Here’s What FBI’s Letter About Hillary Clinton Email Probe Could Mean
The announcement on Friday that the FBI is investigating a new batch of Hillary Clinton emails suggests the bureau may have potentially uncovered something criminal, a 35-year FBI veteran tells TheWrap.
“This letter is a shocker,” said James Wedick, who headed the FBI’s corruption squad in Sacramento. “Obviously they stumbled upon something that suggests criminality.”
In a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee, FBI director James Comey explained that the bureau “has learned of the existence of emails that appear to be pertinent to the investigation.”
Comey did not explain where the new emails came from, only saying only that they surfaced “in connection with an unrelated case.”
The New York Times reported Friday that the new batch of related emails were discovered on the devices of former Congressman Anthony Weiner and his wife, Clinton aide Huma Abedin, as part of another FBI investigation into illicit text messages that Weiner sent to a 15-year-old girl in North Carolina.
“Whatever it is, it was big enough that they felt obligated to address it and they needed to tell Congress about it,” Wedick said.
But some experts caution against jumping to conclusions.
“Even if Comey found minimal evidence that could potentially be relevant, he would have to make it public immediately to avoid the perception that he was aiding the Clinton campaign by keeping it hidden until after the election,” former FBI special agent, M. Quentin Williams, told TheWrap.
In July, Attorney General Loretta Lynch accepted Comey’s recommendation that no charges be pursued in the investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server.
“We cannot find a case that would support bringing criminal charges on these facts,” Comey said in a prepared statement at the time.
In his Friday letter, Comey made clear that the agency has yet to assess the new information and that he could not say how long it would take, suggesting perhaps that the investigation could continue past the Nov. 8 election.
“There is no way the information can be evaluated in a 10-day period,” Wideck said. “It’s impossible.”
