FBI head James Comey will then make his recommendation to Attorney General Loretta Lynch about criminal charges

Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton could be questioned by the FBI in days with the email investigation being wrapped up in weeks, according to new reporting from Al Jazeera America.

The network's David Shuster reported that the investigation has now reached a 'critical stage,' in that the bureau has finished examining her emails and homebrew server and will now be interviewing top aides, along with Clinton herself.

Among those to be interviewed: Clinton's State Department chief of staff Cheryl Mills and senior advisor Philippe Reines, Al Jazeera America said.

'Soon after those interviews – in the next few days and weeks – officials expect director Comey to make his recommendation to Attorney General Loretta Lynch about potential criminal charges,' Shuster said.

Hillary Clinton could be interviewed by the FBI in days, says new reporting on her email scandal from Al Jazeera America

Al Jazeera America's reporting says that Philippe Reines (left) and Cheryl Hines (right) will be interviewed by federal investigators

This new report slightly clarifies the timeline that the Los Angeles Times laid out in a piece earlier this week saying that federal prosecutors have just begun contacting the lawyers of her top aides in order to set up formal interviews.

The names of the aides weren't mentioned in the Times report, though the newspaper said Mills, Reines, along with Huma Abedin and Jake Sullivan had been contacted by the newspaper.

None of the foursome's lawyers would speak on the record about the investigation.

Another aide, IT staffer Bryan Pagliano, was granted immunity by federal prosecutors and provided security logs for Clinton's server that revealed no evidence of foreign hacking, the paper reported.

'The interviews are critical to understand the volume of information they have accumulated,' James McJunkin, the former head of the FBI's Washington field office, told the Los Angeles times.

'They are likely nearing the end of the investigation and the agents need to interview these people to put the information in context,' he continued, backing up what the Al Jazeera America has said as well.

'They will then spend time aligning these statements with other information, emails, classified documents, etc., to determine whether there is a prosecutable case.'

Huma Abedin, Hillary Clinton's deputy chief of staff at the State Department, could soon be interviewed by federal prosecutors and FBI agents as they investigate Clinton's email situation to see if the former secretary of state mishandled classified information

Hillary Clinton has pushed back at allegations that she was sending classified material over her private server saying none of the emails she handled were marked classified at the time

This week the Washington Post published its own investigation into how the email scandal came to be, noting how from day one Clinton wanted to be able to use her Blackberry to send and receive email as secretary of state.

Instead she was forced to lock up her Blackberry, which State Department security experts warned could be hacked and turned into a spying device, before heading into her 'Mahogany Row' office.

'From the earliest days, Clinton aides and senior officials focused intently on accommodating the secretary's desire to use her private email account, documents and interviews show,' the Washington Post wrote.

'Throughout they paid insufficient attention to laws and regulations governing the handling of classified material and the preservation of government records, interviews and documents show.

'They also neglected repeated warnings about the security of the Blackberry while Clinton and her closest aides took obvious security risks in using the basement server,' the Post's investigation continued.

The Post's piece also revealed that 147 agents have been deployed to assist with the investigation, as FBI Director James Comey wants it resolved sooner than later as to not interfere with the presidential election.

The Post walked back that number saying the real tally is closer to 50 agents.

As part of the ongoing FBI and Justice Department investigation, Hillary Clinton will likely be interviewed, but the Los Angeles Time had no information about timing

The Justice Department and the FBI opened up their investigation in July upon receiving a security referral from the inspector general of the intelligence community, who concluded at the time that Clinton had sent emails deemed 'secret,' the highest level of classification, through her personal email system.

The inspector general's office was leafing through the 30,500 emails Clinton had turned over from her homebrew server that she said were work-related.

'None of the emails we reviewed has classification or dissemination markings, but some included [intelligence community]-derived classified information and should have been handled as classified appropriately marked, and transmitted via a secure network,' Inspector General I. Charles McCollough wrote Congress in a letter at the start of the investigation.

Previously, the inspector general and the State Department were shown to be in a dispute over whether these correspondences should be considered classified.

Since then the State Department has released the emails publicly, as part of Freedom of Information Act requests, and 22 emails were marked 'top secret,' while hundreds of others were marked 'secret' or 'confidential.'

None of the emails had markings indicating their classified nature at the time.

Clinton has used this as part of her public defense of the email scandal explaining that these emails were 'retroactively' classified.

She's complained of the government's overzealous nature in classifying the documents and called for the contents of them to come out publicly so that the stink of the scandal would subside.

Clinton had also deleted 31,830 emails from her server that were personal correspondence.

The Los Angeles Times found out that most of those emails have since been recovered since Clinton handed the physical server over to the FBI in August.

Legal experts suggested to the Times that it would be difficult to prosecute Clinton over her handling of classified information as prosecutors would have to prove she knew the information was classified at the time she was sending it.

While Democratic rival Sanders has shied away from criticizing Clinton for the email scandal – famously saying on the first Democratic debate stage that 'the American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails' – Republicans have been chomping at the bit over it.

Throughout the campaign they've portrayed Clinton as worse than former CIA head David Petraeus, who pleaded guilty of a misdemeanor charge of mishandling classified material and thus was spared prison time.

'I mean look at Petraeus – good guy, made a mistake, and by the way, leave the guy alone,' said Republican frontrunner Donald Trump in January. 'Leave Petraeus alone. Right? Enough already. Enough. They've gone after him, they've destroyed him and yet Hillary's flying safe and she did 100 times worse than what he did,'

But there's a pivotal distinction between the Petraeus case and the ongoing one swirling around Clinton.

Petraeus knowingly provided classified material to his mistress and biographer Paula Broadwell, legal experts pointed out. Broadwell was a civilian.

Clinton's emails, even the ones that were later marked classified, were sent to aides who had been cleared to receive the contents.