In a stunning move, the FBI has decided to reopen its investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's private email server.
FBI Director James Comey sent an Oct. 28 letter to House and Senate committee chairs and ranking members to notify them that additional emails deemed "pertinent to the investigation" surface in another, unrelated, case.
"I'm writing to inform you that the investigative team briefed me on this yesterday, and I agreed that the FBI should take appropriate investigative steps designed to allow investigators to review these emails to determine whether they contain classified information, as well as their importance to our investigation," Comey said in the letter.
The FBI director had previously said in July that the Bureau found no "appropriate" charges to be made in the investigation, after hearing testimony from Clinton.
he investigation did find that 110 emails containing classified information were sent or received by Clinton's private email server, despite the Democratic presidential nominee's previous assertion that she did not knowingly send any classified materials from the server.
The question of what correspondence was collected on the unauthorized server, and Clinton's involvement with it, has dogged her presidential campaign for much of 2016.
GOP opponent Donald Trump has hammered Clinton on the issue, while website Wikileaks has released the emails of Democratic adviser John Podesta that have embarrassed her campaign.
ouse Oversight Chairman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah—who has actively sought an investigation of Clinton by the Justice Department—tweeted that the investigation had been reopened shortly after receiving Comey's letter. Requests for comment from Chaffetz's office were not immediately returned.
It is unclear the source of the new emails or if they are related to hacking investigations of Podesta and the Democratic National Committee, but Comey said in his letter that it may be sometime before their importance becomes clear.
"Although the FBI cannot yet assess whether or not this material may be significant, and I cannot predict how long it will take us to complete this additional work, I believe it's important to update your Committees in light of my previous testimony," he said.
