top Trump ally, tweeted “Comey must be under enormous political pressure to cave like this."
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