The FBI Investigates More Emails Related to Clinton

Hillary Clinton’s email saga isn’t over.

The FBI is reviewing a new set of emails “to determine whether they contain classified information,” the bureau’s director, James Comey, told congressional committee chairmen in a letter on Friday. Comey wrote that the FBI discovered the messages in an unrelated case and “cannot assess whether or not this material may be significant.”

“In connection with an unrelated case, the FBI has learned of the existence or emails that appear to be pertinent to the investigation,” Comey wrote in the three-paragraph letter. “I am writing to inform you that the investigative team briefed me on this yesterday, and 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.”

The letter did not specify who sent the emails, who received them, or where they were found.

Comey said he didn’t know how long it would take to review, but the mere announcement that the FBI was revisiting a case it appeared to have closed without charges this summer had the potential to shake up a presidential race that has been trending decidedly in Clinton’s favor. The Republican chairman of the House oversight committee, Representative Jason Chaffetz of Utah, immediately released Comey’s letter publicly and proclaimed the investigation “reopened.”

In New Hampshire, a jubilant Donald Trump immediately seized on the news as a roaring crowd renewed its chant of “Lock her up!”

“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 they made,” Trump said at the outset. “In all fairness, for all the people who have suffered for doing so much less, including just recently, four-star General James Cartwright, General Petraeus, and many others, perhaps finally, justice will be done.”

An FBI spokesman declined to comment beyond Comey’s letter and wouldn’t provide further information on what the new emails say or how the FBI acquired them. But with just 11 days until an election—and with more than 10 million votes already cast—that may not matter.

“Yet again, Hillary Clinton has nobody but herself to blame,” House Speaker Paul Ryan said in a statement in which he reiterated his call for intelligence officials to stop giving Clinton classified briefings as the Democratic Party nominee.

She was entrusted with some of our nation’s most important secrets, and she betrayed that trust by carelessly mishandling highly classified information. This decision, long overdue, is the result of her reckless use of a private email server, and her refusal to be forthcoming with federal investigators. I renew my call for the Director of National Intelligence to suspend all classified briefings for Secretary Clinton until this matter is fully resolved.

The Clinton campaign did not immediately comment. Asked about the news, vice presidential nominee Tim Kaine told reporters, “Got to read more.”

Another top Republican, Senator John Cornyn of Texas, appeared more befuddled than outraged by the timing of Comey’s letter. “Why is FBI doing this just 11 days before the election,” he asked in a tweet.

In July, Comey announced that the government would not bring charges against Clinton over the private email server she maintained as secretary of state, but he called her handling of sensitive information “extremely careless.” NBC’s Pete Williams reported Friday afternoon that the new emails were discovered on “another device” but did not appear to be withheld by Clinton or the State Department from the FBI originally. An FBI official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, would not confirm NBC’s reporting other than to say Friday’s letter was not related to the hack of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s emails. “It’s not WikiLeaks,” the official said.