WASHINGTON: Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director James B Comey may lose his job for allegedly influencing the November 8 presidential elections in the United States.
The director sent shockwaves across the US after he wrote a letter to the lawmakers that the FBI would reopen investigation against Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton for using private email server to dispatch thousands of official and secret emails.
Republican candidate Donald Trump claimed that there was a war going on within the FBI which resulted in sending the letter to the lawmakers.
Hardly anyone, except Trump, praised the timing of the letter. The Republican candidate termed the investigation bigger than the Watergate Scandal. He kept his focus on exploiting the letter against the Democratic rival.
According to a New York Times survey he has managed to secure a four-point lead in the coastal state of Florida. However, he is still trailing behind Clinton in the national survey/polls.
While her campaign managers were doing everything possible to control the damage, Clinton termed the FBI letter “pretty strange” and “deeply disturbing”.
A new debate has ensued in America that whether or not President Barak Obama should fire the FBI director, whom he appointed three years ago.
The FBI directors are nominated by the president and must be confirmed by the Senate – a process similar to the nomination and confirmation of Supreme Court justices or presidential cabinet officials.
Unlike the justices, who are appointed for life and cannot be fired, the FBI director is appointed to a single term of 10 years. The president can fire the FBI director. An FBI director can also be removed by Congress, through an impeachment process.
So far in the agency’s history only one director, William S Sessions, was fired by then president Bill Clinton in 1993.
The US media reported that a day before the FBI director sent the controversial letter to Congress, the Justice Department strongly discouraged the step and told him that he would be breaking with longstanding policy.
Officials said they did not move to stop Comey from sending the letter, but did everything short of it, pointing to policies against talking about current criminal investigations or being seen as meddling in elections.
There has been a lot of confusion over the issue now.
Officials and prosecutors were not sure what would happen next. “Would Mr. Comey provide a blow-by-blow accounting of the F.B.I.’s steps until Election Day? Did he plan further announcements? Or did he intend, after shaking up the election with his letter, to remain silent about the facts until the presidential votes had been tallied,” questioned the New York Times.
The FBI made not further announcements and the Justice Department officials were clueless what would be the next move of Comey.
It has also been reported that the court authorities would be give the emails to read and establish whether any of them breached the national security. The process is unlikely to be completed before the November 8 presidential elections.
The new evidence, according to Mr Comey, was collected from the computer of Huma Abedin’s husband computer. Abedin is a long-time top side of Clinton. Her husband is a former disgraced Congressman Anthony Weiner, who was forced to resign after he sent sexual message to a teenage girl.
Abedin has served in a variety of roles for Clinton, starting as an intern in 1996, when Clinton was first lady. In the State Department, Abedin served as Clinton’s deputy chief of staff for operations. Abedin had a State Department email account, a Yahoo account, an account on Clinton’s private server and an account used to support Weiner’s campaign activities.
Abedin has told people she was unsure how her emails could have ended up on a device she viewed as her husband’s computer. She was not said to be a regular user of the computer.
According to federal law enforcement officials, investigators found thousands of messages on Weiner’s computer that they believe to be potentially relevant to the separate, Clinton email investigation. How they are relevant — or if they are significant in any respect — remains unknown.
Clinton is now urging the FBI to release more information. Her campaign managers predict nothing would emerge that would change the FBI’s conclusion, what it reached in July, that no charges were appropriate against her.
On other hand Donald Trump shifted his guns towards Abedin after the latest controversy. “I wonder is she going to keep Huma. Huma has been a problem. I wonder: Is Huma going to stay there?” he questioned.