Feds Promise Speedy Probe of Clinton Emails

WASHINGTON (CN) - A top Justice Department lawyer told members of Congress on Monday that its review will be quick to determine whether any messages that surfaced in the Anthony Weiner sexting investigation relate to the private email server Hillary Clinton used as secretary of state.

The letter by Assistant Attorney General Peter Kadzik comes after FBI Director James Comey made a surprise announcement Friday about emails that the FBI had not yet begun to review.

"We assure you that the department will continue to work closely with the FBI and together, dedicate all necessary resources and take appropriate steps as expeditiously as possible," Kadzik wrote, according to Politico.

Comey's announcement has divided many Republicans and Democrats, even within their own parties, about the necessity or propriety of such a disclosure so close to Election Day.

Clinton has insisted the supposedly new emails will yield nothing new. "There's no case here," the Democratic presidential candidate said Monday at a campaign rally in Ohio.

The emails surfaced in a federal investigation of Weiner, who is married to top Clinton aide Human Abedin.

Weiner was a congressman for New York when revelations about his "Carlos Danger" sexting in 2014 caused him to resign. The federal investigation opened last month after reports emerged that Weiner was still sending obscene messages, this time wit a 15-year-old girl.

Authorities seized computer devices that belonged to Abedin and Weiner based on allegations that Weiner, now using the pseudonym "T Dog," sent shirtless selfies and messages about his rape fantasies to a 15-year-old North Carolina girl.

After Comey's announcement Friday, the Washington Post reported that the new investigation implicates more than 1,000 emails.

Even if they involve Clinton or classified information, however, this does not mean that the emails are new. The government will have to review the emails to tell if they are duplicates of ones already studied.

Voicing their frustration about the timing of Comey's announcement, Democrats paraded out a list of GOP officials from Donald Ayer, who served a deputy attorney general under President George H.W. Bush, to Richard Painter, former White House ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush.

Further compounding questions about the Republican FBI director's motives, CNBC reported Monday that Comey opposed an announcement by the government earlier this month that accused Russia of trying to influence the U.S. election.

Comey reportedly said it was too close to the election to go public with such a bombshell.

Polling poorly on the heels of his own sex scandal, Republican nominee Donald Trump has used the news from the Weiner investigation to accuse Clinton of criminal wrongdoing.

The FBI closed its initial investigation of Clinton's emails over the summer, with Comey explaining that the former secretary's handling of emails had been "extremely careless" but lacked the criminal intent to justify prosecution.

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