Federal investigators have secured a warrant to examine newly discovered e-mails related to US Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton’s private server, US media reported on Sunday, as a prominent Democrat accused FBI Director James Comey of breaking the law by trying to influence the election.
The warrant allows the FBI to examine the e-mails to see if they are relevant to its probe of the private e-mail server used for government work by Clinton while she was US secretary of state from 2009 to 2013.
FBI officials were unavailable for comment on the status of their investigation. Reuters could not independently confirm that the search warrant had been issued.
Comey came under heavy pressure from Democrats on Sunday to quickly provide details of the e-mails, as Clinton allies worried the prolonged controversy could extend beyond Tuesday next week’s election and cast a shadow over a Clinton transition if she wins the White House.
Comey’s disclosure of the e-mail discovery in a letter to the US Congress on Friday last week plunged the final days of the White House race between Clinton and US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump into turmoil. Clinton had opened a lead over Trump in national polls, but it had been narrowing even before the e-mail controversy resurfaced.
US Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid sent a letter to Comey on Sunday suggesting he had violated the Hatch Act, which bars the use of a federal government position to influence an election.
“Through your partisan actions, you may have broken the law,” Reid said in the letter to Comey.
Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta and campaign manager Robby Mook questioned Comey’s decision to send a letter notifying the US Congress of the e-mail review before he even knew whether they were significant or relevant.
Comey’s letter was “long on innuendo, short on facts,” Podesta said on CNN’s State of the Union and accused the FBI head of breaking precedent by disclosing aspects of an investigation so close to an election.
“We are calling on Mr Comey to come forward and explain what’s at issue here,” Podesta said, adding the significance of the e-mails was unclear.
“He might have taken the first step of actually having looked at them before he did this in the middle of a presidential campaign, so close to the voting,” he said.
Comey’s letter was sent over the objections of US Department of Justice officials, but those officials did not try to stop the FBI from getting the warrant, a source familiar with the decision said, because they are interested in the FBI moving quickly on the probe.
Sources close to the investigation have said the latest e-mails were discovered as part of a separate probe of former Democratic US Representative Anthony Weiner, the estranged husband of Clinton aide Huma Abedin.
Weiner is the target of an FBI investigation into illicit text messages he is alleged to have sent to a 15-year-old girl in North Carolina. The FBI already had a warrant to search Weiner’s laptop in that probe, but needed a warrant to look at the material that might be related to Clinton.
Sources familiar with the matter said FBI agents working on the Weiner investigation saw material on a laptop belonging to Weiner that led them to believe it might be relevant to the investigation of Clinton’s e-mail practices.
Trump has highlighted the issue as proof for his argument that Clinton is corrupt and untrustworthy.
“We have one ultimate check on Hillary’s corruption and that is the power of the vote,” Trump told a rally in Las Vegas on Sunday. “The only way to beat the corruption is to show up and vote by the tens of millions.”
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