Clinton has said she believes the reopening of her case contributed to her defeat, and many of her supporters agree. Although it is hard to quantify the effect on the election, it is clear that a report in the Daily Mail led to Weiner's guilty plea and prison sentence.

Our original post from Oct. 28, has been updated below:

AD

AD

This is the sentence, published in September 2016 by the Daily Mail's U.S. website, that led to the return of Hillary Clinton's FBI woes: “Anthony Weiner carried on a months-long online sexual relationship with a 15-year-old girl during which she claims he asked her to dress up in 'schoolgirl' outfits for him on a video messaging application and pressed her to engage in 'rape fantasies.'”

By the time of that report, Wiener's sexting relapse had been exposed weeks earlier by the New York Post, which published messages that the former New York congressman exchanged with a "40-something divorcée.” The New York Post story prompted Wiener's wife, top Clinton aide Huma Abedin, to announce she was leaving her husband, but it did not suggest criminal behavior.

The Daily Mail's follow-up story, however, alleged that Weiner had traded sexually explicit messages with an underage girl and caught the FBI's attention. In the process of investigating Weiner, the FBI examined a computer shared by Weiner and Abedin and happened upon emails deemed relevant to the agency's earlier probe of the way Clinton and aides handled classified information during Clinton's tenure as secretary of state.

AD

AD

Thus we had the news in October that the FBI was renewing its inquiry into Clinton's use of a private email server. All because of story in a British tabloid.