Washington: In a sensational twist on the home straight to the election, the FBI has thrown a cryptic but explosive hurdle on what was widely assumed to be Hillary Clinton's assured march into the Oval Office - announcing it will investigate newly discovered emails related to her controversial private email server.
The emails were discovered after the bureau seized devices belonging to Clinton's senior aide and confidante Huma Abedin, and her estranged husband, disgraced former congressman Anthony Weiner, according to media reports.
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Clinton urges FBI to release email information
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton calls on the FBI to immediately release all information it has on newly discovered emails.
As shockwaves emanated from Washington, FBI director James Comey's announcement was met initially with stunned silence from the Clinton campaign and greeted with renewed chants of "Lock her up! Lock her up" as Republican candidate Donald Trump broke the news to a re-energised rally in New Hampshire.
With less than two weeks to go, Comey gave no indication of a timeline for the renewed investigation, which he said in a letter to congressional leaders, was sparked by the discovery of "emails that appear to be pertinent to the Clinton investigation" in what he said was an unrelated case.
That unrelated investigation is an FBI probe into illicit text messages sent to a 15-year-old North Carolina girl by Weiner. The New York Times, which first reported the new link to Weiner, said that the new emails came to light after the FBI seized devices owned by both Weiner and Abedin.
Abedin separated from Weiner in August after reports that he had again been sexting women. Shortly after the separation was announced, a new report was published claiming Mr Weiner had exchanged explicit messages with the 15-year-old girl.
Comey did not use the word "re-open" in relation to the investigation. But that appears to be what he has done, despite the eruption of a social media debate that "re-open" is a reckless Republican mischaracterisation of his letter.
Saying he had been briefed on the new material on Thursday, Comey wrote: "I agreed that the FBI should take appropriate investigative steps designed to allow investigators to review these emails to determine whether they contain classified information, as well as to assess their importance to our investigation."
Awaiting the outcome of the FBI's earlier, year-long investigation of Clinton's use of the server stashed in the basement of her home was a nightmare for Clinton – any finding of prosecutable criminal conduct might have destroyed her chances of becoming president.
The FBI cleared her of any wrongdoing on the eve of the party conventions in July but once again, the possibility that she could become "the defendant" looms as a sensational game-changer.
Now, Comey's new letter to Congress implies that the FBI has embarked on a line of inquiry that is something more than closing out an already closed investigation.
In Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on Friday, Clinton called on the FBI to release all new information in the probe. Her campaign chairman John Podesta demanded further information about the new emails, because of the timing of the announcement and its impact on the campaign.
"The American people deserve to get the full and complete facts immediately. The director himself has said he doesn't know whether the emails referenced in his letter are significant or not. I'm confident whatever they are will not change the conclusion reached in July," Clinton told reporters.
"Already, we have seen characterisations that the FBI is 're-opening' an investigation but Comey's words do not match that characterisation ... we have no idea what those emails are and the director himself notes they may not even be significant.
"It is extraordinary that we would see something like this just 11 days out from a presidential election. The director owes it to the American people to immediately provide the full details of what he is now examining.
"We are confident this will not produce any conclusions different from the one the FBI reached in July."
In a memo to FBI employees soon after his disclosure to Congress, Comey said he felt "an obligation to do so, given that I testified repeatedly in recent months that our investigation was completed," The Washington Post reported.
"Of course, we don't ordinarily tell Congress about ongoing investigations, but here… I also think it would be misleading to the American people were we not to supplement the record," he wrote.
Since mid-October, Clinton has opened a steady lead of five to seven points in the Real Clear Politics average of national opinion polls and she has been surging in most of the vital swing states, as Trump's campaign lurches from crisis to crisis.
This week was becoming more treacherous for Clinton, though, amid reports of steep Obamacare premiums and revelations of influence peddling in the Clinton Foundation.
But in a month of many so-called October surprises, Comey's Friday bombshell was, by far, the most sensational – because of how it will feed intense voter distrust that makes Clinton one of the most disliked candidates for the presidency, second only to Trump.
In the July announcement in which he cleared Clinton, Comey clearly was angered by the conduct of Clinton and her staff, describing their handling of classified material as "extremely careless" and "sloppy".
There was evidence of potential violation of laws governing the handling of classified information, he said at the time, but the investigation had concluded that "no reasonable prosecutor" would bring a case, in part because there was no evidence that there had been intentional mishandling of classified material or indications of disloyalty to the US or efforts to obstruct justice.
Since then Comey has been under constant attack from Trump and his campaign surrogates, with the FBI featuring prominently in Trump's increasingly strident charge that the election has been rigged against him.
In the second of the three candidate's debates, Trump sensationally announced that if elected, he'd have Clinton thrown in jail. In New Hampshire on Friday, Trump switched rails, praising the FBI, saying he had "great respect" for the agency's decision to "right the horrible mistake that they made".
"Perhaps, finally, justice will be done," he said, as the crowd erupted, with many punching the air with their fists as they chanted, "Lock her up! Lock her up!"
"I need to open with a very critical, breaking news announcement," Trump said as he took the microphone.
"Hillary Clinton's corruption is on a scale that we have never seen before. We must not let her take her criminal scheme into the Oval Office. I have great respect for the fact that the FBI and the department of justice are now willing to have the courage to right the horrible mistake that they made.
"This was a grave miscarriage of justice that the American people fully understood. And it is everybody's hope that it is about to be corrected."
Trump's campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, also celebrated the news, tweeting: "A great day in our campaign just got even better. FBI reviewing new emails in Clinton probe."
The announcement electrified senior Republicans, many of whom had become resigned to losing the White House in an election that was theirs for the taking, but was being thrown away by Trump's inability to stay on message as he became engulfed in serial sexual abuse charges – all of which gained credibility because of his admission in the "grab-them-by-the- pussy" video.
"The FBI's decision to reopen their criminal investigation into Hillary Clinton's secret email server just 11 days before the election shows how serious this discovery must be," Republican committee chairman Reince Priebus, said in a statement. "This stunning development raises serious questions about what records may not have been turned over and why, and whether they show intent to violate the law."
"A total bombshell," said New York Republican congressman Peter King told The Washington Post of Comey's announcement.
Predicting that the FBI would not end its renewed inquiry before Election Day, he claimed that Comey wanted the public to know of his move regardless of the outcome - "He wants it all out there."
But beyond the political process, Comey came in for harsh criticism from former law officers.
"I got a lot of respect for Jim Comey, but I don't understand this idea of dropping this bombshell which could be a big dud," former federal prosecutor Peter Zeidenberg told Politico magazine. "It just invites speculation ... I would question the timing of it. It's not going to get done in a week."
Nick Akerman, a former assistant US Attorney in the Southern District of New York, also went on the attack.
"Director Comey acted totally inappropriately. He had no business writing to Congress about supposed new emails that neither he nor anyone in the FBI has ever reviewed. It is not the function of the FBI Director to be making public pronouncements about an investigation, never mind about an investigation based on evidence that he acknowledges may not be significant."