Donald Trump’s campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, slammed Hillary Clinton for her response to the FBI’s decision to review new emails it says are “pertinent” to its investigation into Clinton’s private email server.
{mosads}”What’s unprecedented and indeed unnecessary is her having that private server in the first place,” Conway said Sunday on NBC’s “Today.”
“She set off this chain of events and she can’t escape that. She’s playing the victim now. They’re doing an all-out assault on FBI Director James Comey; I mean really shooting the messenger, plus a full body slam all day yesterday.”
Conway called that a “risky strategy.”
FBI Director James Comey announced in July that he would not recommend criminal charges over Clinton’s use of a private email server while serving as secretary of State.
On Friday, he sent a letter to Congress saying that the bureau discovered emails “pertinent” to the investigation and would be reviewing them.
The new emails were reportedly discovered during a separate investigation into former Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) over an alleged online relationship with a 15-year-old girl.
Weiner is the estranged husband of longtime Clinton aide Huma Abedin, and the emails purportedly belong to her.
On Sunday, Conway criticized Clinton and said the Democratic presidential nominee could ask Abedin about what’s in those emails.
She also said Comey was in an “impossible” position.
“Had he sat on the information, he may well have been interfering with the election as well,” Conway said.
“Because if you go and you vote for Hillary Clinton, she becomes the president of the United States, then this investigation is reopened, or I guess a separate investigation is launched, and then what?” she continued.
“She’s already president, and she’s under this cloud of corruption that really has defined the last couple years of Hillary Clinton.”
Still, Conway said Comey can’t play the victim, either.
“Had he done a thorough investigation in the first place and made sure that device had been handed over, then maybe we wouldn’t be in this position,” Conway said.
“I think it’s incredible ironic that this stems from another investigation, it has nothing to do with the Republican Party or the Trump campaign, into Anthony Weiner’s sexting. So this is on them.”
Democrats have since been pressing the FBI director to release more information about what was contained in those emails, but Conway appeared to cast doubt on whether that would be possible before the presidential election.
“I know that the general nature of these types of investigations is that they take a long time,” she said. “So I think the Clinton campaign is pressuring Comey to do something that may not be possible, simply given the short time.”
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