Clinton campaign accuses FBI director of ‘blatant double standard’ in email inquiry | McClatchy Washington Bureau

Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign blasted FBI director James Comey on Monday for what it called a “jaw-dropping” double standard when it comes to the renewed probe into Clinton’s emails.

Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook cited reports that Comey had opposed going public with details of an FBI investigation into Russian meddling in the presidential race because it would be too close to Election Day.

“Director Comey ensured that the FBI would not be part of letting the American people know that the Kremlin was behind a direct effort to undermine our democracy,” Mook said in a call with reporters on Monday.

“It’s impossible to view this as anything less than a blatant double standard,” he said, adding that it “completely defies all logic.”

By using vague language in his letter to congressional leaders just 11 days before the election, Comey gave GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump an opening to “wildly speculate and lie” about the FBI’s probe into emails related to Clinton’s case, while keeping silent about investigations into Trump campaign advisers’ connections to Russian actors, Mook said.

“It is not fair for him to stay silent about investigations into election-related hacks,” Clinton campaign press secretary Brian Fallon added. “If he believes that the Russians are behind it, he should say so.”

Instead, the FBI director has “set a standard for narrating a play-by-play for matters involving Hillary Clinton” that was not being applied to matters related to Trump, Fallon said.

Responding to questions from reporters, Fallon added that the Democratic campaign was confident the newest FBI probe would not reveal anything new beyond the finding of the investigation that the agency closed in July.

This came as Trump charged that, if elected, Clinton would not be able to get things done in the White House while under FBI investigation.

“The investigation will last for years. The trial will probably start,” Trump said at a rally Monday in Grand Rapids, Michigan. “Nothing will get done. I can tell you. Your jobs will continue to leave Michigan. Nothing’s going to get done.”

Top Democrats jumped on the allegations of the FBI’s Russia investigation Monday, calling on Comey to release more information.

“We need to know what in the world is going on here,” Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, said in a statement. “The American people deserve to know if the FBI is investigating Donald Trump or his associates for their interactions with Russian interests.”

In a heated letter to the FBI director on Sunday, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., charged that Comey had covered up information about connections between Trump and Russian hacking.

“In my communications with you and other top officials in the national security community, it has become clear that you possess explosive information about close ties and coordination between Donald Trump, his top advisers and the Russian government — a foreign interest openly hostile to the United States, which Trump praises at every opportunity,” Reid told Comey in the letter.

While Trump and his aides have denied any connections with Russia, Democrats have criticized him for his seeming praise of President Vladimir Putin during the campaign. They have also criticized him for refusing to agree with the assessment of top U.S. security officials that Russia was behind the hacks of the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign. Top Democrats on the House and Senate Intelligence committees say they’ve concluded Russian intelligence agencies were trying to influence the U.S. presidential election. Russia has denied the accusation.