FBI obtains warrant to examine Clinton emails

As a dominant Democrat accused of breaking the law by trying to affect the election FBI Director James Comey, national investigators have secured a warrant to analyze recently found emails related to Hillary Clinton’s private server, a source familiar with the matter said on Sunday.

Comey’s disclosure of the e-mail discovery in a letter to Congress on Friday dropped the final days of the White House race between Clinton and Republican Donald Trump into chaos. A recent lead over Trump had opened in national polls, but it’d been narrowing even before the controversy that was e-mail resurfaced.

The surprising turn in the e-mail controversy shook financial markets’ conviction of a Clinton victory and the US dollar fell on Monday against major currencies in early Asian trading.

US Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid sent a letter on Sunday suggesting he violated the Hatch Act, which bars using a government position to influence an election.

“ Through your partisan actions, you may have broken the law,” Reid, a senator from Nevada, said in the letter.

Campaign manager Robby Mook and Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta challenged Comey’s decision to send a letter notifying Congress of the e-mail review before he even knew whether they were applicable or essential.

Comey’s letter was “ long on innuendo, brief on facts,” Podesta said on CNN’s “State of the Union” program and accused of breaking precedent by revealing aspects of an investigation so the FBI chief.

“we’re calling to come forward and clarify what’s at issue here,” Podesta said, adding the significance of the emails was not clear.

Comey’s letter was sent over the objections of Justice Department officials. But those officials did not attempt to stop the FBI from getting the warrant, a source familiar with the decision said, because they are interested in the FBI going rapidly on the probe.

Weiner is the target of an FBI investigation into unlawful text messages he is alleged to have sent to a 15-year-old girl in North Carolina. The FBI had the warrant to search Weiner’s laptop for the reason that probe, but needed the warrant to take a look at the material that may be related to Clinton.

‘CHECK ON CORRUPTION’

Sources knowledgeable about the issue said FBI agents working on the Weiner investigation saw content on a notebook belonging to Weiner that led them to consider it might be important to the investigation of Clinton’s e-mail practices.

Trump has emphasized the problem as evidence that Clinton is untrustworthy and corrupt.

“ We have one supreme test on Hillary’s corruption and that’s the power of the vote,” Trump told a rally in Vegas on Sunday. “The lone way to conquer vote by the tens of millions and the corruption is to show up.”

Comey, who declared in July that the FBI’s long investigation of Clinton’s e-mails was finishing without any charges, said in his letter the agency would review the emails that were just surfaced to determine their relevance to the investigation of her handling of classified information.

Richard Painter, a professor at the University of Minnesota Law School and the main White House ethics lawyer from 2005 to 2007, said he filed a complaint with the Office of Special Counsel, which investigates Hatch Act violations about Comey’s activities.

That is an abuse of power,” he said in a column in the New York Times.

“Comey’s critics cannot show his letter violated the Hatch Act unless they are able to demonstrate the FBI manager was meaning to affect the election rather than notify Congress, which was Comey’s stated intention,” said Richman, who said he’d advised Comey on law enforcement policy but not this dilemma.

Clinton was shown by an ABC News/Washington Post poll with a statistically insignificant 1-point national lead on Trump. About a third of likely voters in the survey said they were likely to back Clinton given Comey’s disclosure.

Clinton, who told a Florida rally that Comey’s letter was deeply troubling,” didn’t address the problem directly on Sunday but referred vaguely to voters overcoming a “distraction.”

“There’s lots of noise and distraction but it actually comes down to the sort of future we desire and who can get us there,” she told a packed homosexual club in Wilton Manors, Florida, where hundreds of supporters who cannot get in lined the streets outside.

“We don’t want a president who’d appoint Supreme Court justices to overturn union equality,” she said.