FBI Director James Comey has sent shockwaves through Hillary Clinton’s campaign after he announced a new review of her emails.

The US Senate’s top Democrat, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, has already blasted him for announcing his new review just days before the presidential election, an action he says “may have broken the law.”

Allegations Clinton put the United States at risk by using a private email server while US Secretary of State were thrust back into the spotlight when Comey revealed a renewed FBI probe into the matter based on a previously unknown trove of emails.

“As soon as you came into possession of the slightest innuendo related to secretary Clinton, you rushed to publicise it in the most negative light possible,” Reid said.

“Through your partisan actions, you may have broken the law,” Reid added, alleging that Comey had violated the Hatch Act, which bars the FBI from influencing elections.

Ms Clinton has demanded the FBI director explain in detail why he had effectively reopened an inquiry declared complete in July, branding Comey’s move “deeply troubling” so close to Election Day.

media_camera FBI Director James Comey’s announcement that his bureau was reviewing new emails possibly relevant to Hillary Clinton's private email server investigation has thrust him into the public spotlight again just days before Election Day. Picture: AP

According to US media, the probe was renewed after agents seized a laptop used by Clinton’s close aide, Huma Abedin, and her now estranged husband, Anthony Weiner.

Comey, a New York native, was made the director of the FBI in 2013 for a 10-year term which will carry on into the new US president’s administration.

With a background in corporate law, government, banking and the arms trade, he came to the attention of former US President George W Bush who appointed him deputy attorney general at the Department of Justice (DOJ) in 2003.

Comey left DOJ in 2005 to work at one of the world’s largest defence contractors, Lockheed Martin. In 2013, he became the FBI’s leading chief.

These are some of the facts we know about him:

media_camera FBI Director James Comey is at the centre of the renewed FBI email investigation. Picture: AP

COMEY IS A WEALTHY REPUBLICAN

Comey is a Republican party member with a reported a net worth of more than US$11 million (AU$14.4 million), CNN reports. Comey and his wife, Patrice, previously listed about US$5 million (AU$6 million) in stocks with a US Senate Committee when he was a nominee for the FBI’s director role. Their investments included a Schwab government money fund, Exxon Mobil, Pepsico, Berkshire Hathaway, Verizon Communications, Proctor & Gamble Co. and Hormel Foods.

The couple also said they owned a home worth around US$3 million (AU$3.9 million) in Westport, Connecticut, where he and his wife are licensed foster care parents. In late 2011, the Comeys took in “a newborn boy born prematurely with cocaine in his blood stream and cared for him for six months until he could be placed with a foster-adoptive mother”.

The Comeys also donated money to create a foundation to help children in foster care. They are parents to five children: Maurene, Katherine, Brien, Claire and Abby.

COMEY DISPUTED AMERICA’S WIRETAPPING PROGRAM

While working for the Bush administration, Comey questioned a plan to re-authorise its warrantless domestic surveillance program, which led to him drafting a letter of resignation in 2004.

While he never sent his letter, he told a Senate Judiciary Committee in 2007 that when he temporarily became in charge of the Justice Department, he refused to re-authorise a secret National Security Agency warrantless wiretap program that the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel determined was illegal.

In Comey’s drafted resignation letter, which was published by The Washington Post, he said “the Justice Department and I have been asked to be part of something that is fundamentally wrong.”

Shortly after, Comey privately met with Bush, who agreed to “do the right thing, and put the program on a footing that we could certify its legality,” Comey said.

media_camera President Barack Obama, followed by FBI Director James Comey, arrives in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington. Picture: AP

HE WAS APPOINTED BY PRESIDENT OBAMA

In 2013, President Barack Obama selected Comey, the former Bush-appointed Republican as Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. His appointment came after Comey was a known financial supporter of Republicans John McCain and Mitt Romney in their bids to become US president.

COMEY PROSECUTED MARTHA STEWART

When celebrity lifestyle expert Martha Stewart was charged in 2003 of illegal insider trading, Comey was the man who brought the charges against her.

‘’This criminal case is about lying — lying to the FBI, lying to the SEC, lying to investors,” Comey said at the time, when he was the US attorney for the Southern District of New York. ‘’Martha Stewart is being prosecuted not for who she is, but because of what she did.’’

Stewart was convicted on all counts in 2004 and spent five months in jail.

media_camera Martha Stewart was one of the high-profile cases that James Comey pursued. Picture: Getty

HE’S INVESTIGATED THE CLINTONS BEFORE

Comey’s first investigation of the Clintons was back in the mid-1990s, when he joined the Senate Whitewater Committee as a deputy special counsel.

He looked into allegations that the Clintons took part in a fraud connected to a failed Arkansas real estate venture.

No charges were ever brought against the Clintons.

In 2002 Comey took over an investigation into President Bill Clinton’s 2001 pardon of financier Marc Rich.

As a federal prosecutor, Comey looked into Rich, who had been indicted before fleeing the US. At the time, there were accusations that Rich’s ex-wife Denise donated to the Democratic Party, the Clinton Library and Hillary Clinton’s 2000 Senate campaign. In the end, Comey decided not to pursue the case.

media_camera US Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton has been linked to another email server probe. Picture: AFP

At the FBI, Comey was also involved in the first Clinton email inquiry, which closed without charges in July. Mr Comey said at the time that Mrs Clinton had been “extremely careless” but no criminal charges were warranted.

It has now only just resurfaced after Comey alerted members of Congress to the existence of emails that he said could be pertinent to that investigation. The FBI has obtained a warrant to begin reviewing newly discovered emails from longtime Clinton aide Huma Abedin that were found on a device seized during an unrelated sexting investigation of Anthony Weiner, a former New York congressman and Abedin’s estranged husband.

The official, who has knowledge of the examination, would not say when investigators might complete the review of Abedin’s emails but said they would move expeditiously.

In his letter that roiled the White House race, Comey said he’d been briefed about the Abedin emails and had agreed that investigators should take steps to review them.

media_camera Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump speaks during a rally. Picture: AFP

COMEY DOESN’T GIVE A ‘HOOT’ ABOUT POLITICS

In July this year, Comey told a US Senate Committee looking at the Clinton email inquiry that he “didn’t give a hoot about politics”.

In his own words, he said: “People can disagree, can agree, but they will at least understand that the decision was made and the recommendation was made the way you would want it to be, by people who didn’t give a hoot about politics, who cared about what are the facts, what is the law, and how similar people, all people have been treated in the past.”

Despite this, the timing of Comey’s letter less than two weeks before Election Day drew criticism from Democrats and some Republicans who cast it as unprecedented and as potentially tipping the scales in the presidential race in favour of Republican Donald Trump.

Energised by the news, the GOP presidential nominee has rallied his supporters, calling the latest developments “worse than Watergate” and arguing that his candidacy has the momentum in the final days of the race.

— with wires

Originally published as The FBI boss who is Hillary’s nightmare