Democratic US presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton on Saturday challenged FBI Director James Comey to provide a fuller explanation of investigative steps he is taking related to her use of a private e-mail server, as she accused him of “deeply troubling” behavior 10 days before the US elections.
Speaking to volunteers in Daytona Beach, Florida, Clinton said: “Some of you may have heard about a letter the FBI director sent” on Friday to the US Congress informing it that the agency is again reviewing e-mails.
Comey in July decided that the FBI was not going to seek prosecution of Clinton for her handling of classified materials on a private e-mail server while she was US secretary of state.
Photo: AFP
“It is pretty strange to put something like that out with such little information right before an election,” Clinton said, adding: “It’s not just strange, it’s unprecedented and it’s deeply troubling because voters deserve to get full and complete facts.”
She urged Comey to “put it all out on the table.”
In tandem with Clinton, her fellow Democrats on Saturday pressured Comey to provide details on a controversy that dominated the presidential campaigns on Saturday, less than two weeks before the election on Tuesday next week.
Four US senators — Patrick Leahy, the longest-serving Senate Democrat, Dianne Feinstein, Thomas Carper and Benjamin Cardin — wrote to Comey and US Attorney General Loretta Lynch asking that they provide by today more detailed information about investigative steps under way.
At a news conference in Columbus, Ohio, the Congressional Black Caucus, comprised of about 45 members of the US House of Representatives, nearly all Democrats, also urged Comey to be more forthcoming.
Sources close to the investigation on Friday said the latest e-mails were discovered as part of a separate probe into Anthony Weiner, the estranged husband of top Clinton aide, Huma Abedin.
Weiner, a former Democratic US representative from New York, 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.
Republican US presidential candidate Donald Trump pounded away at the new FBI development, devoting a large part of a campaign speech in Golden, Colorado, to attacking Clinton and arguing that she is not to be trusted with the presidency.
“Her criminal action was willful, deliberate, intentional and purposeful,” Trump said, standing in front of hay bales stacked in a horse barn.
“Hillary set up an illegal server for the obvious purpose of shielding her illegal actions from public disclosure and exposure,” he said.
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