Democrats and Clinton’s advisers fretting as email issue reasserts itself

By Patrick Healy and Jonathan Martin, New York Times News Service

Sunday, Oct. 30, 2016 | 2 a.m.

Leading Democrats and advisers to Hillary Clinton expressed deep concern Saturday that the FBI’s renewed attention and unanswered questions about emails relating to Clinton would turn some voters against her, hurt party candidates in competitive House and Senate races, and complicate efforts to win over undecided Americans in the final days of the election.

Clinton campaign aides sprang onto a war footing, deciding that their best strategy was to launch a ferocious attack on James Comey, the FBI director. They accused him of smearing Clinton with innuendo and providing ammunition to the Republican nominee, Donald Trump, in a move that violated Justice Department rules and is unprecedented so late in a presidential race.

With Clinton leading Trump in most polls by small margins, Clinton advisers were also emphatic that they would not be thrown off stride. They said they would not change any political strategy, television advertising or campaign travel plans simply to try to contain the potential damage of the new FBI inquiry.

For months, the FBI had investigated whether Clinton had broken any laws by using a private email server while she was secretary of state. This past summer, Comey said that Clinton had been “extremely careless” by allowing sensitive information to be discussed outside secure government servers, but that the agency had concluded that Clinton had not committed a crime. The investigation was closed.

Last week, Comey notified Congress that the agency may have discovered emails relevant to the investigation that belonged to Clinton’s top aide, Huma Abedin. The emails were discovered on the computer of Abedin’s estranged husband, Anthony Weiner, during a separate investigation into allegations that he had exchanged sexually explicit text messages with a teenager.

According to several Clinton advisers, Clinton told them overnight and on Saturday that she wanted the campaign to operate normally, not rashly, while pressuring Comey to dispel any possibility that her candidacy was under legal threat. But the Clinton team also had to deal with a newly emboldened Trump, who urged voters at a rally Saturday to oppose Clinton because of her “criminal action” that was “willful, deliberate, intentional and purposeful.”

The paramount fear among Clinton advisers and Democratic officials is that an election that had become a referendum on Trump’s fitness for office, and that had increasingly seemed like Clinton’s to lose, would now become just as much about her conduct.

In phone calls, email chains and text messages Saturday, Clinton aides and allies were by turns confident that the FBI would find nothing to hurt Clinton and concerned that the inquiry would nudge demoralized Republicans to show up to vote for down-ballot candidates — and perhaps even cast ballots, however reluctantly, for the battered Trump.

“This is like an 18-wheeler smacking into us, and it just becomes a huge distraction at the worst possible time,” said Donna Brazile, chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee and a close Clinton ally. “The campaign is trying to cut through the noise as best it can. We don’t want it to knock us off our game. But on the second-to-last weekend of the race, we find ourselves having to tell voters, ‘Keep your focus, keep your eyes on the prize.'”

Clinton advisers seized on reports Saturday that, the day before Comey alerted Congress, the Justice Department had strongly discouraged him from doing so and warned the director that he would be breaking with long-standing policy on disclosing details of continuing investigations, law enforcement officials said.

During an 8 a.m. Saturday conference call, aides decided to go on the offensive over Comey’s unusual decision to publicly disclose the inquiry. Four hours later the Clinton campaign chairman, John Podesta, and campaign manager, Robby Mook, criticized Comey for putting out incomplete information and even innuendo about Abedin’s email and breaking with Justice Department protocol.

“By providing selective information, he has allowed partisans to distort and exaggerate to inflict maximum political damage,” Podesta said during a campaign conference call with reporters. “Comey has not been forthcoming with the facts,” he added, describing the director’s letter to Congress on Friday as “long on innuendo” and calling on Comey to release more details about the inquiry.

“There’s no evidence of wrongdoing, no charge of wrongdoing,” Podesta said. “Even Director Comey said this may not be significant. If that’s all true, it’s hard to see how this amounts to anything.”

Comey has not publicly commented on the investigation, other than the letter he sent to members of Congress on Friday telling them that more emails were being examined. He also wrote an email to FBI employees explaining that he felt he had to inform Congress even though the agency did not yet know “the significance of this newly discovered collection of emails.”

Podesta, when asked if Abedin had shared information with the campaign about what might be in the newly discovered emails, said she had previously turned over all relevant emails relating to Clinton as part of the FBI’s earlier investigation of the former secretary of state’s handling of classified email material.

Podesta said there was “absolutely nothing that she’s done that calls into question anything.”

“We of course stand by her,” he added, in response to a question about whether Abedin would step down from the campaign.

As much as Clinton advisers stressed that they were not panicking, some of them radiated anger at Comey, Weiner and even Clinton herself — a reflection of 18 months of frustration that her personal decisions about her email practices and privacy were still generating unhelpful political drama at this stage of the race. Two Clinton aides, for example, pointedly noted in interviews that it was difficult to press a counterattack without fully knowing what was in Abedin’s emails.

In a conference call with campaign surrogates Friday night, a rare gathering at the start of a weekend, Clinton advisers asked them to push a coordinated message in news media interviews and with voters: that the FBI investigation had not been reopened; that none of the new emails had emerged from Clinton; that the FBI had to release more details about its inquiry; and that they were concerned that Comey had taken this action.

Encouraged by Clinton’s senior aides to reframe the story and make it about Comey’s actions, liberal groups from the Congressional Black Caucus to NARAL, the abortion-rights group, scrambled to press the FBI director for more information.

Clinton’s advisers said she was still planning to campaign as scheduled Saturday and Sunday in Florida, Monday in Ohio, Tuesday in Florida and Wednesday in the Republican-leaning state of Arizona. Clinton aides said that by sticking to the Arizona plan, Clinton was projecting confidence that she had not been rattled, and that the campaign was not reshuffling its plans because of the eleventh-hour surprise from Comey.

While some voters are undecided, about 20 million Americans have cast their ballots in early voting and millions more long ago concluded which candidate they would support.

In a polarized country, where many are unwaveringly contemptuous of either Trump or Clinton, the latest development in the email saga prompted a mix of shrugs and renewed determination from the left and told-you-so claims of Clinton perfidy from the right.

“My mind was made up,” said Luis Luaces, 57, a Florida Republican who expressed little surprise about the Weiner email twist as he cast his ballot for Trump on Saturday in Miami. “I know what the Clintons are about.”

Democrats also said the development had done little to alter their perceptions. In Charlotte, North Carolina, Ian Leemans, 35, a Democrat, said he had been at work checking news sites when he saw a flashing banner with Friday’s news. He had already planned to vote early for Clinton, but after the news, he felt even more urgency to cast his ballot.

“I thought, OK, this is going to be an advantage for Trump people to say, ‘Oh, it is a rigged election,'” Leemans said. “So I thought, ‘Oh, I need to make sure I get up at 8 o’clock on a Saturday and vote.'”

Several Republican pollsters and strategists said the FBI inquiry was more likely to help the party’s candidates for the House and Senate than to transform the political fortunes of Trump. Given his slide in national polls, they said, only a cataclysmic setback for Clinton — like a federal indictment — would change the dynamics of the race.

“To the extent this affects relative enthusiasm among Republicans and Democrats, it helps down-ballot Republicans,” said Whit Ayres, a pollster advising one such candidate seeking re-election, Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida. Referring to Clinton’s lead over Trump in recent polls, Ayres added, “The margin at the top of the ticket is large enough so that it probably takes an indictment, rather than an investigation, to move those numbers sufficiently.”

With control of the Senate on a knife’s edge and Democrats wielding Trump’s unpopularity like a weapon to make gains in the House, Republicans were exultant to at least get off the defensive.

While few Republicans were willing to argue Comey’s letter could revive Trump, they said the new revelations dovetailed with a message they were already pushing: that Democratic candidates would only enable Clintons’s instinct for secrecy and not hold her accountable.

“It boosts the check-and-balance argument because it is a reminder of all of the things voters hate about Clinton,” said Rob Simms, executive director of the House Republican campaign arm.