Less than 48 hours before election day, in an election season which was marred by controversies, Nine days after throwing the presidential race into turmoil, FBI Director James Comey once more cleared Hillary Clinton of criminal wrongdoing on Sunday, Nov 6, for using a private email server as secretary of State.
The verdict left Democrats still fuming over what party leaders saw as improper political meddling, which caused polls to tighten across the country.
“During that process, we have reviewed all of the communications that were to or from Hillary Clinton while she was secretary of State,” Comey wrote. “Based on our review, we have not changed our conclusions that we expressed in July with respect to Secretary Clinton.”
This follows a similar letter sent to the Congress on July 28 in which he said that the FBI has reopened the investigation following discovery of some pertinent emails related to the Clinton investigation on the laptop of Huma
Abedin, a close aide of the former Secretary of State, which was shared by Abedin’s estranged husband Anthony Weiner.
“Since my letter (of October 28), the FBI investigation team has been working around the clock to process and review a large volume of emails from a device obtained in connection with an unrelated criminal investigation,” Comey said. It was reported that there were 650,000 emails on that laptop.
“During that process, we reviewed all the communications that were to or from Hillary Clinton while she was the Secretary of State,” Comey said.
The FBI’s letter was welcomed by the Clinton campaign, which saw its popularity graph sharply dropping down in the aftermath of the October 28 letter.
“We were always confident nothing would cause the July decision to be revisited. Now Director Comey has confirmed it,” tweeted Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon.
“We are glad to see that he has found, as we were confident that he would, that he had confirmed the conclusions he reached in July and we are glad that this matter is resolved,” Jennifer Palmieri, Clinton’s communications director, told reporters.
