WASHINGTON: Election race in the United States took a dramatic turn after the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) announced to reopen investigation against Hillary Clinton for using private server to send thousands of official and secret emails.
Clinton, the Democratic presidential candidate, and her aides were flabbergasted. In a press conference she demanded unveiling of complete facts.
“We are 11 days out from perhaps the most important national election of our lifetimes. The American people deserve to get the full and complete facts immediately,” she told journalists in Des Moines, Iowa.
Donald Trump, the Republican presidential candidate, and his aides were elated. He termed the new FBI probe bigger than Watergate Scandal that forced President Nixon to resign. “They are reopening the case into her criminal and illegal conduct that threatens the security of the United States of America. Hillary Clinton’s corruption is on a scale we have never seen before. We must not let her take her criminal scheme into the Oval Office,” Trump said at a rally in Manchester, New Hampshire.
Trump’s supporters eagerly shouted, “Lock her up, lock her up.” The controversy brewed after FBI Director James B Comey informed the lawmakers through a letter that the bureau received new evidence and required reopening of the investigation against Clinton.
The Americans would vote to choose their new president on November 8. The national polls predict an easy victory for Clinton. According to New York Times polls, Clinton still enjoys 91 percent chances of becoming the 45th US president. If it happens she would also be the first female president of the country in its 240 years of history.
Interestingly, the newly discovered evidence was found on a computer, used by Clinton’s top aide Huma Abedin and her husband and disgraced former congressman Anthony Weiner.
The FBI intended to probe whether more than 1000 emails, found on that computer, contained classified material or not.
Earlier, in July the FBI had concluded the investigation against Clinton with no charges. Though at that time the FBI director observed that Clinton had been “extremely careless” while using private server to send classified emails as secretary of state.
In March 2016, WikiLeaks launched a searchable archive for 30,322 emails and email attachments sent to and from Hillary Clinton’s private email server while she was the secretary of state. The 50,547 pages of documents span from June 2010 to August 2014. As many as 7,570 of the documents were sent by Clinton herself.
Analysts in Washington DC observed that the latest FBI announcement might reshape a presidential race that Clinton has been leading in most public polls. The Democratic candidate’s camp was confident that newly found emails would not change the FBI’s earlier conclusion it reached in July. Clinton’s Campaign Chairman John Podesta said it was extraordinary to see something like that just 11 days before the election.
Although the announcement has created a big controversy, the FBI would need some time to assess whether or not the newly found material was significant.
Abedin worked for Clinton since 1990s. She is vice chairman of Clinton’s presidential campaign. Abedin exchanged thousands of emails with Clinton while serving as her deputy chief of staff at the State Department. She, like her boss, used an email address routed through the private server.
Abedin and Anthony Weiner got married in 2010. Weiner had to resign as Congressman after he tweeted his own sexually explicit photograph. Abedin announced separation from Weiner last August.
Meanwhile, reaction from all sides started pouring in. The congressmen, senators and campaign managers spoke to various newspapers and television networks to register their viewpoint.
Clinton’s Campaign Spokesman Brian Fallon told CNN that Comey was “unleashing a wildfire of innuendo”.
The top democrat on the Senate’s Intelligence Committee, Dianne Feinstein, expressed her shock at the FBI’s “vague announcement”. She observed the FBI statement “played right into the political campaign of Donald Trump”.
“A total bombshell,” said Rep Peter T King, a member of the House Homeland Security Committee.
Senator Charles E Grassley, chairman of the Senate’s Judiciary Committee, called the letter “unsolicited and, quite honestly, surprising”.
And the Republican candidate Donald Trump commented the FBI scrutiny offers a chance to correct “a grave miscarriage of justice”.