The campaign of Hillary Clinton ramped up its attacks on FBI Director James Comey on Sunday, releasing a video to supporters saying it was “puzzled and outraged” by Comey’s disclosure right ahead of the election that the FBI was looking into additional Clinton emails.
Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon called Comey’s brief but explosive letter to lawmakers “unbelievably vague” and “light on facts and heavy on innuendo.” Coming a little over a week before Election Day, “it only serves to give Republicans a new line of attack on Hillary Clinton,” Fallon said.
Fallon’s statements were part of a broad, aggressive effort by the Clinton campaign over the weekend to limit the fallout from Comey’s disclosure, which had the extraordinary effect of inserting the FBI into a presidential election with mere days to go.
In his letter, Comey said the bureau had discovered new emails that might be pertinent in the investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server as secretary of state. The emails reportedly surfaced in a separate inquiry involving disgraced former congressman Anthony Weiner, the husband of longtime Clinton aide Huma Abedin.
Comey has not said how many emails there were, whether he had read them, or if they will be reviewed by the bureau before voters head to the polls on Nov. 8. Democrats have hammered Comey for jolting the race with such a vague disclosure.
Fallon noted that the emails were not withheld by Clinton or her campaign. “It’s entirely possible that they are duplicates of emails that the FBI already looked at months ago,” Fallon said. “So if that’s the case, why send this letter in the first place?”
“You’re probably just as puzzled and outraged as we are,” Fallon added.
On Sunday, Clinton running mate Tim Kaine called upon Comey to clarify whether he had personally read the emails. Kaine said it was “unprecedented” to disclose information from an ongoing investigation in the days leading up to an election. “If he hasn’t seen the emails, they need to make that plain and release the circumstances of those once they have done the analysis,” Kaine said.
Donald Trump has reveled in the shake-up created by Comey’s letter. The Republican nominee has called the controversy “bigger than Watergate” and said it proves Clinton is “guilty” of something, even though we don’t know the actual contents of the emails.