What we know about the FBI's new email review

FBI Director James Comey rocked the presidential race Friday by announcing the existence of new emails relating to Hillary Clinton’s private email server.

Comey's 3-paragraph letter revealing the emails touched off a firestorm of speculation, though more information has since emerged providing a few more details about the emails.

Federal officials quoted in a number of outlets have said that the new batch of emails were found on a laptop belonging to former Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.).

Prosecutors in Manhattan seized the device as part of an investigation into an illicit texting conversation involving an underage girl, according to The New York Times.

Weiner is the estranged husband of longtime Clinton aide Huma Abedin, and the emails on the laptop purportedly belonged to her, the Times reported.

"Case reopened," Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, declared Friday on Twitter, breaking news of the new FBI review.

Officials have since clarified that the investigation into Clinton's email arrangement was never officially closed due to administrative matters.

Comey indicated the probe was completed in early July when he declined to recommend pursuing charges over the mishandling of classified information.

He wrote Friday to inform lawmakers that new emails were discovered that may be "pertinent" to the agency's investigation, saying his agency would "take appropriate steps to obtain and review them."

In a memo to FBI employees on Friday, Comey said that he was aware that sending the letter to lawmakers could open him up to criticism, but felt obligated to be transparent about the investigation.

“Of course, we don’t ordinarily tell Congress about ongoing investigations, but here I feel an obligation to do so given that I testified repeatedly in recent months that our investigation was completed,” reads the memo, which was obtained by The Washington Post.

“I also think it would be misleading to the American people were we not to supplement the record. At the same time, however, given that we don’t know the significance of this newly discovered collection of emails, I don’t want to create a misleading impression. In trying to strike that balance, in a brief letter and in the middle of an election season, there is significant risk of being misunderstood, but I wanted you to hear directly from me about it," he wrote.

According to the Associated Press, Abedin testified in a sworn deposition in June that she never deleted old emails.

"I didn't have a practice of managing my mailbox other than leaving what was in there sitting in there," she said, according to the AP. "I didn't go into my emails and delete State.gov emails. They just lived on my computer."

"That was my practice for all my email accounts," she said. "I didn't have a particular form of organizing them. I had a few folders, but they were not deleted. They all stayed in whatever device I was using at the time or whatever desktop I was on at the time."

It's unclear what's in the newly discovered emails, and some have speculated that they could just be duplicates of emails already reviewed by officials.

The FBI's investigation centered on whether classified information had been mishandled, and it remains to be seen whether the emails did, in fact, contain classified information.

If the emails turn out to be new, those involved will be put in the uncomfortable spot of explaining why they weren't already handed over for archiving.

GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump speculated Saturday that the FBI was reviewing some of Clinton's "33,000 missing and deleted emails."

Clinton and a number of aides, as well as Democratic Party brass, have publicly called on the FBI director to be more forthcoming in order to avoid having her detractors take control of the story.

Clinton on Saturday blasted the FBI director for making an "unprecedented" announcement within two weeks of the election. Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon also knocked Comey, accusing him of pushing "innuendo."

"Director Comey is just unleashing a wildfire of innuendo, of anonymously sourced reports, of Republicans mischaracterizing what the letter says," Fallon, a former Justice Department spokesman, told CNN on Friday.

Leaders of both parties are demanding more information about the review of new emails before the election, with Democrats itching to have more details released to the public within days.

Comey, who has prided himself on being an independent law enforcement official, will have to weigh providing additional updates on the review of newly discovered emails so close to the election.

Critics who knocked the FBI director in early July for breaking precedent to comment on the investigation and criticize Clinton's "extremely careless" behavior are now pushing him provide more details.

..... federal agents detail how a classified paper on Pakistan, sent from a State Department source, Abedin inexplicably forwarded to her personal Yahoo email account — an obviously unclassified, unencrypted, unsecured and unauthorized system........not an isolated event but a common practice with Abedin.

“She routinely forwarded emails from her state.gov account to either her clintonemail.com or her yahoo.com account,” the agents wrote. Why? “So she could print them” at home and not at her State Department office.

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The cover story used.....Huma was only forwarding the emails home so she
could print them, b/c Hillary wanted it that way, even though it's illegal.

REALITY CHECK: Tens of thousands of classified emails are housed,
not only on Hillary's secret basement server, but at Huma’s home as well.....
on devices held by Huma's unemployed husband.

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This underlines Judiciary Chair Sen Grassley's point that Huma Abedin may have been collecting political intelligence gleaned from unsuspecting State Dept officials that was then sold..... for a price.

Recall that Huma was a govt employee at the State Dept. Then Hillary facilitated Huma having several other jobs simultaneously. (a) Huma working for Teneo....the powerhouse company that is purported to be the vehicle foreign entities use to get access to the Clintons. (b) Clinton Foundation employee. (c) State Dept employee.

Sen Grassley wrote in a June 13, 2015 letter:

It appears that one of Abedin’s clients, the Clinton-connected Teneo Strategies, may have been compensating Ms. Abedin for gathering information from US government sources for the purpose of informing investment decisions of her consulting clients - or in other words, political intelligence.

This raises important questions about whether Abedin’s dual role was adequately disclosed to government officials who may have provided her information without realizing that she was being paid by private investors to gather information.

Grassley’s letter recounted:

<><> Abedin allegedly sent or received more than 7,000 emails on her US government account that involved Teneo’s Doug Band, a close confidante and travel companion of the globe-trotting Bill Clinton;

<><> one email exchange involved Teneo’s Doug Band pressuring Abedin to encourage her State Department boss, Hillary Clinton, to facilitate a White House appointment for one of his clients. Judith Rodin, then-president of the Rockefeller Foundation, “donated hundreds of millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation,” Mr. Band allegedly noted in his email to Ms. Abedin.

<><> email evidence allegedly suggests that Ms. Abedin and another Hillary aide, Cheryl Mills, colluded to find a way to ensure the US govt paid for Ms. Abedin’s travel to and from New York.

<><> multiple allegations received by Sen Grassley’s Judiciary Committee indicated Abedin had actually taken leave during her time as a govt employee, casting doubt on whether Abedin should have received $33,000 in taxpayer money.

As joshua c posted: Gee, I am only guessing here, but there may be a reason why you cannot print from a State Dept secure system that has classified information.

Been watching CNN to observe their coverage, They had an analyst on who seemed to be on top of the story. The CNN talking head actually attacked him a bit asking why he was bringing up additional issues and how he knows what he knows.

According to him he received the information from people in the FBI who are actively involved with the case. He said that when the team of agents found the information during the Weiner investigation those agents went and discussed what they found with the team of agents that worked Hillary’s email investigation. Those agents then said this is definitely something we want to look into. The result was Comey’s letter.

He also said there is still an ongoing investigation with the Clinton foundation and what they just found has now become a source of information for three separate investigations.

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