Hillary Clinton and her aides and allies forcefully criticized FBI Director James Comey on Saturday, demanding that he release more information about the bureau’s discovery of Clinton-related emails and criticizing him for bad timing.

At a campaign rally in Daytona Beach, Florida, Clinton said it was “pretty strange” for Comey to “put something like that out with such little information right before an election,” adding: "In fact, it’s not just strange; it’s unprecedented and it is deeply troubling.”


Earlier Saturday, her two top campaign staffers, John Podesta and Robby Mook, ripped into Comey, with the former accusing the FBI chief of releasing a letter “long on innuendo and short on facts.”

“No one can separate what is true from what is not because Comey has not been forthcoming with the facts,” Podesta said, calling on Comey to release additional information beyond the cryptic letter he sent to members of Congress on Friday. He accused Comey of providing “selective information” that Republicans were using for political advantage.

Citing reports that the emails could be duplicates and may not have actually been from Clinton herself, Podesta said, “There’s no evidence of wrongdoing, no charge of wrongdoing, no indication that this is even about Hillary.”

Several top Democratic senators, including the ranking members on the committees with oversight of the Justice Department, sent a scathing letter Saturday to Comey and Attorney General Loretta Lynch, likewise demanding more information from the FBI director.

“It is not clear whether the emails identified by the FBI are even in the custody of the FBI, whether any of the emails have already been reviewed, whether Secretary Clinton sent or received them, or whether they even have any significance to the FBI’s previous investigation,” the senators complained.

There were multiple reports on Saturday that Comey’s decision to make public his investigation into emails came against Lynch’s wishes. “He is operating independently of the Justice Department. And he knows it,” one Justice Department official told The Washington Post of Comey.

Podesta and Mook cited that report, and others, to make their case that Comey’s letter was “unprecedented.”

The senators similarly said that Comey’s move “breaks with the longstanding tradition of the Department of Justice and the FBI of exercising extreme caution in the days leading up to an election,” and asked the bureau to tell them how many emails were included in the fresh batch, along with how investigators were determining which ones were duplicates of previously disclosed emails.

The emails were discovered during a separate investigation into the sexting of Anthony Weiner, the now-separated husband of top Clinton aide Huma Abedin. FBI officials found what are said to be thousands of emails from Abedin’s account on devices belonging to Weiner.

Podesta defended Abedin on the call, saying she had “completely and voluntarily” complied with the FBI investigation.

“We, of course, stand behind her,” Podesta said.

Donald Trump, at a rally Saturday in Golden, Colorado, weighed in at length about the FBI's move, calling the email controversy “the biggest political scandal since Watergate” and accusing Clinton of “criminal action” that was “willful, deliberate, intentional and purposeful.”

He also boasted about his previous assessments of Weiner.

“Boy, did I call that correctly,” Trump said of the disgraced former congressman, who he called a “sleazy, sleazy guy.” As for Abedin, he wondered: “Is she going to keep Huma? Huma’s been a problem, do we agree?”

Trump also speculated that Comey’s action was made under pressure from his own employees. “I’ll bet you without any knowledge there was a revolt in the FBI,” he said.

And he went beyond what Comey wrote to declare that the newly discovered email batch must be damning. “Now the evidence as I would imagine is so overwhelming because they wouldn’t have done this if it wasn’t overwhelming,” Trump said.

As for Clinton, Trump said: “Hillary has nobody to blame but herself for her mounting legal troubles. Her criminal action was willful, deliberate, intentional and purposeful.”

The Democrats’ attacks on Comey — Podesta accused him of “providing selective information” — represent a sharp departure from the rhetoric used by Democrats over the summer after Comey held a news conference to announce he would not charge Clinton with any wrongdoing over the use of a private email server. Clinton herself then had said she was grateful for “the professionalism of the FBI and the Department of Justice.”

Mook on Saturday declared, “The more information that comes out, the more overblown this entire situation seems to be.”

The campaign initially tried to downplayed the political impact of the FBI announcement, with Mook insisting, “Our volunteers are rallying behind Hillary.” When it comes to Clinton’s use of a private email server, Mook insisted that voters “already factored it into their decision-making.”

But in a Medium post Saturday evening, Podesta noted that Comey had “opened the door to conspiracy theories, Republican attacks against Hillary, and a surge of fundraising for Trump and his team,” suggesting a rather different level of urgency.

On the call, Podesta stopped short of accusing Comey of partisan motivations. “We are not charging him with anything other than taking an unprecedented step for which he owes the American public an explanation,” he said.

Podesta also swiped at Comey for a memo addressed to FBI employees on Friday, in which he said he “felt an obligation” to send the letter to Congress “given that I testified repeatedly in recent months that our investigation was completed.”

Podesta said, “I guess he felt the heat enough that he’d need to explain himself to the employees of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, but his first duty is to the American people.”

As Democrats soured on Comey, Trump seemed to warm to an official he'd previously criticized.

In July, after Comey did not recommend charges, Trump criticized Comey's decision and told supporters: "We have a rigged system, folks." He has repeatedly cast the initial decision not to indict Clinton as a historical miscarriage of justice.

But at a campaign stop on Friday, the day's news seem to have changed Trump's stance.

"The FBI, I think they’re going to right the ship, and they can save their great reputation by doing so,” Trump told rally attendees in New Hampshire. “It might not be as rigged as I thought."

Ben Schreckinger, Daniel Strauss and Gabriel Debenedetti contributed to this report.