Federal agents are preparing to scour roughly 650,000 emails contained on the laptop of former Rep. Anthony Weiner to see how many relate to a prior probe of Hillary Clinton’s email use, as metadata on the device suggests there may be thousands sent to or from the private server that the Democratic nominee used while she was secretary of state, according to people familiar with the matter.

The review will take weeks at a minimum to determine whether those messages are work-related emails between Huma Abedin, a close Clinton aide and the estranged wife of Weiner, and State Department officials; how many are duplicates of emails already reviewed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation; and whether they include either classified information or important new evidence in the Clinton email probe, which FBI officials call “Midyear.”

FBI Reviewing New Emails in Case of Clinton’s Private Server

The FBI has had to await a court order to begin reviewing the emails, because they were uncovered in an unrelated probe of Weiner, and that order was delayed for reasons that remain unclear.

Meanwhile, FBI Director James Comey’s surprise disclosure Friday, less than two weeks before the election, that investigators were pursuing the potential new evidence lays bare tensions that have built for months inside the bureau and the Justice Department over how to investigate someone who could soon be elected president.

Read:Emails give FBI’s Comey a second chance to influence a presidential election

The continuing work means that if Clinton wins the White House, she will likely do so amid at least one ongoing investigation into her inner circle being handled by law-enforcement officials who are deeply divided over how to manage such cases.

An expanded version of this report appears on WSJ.com.

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