The justice department’s Office of the Inspector General announced on Thursday that it would conduct a review of the handling of the FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a personal email server during her time as secretary of state.

The independent auditor said the sprawling review would include an examination of whether the FBI director, James Comey, violated policy or procedure when he sent Congress notification about new evidence his department had discovered, 11 days before the presidential election.

Clinton has argued that this disclosure played a pivotal role in her losing the election to Donald Trump, due to negative media coverage.



Three days before the election, Comey publicly conceded that none of the new material was pertinent to the investigation, which concluded Clinton was not criminally responsible for the use of the personal server but had been “extremely careless” in her handling of sensitive information.

The justice department review, a significant publicity blow to the FBI, will examine this statement as well as a public announcement made by Comey in July during which the findings of the investigation were made public.

The new emails were discovered during a non-related FBI investigation into the disgraced former New York congressman Anthony Weiner, whose estranged wife, Huma Abedin, is a close Clinton adviser.

In an emailed statement on Thursday, Comey described the justice department’s inspector general, Michael Horowitz, as “professional and independent” and said the FBI would “fully cooperate with him”.

“I hope very much he is able to share his conclusions and observations with the public because everyone will benefit from thoughtful evaluation and transparency regarding this matter,” Comey said.

Horowitz, an Obama appointee, said the review would also examine whether justice department officials and FBI employees had “improperly disclosed non-public information” during the investigation.

The review had been opened “in response to requests from numerous chairmen and ranking members of congressional oversight committees, various organizations, and members of the public”.

Jerry Nadler, a senior Democratic member of the House judiciary committee and one of the most prominent voices calling for an independent investigation of Comey’s conduct, welcomed the announcement.

“You can’t have the FBI or a prosecuting agency interfering with the election and he [Comey] most certainly did. He should have been fired for that on the spot,” Nadler told the Guardian in an interview.

“What’s important is that we firm up how government agencies, police agencies behave before an election so that we can make sure that this type of thing doesn’t happen again, so we don’t have future elections whose legitimacy is called into question.”

Clinton’s former press spokesman Brian Fallon told MSNBC the review was “entirely appropriate and very necessary but also not surprising because the deviations from the FBI and the justice department were so glaring and egregious”.

The announcement is likely to be heavily criticized by Republicans but the sweeping nature of the review means it is also set to examine whether the justice department’s assistant attorney general for legislative affairs, Peter Kadzik, “should have been recused from participating in certain matters” in the investigation of Clinton’s emails.

Hacked emails posted by WikiLeaks showed Kadzik had contacted Clinton’s campaign chair, John Podesta, to alert him to a forthcoming congressional hearing that would likely involve questions about the candidate.

Although the inspector general has the ability to recommend a criminal investigation into Comey’s conduct, such a conclusion would be highly unlikely, with the probe examining whether the director breached departmental policy on discussing investigations publicly.

The review’s conclusions will probably be received by Trump’s pick for US attorney general, Jeff Sessions, a staunch conservative and critic of Clinton who stood onstage during Trump campaign rallies as crowds chanted “lock her up”.