Hillary Clinton's defiant message over FBI email probe: 'There's no case here'

Hillary Clinton smiles holding a mask onboard her campaign plane on Halloween
Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images
David Gardner1 November 2016

Hillary Clinton has gone on the offensive after the bombshell FBI decision to re-open a probe into her emails declaring: “There’s no case here.”

The defiant remarks were her strongest challenge yet to the sensational new twist that has thrown the White House race wide open with just one week left before America goes to the polls.

Rather than ignore the issue and hope it will go away, the Democratic candidate has decided to face the allegations head on.

It is unclear whether the 650,000 emails found on a laptop belonging to the husband of Mrs Clinton’s top aide Huma Abedin are pertinent to the FBI’s investigation into the former First Lady’s use of a private server while she was US Secretary of State.

Investigators say the outcome won’t be known until after the November 8 election.

Hillary Clinton v Donald Trump: US Presidential Election

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But speaking at a campaign rally in the battleground state of Ohio yesterday (Mon), Mrs Clinton accused the FBI of jumping the gun.

She said the FBI made it’s controversial move “with no evidence of any wrongdoing with just days to go.”

If the bureau wants to look at the emails from her longtime aide Huma Abedin, she said, “by all means, they should look at them.”

But she insisted the FBI would eventually come to the same conclusion they did in July when they initially shut down the probe and ruled she’d face no further action over her handling of classified information.

“They said it wasn’t even a close call and I think most people have decided a long time ago what they think about all of this,” she added.

That may have been her public view, but insiders admit the Clinton campaign was “stunned” by the eleventh hour announcement by FBI Director James Comey.

Agents now have a warrant to examine the laptop belonging to disgraced former US Congressman Anthony Weiner - Ms Abedin’s estranged husband.

It is not known for certain if there are emails from Mrs Clinton or if they are any different from those already seen by the FBI.

Democrats appear to be rallying around their candidate and are trying to find a silver lining in the debacle that stripped Mrs Clinton’s lead from 12 points to one in the space of a few days, according to one major US poll.

The email controversy continued to dominate the news cycle in the US as the New York Times claimed Mr Trump avoided paying millions of dollars in taxes in the early 1990s by using a loophole “so legally dubious his own lawyers advised him that the Internal Revenue Service would most likely declare it improper if he were audited.”

The manouvre was later outlawed by US lawmakers, said the paper, which admits it’s impossible to know Mr Trump’s financial background in full because he has not released his tax returns.

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