Washington: The Justice Department discouraged the FBI from alerting Congress to the unexpected discovery of emails potentially related to its investigation of Hillary Clinton's private email server, given the proximity to the presidential election and the potential for political fallout, a government official said.
Justice Department officials who were advised of the FBI's intention to notify Congress about the discovery expressed concern that the action would be inconsistent with department protocols designed to avoid the appearance of interference in an election.
"Now it's reported that the Department of Justice is fighting with the FBI. That's because the Department of Justice is trying their hardest to protect the criminal activity of Hillary Clinton," Trump said, offering no evidence for the assertion.
A person familiar with the investigation, who lacked authority to discuss the matter publicly and insisted on anonymity, said the device that appears to be at the center of the new review was a computer that belonged only to Weiner and was not one he shared with Abedin.
As a result, it was not a device searched for work-related emails at the time of the initial investigation. The person said it is "news to (Abedin)" that her emails would be on a computer belonging to her husband.
"I didn't have a practice of managing my mailbox other than leaving what was in there sitting in there," Abedin said. "I didn't go into my emails and delete State.gov emails. They just lived on my computer. That was my practice for all my email accounts. I didn't have a particular form of organizing them. I had a few folders, but they were not deleted. They all stayed in whatever device I was using at the time or whatever desktop I was on at the time."
In February 2013, Abedin signed a routine State Department document under penalty of perjury in which she promised to "turn over all classified or administratively controlled documents and materials" before she left her government job, and promised that she was not retaining copies, "including any diaries, memorandums of conversation or other documents of a personal nature."FULL COVERAGE: US Presidential Elections
The document required her to give back all "unclassified documents and papers relating to the official business of the government acquired by me while in the employ of the department."
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