E-mails between Clinton and top aide, but little else, spurred FBI to resume controversial probe

The FBI told a federal judge that it needed to search a computer to resume its investigation of Hillary Clinton’s use of a private e-mail server because agents had found correspondence on the device between Clinton and top aide Huma Abedin but they did not know what was being discussed, according to newly unsealed court documents. The bureau argued that Clinton and Abedin were previously on e-mail chains in which classified information was discussed, and so there was probable cause to search a computer belonging to Abedin’s estranged husband, disgraced former congressman Anthony Weiner, for information potentially related to the Clinton e-mail case.

That search — along with FBI Director James B. Comey’s decision to tell Congress that the investigation into Clinton’s e-mail practices had resumed — came less than two weeks before the election and upended the presidential campaign. US Magistrate Judge Kevin Nathaniel Fox approved a search warrant in the case, but the FBI is likely to draw criticism that it relied on flimsy evidence to resume its Clinton probe.