Reopened Clinton Email Probe ‘Clearly a Game Changer’

Friday’s bombshell revelation that the FBI has reopened its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email server could not have come at a worse time for the Democratic nominee, according to political activists and experts.

With Election Day a week from Tuesday, the announcement comes too late for her to recover from any damage that is inflicted, but early enough for the full magnitude of that damage to sink it. Despite the decision in July to not recommend criminal charges over Clinton’s use of a private email server, she will have to play defense on the issue in the final days of the campaign.

“It’s the worst possible timing. People are voting today.”

“It’s the worst possible timing,” said Harlan Hill, a Democratic strategist who launched a super PAC supporting Republican Donald Trump after Sen. Bernie Sanders lost the Democratic primary. “People are voting today.”

Clinton did not mention the investigation in a pair of campaign appearances in Iowa Friday, but sought to contain the political fallout at a brief news conference in the evening. She noted that FBI Director James Comey told congressional leaders that he does not know whether the newly discovered emails are significant.

“The American people deserve to get the full and complete information immediately,” she told reporters. “I’m confident whatever they are will not change the conclusion reached in July.”

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But Michael Johns, a Tea Party activist from New Jersey, said the FBI’s decision to reopen the probe means that the remaining days of the campaign will be dominated by discussion of an issue the Clinton campaign thought it had buried.

“It’s clearly a game changer in the sense that in the minds of people, this was a case that had been closed. [There were] no pending charges and a feeling that Hillary — rightly or wrongly — had been exonerated,” he said.

All that went out the window Friday with the announcement that the FBI had found additional undisclosed emails on a device belonging to disgraced former Rep. Anthony Weiner, the estranged husband of longtime Clinton aide Huma Abedin. Weiner has been implicated in multiple sexting scandals and other inappropriate online behavior.

“It reinforces in the minds of Americans the depth and extent of Clinton’s corruption,” said Johns, who worked as a speechwriter in the George H.W. Bush administration.

Political consultant Ron Bonjean, a former spokesman for the speaker of the House and the Senate majority leader, said Weiner’s involvement virtually guarantees that the story will have legs.

“The fact that it involves Anthony Weiner means that the news coverage is going to be volcanic over the next 11 days,” he said. “It will be the equivalent of a negative ad that costs a billion dollars.”

LifeZette Editor-in-Chief Laura Ingraham suggested the bombshell from the FBI will preview a dismal four years ahead for liberal politicians, who will be forced to repeatedly mortgage political capital to defend Clinton if she wins.

“What’s going to be left of liberalism after the liberals devote four years’ worth of credibility to defending these people?” Ingraham quipped rhetorically.

Ingraham also said the revelation should put new pressure on Republicans still on the sidelines to rally to Trump’s side.

“And what sort of conservative doesn’t try to keep [the Clintons] out of power?” Ingraham asked.

Prior to the FBI’s announcement, Clinton seemed firmly in control of the race. The current RealClearPolitics polling average gives her a lead in a head-to-head matchup of 5.2 percentage points. But Hill said Trump slowly had been cutting into Clinton’s advantage over the past few days. Friday’s news should accelerate that, he said.

“This resets the race. I’ve been one of the few people on TV saying this thing is not over,” he said. “It just confirms everything that we’ve seen from [hacked emails released by] WikiLeaks.”

Hill said Clinton will find it hard to deflect.

“This is all her doing,” he said. “She can’t blame the Russians. She cant blame Donald Trump. She can’t blame WikiLeaks.”

Hill and Bonjean both said Trump would be wise to step back and let the story play out with minimal participation from his campaign. Still, at a rally in Maine on Friday, the Republican nominee pounced on the news.

“This is worse than Watergate,” he said.

One potential mitigating factor in Clinton’s favor is that early voting already is under way in many key swing states. Any votes already cast for Clinton cannot be changed, regardless of what the FBI finds.

“I don’t know the percentage of votes that have already been cast [in Iowa], but I would say it’s probably pretty high, maybe 20 percent of the final total,” said Mack Shelley, chairman of the Department of Political Science at Iowa State University. “So there are a lot of votes in the bank.”

Shelley said most voters already have made up their minds and that new revelations over Clinton’s email use is “background noise.” At the same time, he added, inserting the possibility of criminal charges back into the discussion kicks the controversy to another level and could tip the balance in close states.

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“This might be one other reason [for independents] not to vote for Hillary,” he said.

Chris Arterton, a professor of political management at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., said the impact likely will depend on what investigators find in the new emails. He said he is not sure the re-emergence of an investigation will prove fatal to Clinton’s presidential aspirations. But he said it is a “different order of magnitude” more significant than scandals like WikiLeaks.

“Particularly people on the Clinton bandwagon breathed a great sigh of relief when the FBI closed the case,” he said. “I think this does put it back on the table.”

Arterton said it also offers fresh ammunition to corruption allegations Trump has been making: “The bite seems a little bit harsher than it was before.”

Shelley pointed to another potential consequence for Democrats. If it results in lower turnout, even if Clinton has enough cushion to win, it could cost Democrats in close down-ballot races.

“It just make it that much harder for the Democrats to win back control of the U.S. Senate,” he said.