The White House on Monday highlighted concerns over the FBI director’s decision to announce that the bureau is examining whether newly discovered emails may be relevant to its investigation of Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server.

Press secretary Josh Earnest was careful to say FBI director James Comey is regarded by Barack Obama as a man of integrity and principle. But he also noted the importance of “longstanding tradition and practice and norms” and warned of the “risk” of communicating with Congress.

Earnest said one senior Republican official already had suggested that his party was considering impeaching a future President Clinton.



Comey has faced a fierce backlash for going public with the new FBI investigation just 11 days before a presidential election, reportedly against the advice and guidelines of attorney general Loretta Lynch and other senior figures at the Department of Justice. On Sunday the FBI obtained a search warrant to begin reviewing the emails, reportedly numbering 650,000 and found on the laptop of Anthony Weiner, estranged husband of Clinton aide Huma Abedin.

On Monday, a spokesman for the Office of Special Counsel indicated that the independent federal agency may be investigating Comey over an alleged violation of the Hatch Act, which guards against federal officials seeking to influence an election.

At a White House press briefing, Earnest said much that could be interpreted as critical of Comey, though he declined to do so explicitly.

“The president believes that our democracy has been very well served for more than two centuries by officials at the Department of Justice and the FBI observing longstanding traditions that limit public discussion of investigations, whether an election is around the corner or not,” he said.

“It is clear what Director Comey has done. What’s not clear is what led to the decision. Nobody at the White House has insight into the decision that Director Comey made. I’m not aware of any of the factors that went into Director Comey’s decision to send this letter to Congress on Friday.”

Asked if the incident could affect the election outcome, Earnest replied: “We certainly have already seen some of Secretary Clinton’s harshest critics capitalise on this letter, distort its contents to provoke controversy.”

Comey’s letter to Congress, stating that the FBI is examining newly discovered information that might be pertinent to Clinton’s use of a private email server as secretary of state, has placed a widely respected FBI director in extraordinary political jeopardy.

Earnest dismissed any notion that Congress could be seen as an impartial oversight body. “We’ve already seen just in the last 72 hours the kind of risk that’s associated with communicating to them sensitive information,” he said.

“There’s one senior Republican official, who had previously endorsed the Republican nominee for president, who’s let it slip that his party was considering impeaching President Clinton even before she’s been elected, if she’s elected.

“That I think is a pretty clear indication that Congress is not at all impartial and that’s why many of these norms … that apply even when we’re not talking about someone famous and even when we’re not talking about an election a week and a half away, should apply. The president believes these norms are important and worth upholding.”

The press secretary was at pains to defend Comey as an individual, if not his actions in this case. “The president’s assessment of his integrity and character has not changed,” he said. “For example, the president doesn’t believe that Director Comey is intentionally trying to influence the outcome of an election. The president doesn’t believe that he’s secretly strategising to benefit one candidate or one political party.

“He’s in a tough spot and he’s the one who will be in a position to defend his actions in the face of significant criticism from a variety of legal experts, including individuals who served in senior Department of Justice positions and administrations that were led by presidents in both parties.

“But I’m just not going to be in a position to frankly defend or criticise the decisions that he’s made with regard to what to communicate in public.”

An emboldened Donald Trump has described the revelation as “bigger than Watergate”, but there is little initial evidence the news has upended the presidential race. A Morning Consult/Politico poll carried out after the announcement put Clinton three points ahead, while a CBS/YouGov survey of likely voters in 13 battleground states showed that only 1% of Clinton supporters were less likely to vote for her as a consequence.

Trump claimed on Monday that the FBI had stumbled across a digital “mother lode” and predicted they would discover missing work-related emails that had been deleted from Clinton’s computers.

“650,000 [emails]? … I think you are going to find the 33,000 that are missing,” he told supporters in Michigan. “I think we hit the mother lode, as they say in the mining industry.”

Trump urged Comey to resist political pressure. “He’s gotta hang tough because a lot of people think he did the wrong thing, but he did the right thing,” he told the Grand Rapids rally. “I was not his fan but what he did he brought back his reputation.”

“It took guts for director Comey to do what he did,” he added, to chants of “lock her up” from the crowd.

Trump has seized on signs of momentum to push into once-safe Democratic territory in the industrial mid-west. He was also due to speak in Warren in Michigan on Monday before appearing with running mate Mike Pence in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, on Tuesday.

Until his polling gap began to narrow again last week, Trump had been forced back to a dwindling number of swing states, while Clinton eyed Republican territory in Utah, Arizona and Georgia. Renewed optimism among Republicans has created an unusually vast national battleground, particularly as Trump’s economic populism scrambles traditional demographic dividing lines.

Michigan and Wisconsin have both been hit hard by the loss of manufacturing jobs and were the scene of surprise defeats for Clinton in the Democratic primary, when large numbers of blue-collar workers favoured Bernie Sanders. Signs of Democratic nervousness in Wisconsin became apparent last week when the Clinton campaign suddenly announced an advertising blitz. Sanders has been dispatched to help campaign for Clinton in the state on Wednesday.

The impact of early voting may also be forcing Trump to look further afield. States such as a North Carolina have seen heavy early turnout among Democrats and may be relatively immune from any late swing away from Clinton.

If he cannot win North Carolina but picks up Florida and Ohio, Trump’s best hope of pulling off a shock victory will rely on either rustbelt states like Michigan and Wisconsin or, in the north-east, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Maine.

Clinton is redoubling her efforts. Two stops on Monday in Ohio were to be followed by three in Florida on Tuesday and another swing to North Carolina later in the week.

“Most people have decided quite a long time ago what they think about all this,” she told a rally in Ohio on Monday. “Now what people are focused upon is choosing the next president and commander-in-chief.”



There was less direct criticism of the FBI than over the weekend.

“I am sure a lot of you may be asking what this email business is about and why in the world the FBI would decide to jump into an election without any evidence and it’s a good a question,” she said, to boos from a young crowd at Kent State University. “By all mean they should look at [the emails] and I am sure they will reach the same conclusion as when they looked at my emails: there is no case.”

The Office of Special Counsel (OSC) declined to confirm to the Guardian whether it is investigating Comey for violating the Hatch Act. But on Saturday, Richard Painter, a former ethics lawyer in George W Bush’s White House, filed an official complaint against Comey with the office. Spokesman Nick Schwellenbach said: “In general, OSC opens a case after receiving a complaint.”

Such investigations can take anywhere from days to months. Should the OSC find Comey to have violated the Hatch Act, and should Clinton win the presidency, she may find herself in a position to determine “appropriate action” for an FBI director slated to serve until 2023.

The Senate’s top Democrat, Harry Reid, has openly accused Comey of breaking the law to help elect Trump. The likely investigation adds to a swarm of headaches for Comey, who awoke on Monday to repudiation from former allies.

Eric Holder, the former attorney general who worked beside Comey, wrote a public rebuke in the Washington Post, warning that Comey has jeopardized “public trust in both the justice department and the FBI”.

“It is incumbent upon him – or the leadership of the department – to dispel the uncertainty he has created before election day,” Holder wrote.

Holder also joined nearly 100 former federal prosecutors in blasting Comey for inviting “considerable, uninformed public speculation” about the Clinton case, before establishing, by the FBI director’s admission, investigative relevance. The letter, circulated by the Clinton campaign, refrained from characterizing Comey’s motivations but said he had compromised the “non-partisan traditions” of the department and the FBI.

Meanwhile, Clinton suffered another blow from a separate source: the ongoing WikiLeaks release of emails from her campaign chairman, John Podesta. The latest batch appeared to show that Donna Brazile, the interim head of the Democratic National Committee and a CNN contributor, gave Clinton a heads up about a likely debate question the day before she was due to take on Sanders in a primary debate.

CNN spokeswoman Lauren Pratapas said: “CNN never gave Brazile access to any questions, prep material, attendee list, background information or meetings in advance of a town hall or debate.”

Brazile has subsequently announced her resignation from CNN.