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Hillary Clinton Emails: No, Utah Representative Jason Chaffetz, The FBI Investigation Has Not Been ‘Reopened’

By Patricia Ramirez
Published on: 14:38 PST, Oct 28, 2016

Republican Utah representative Jason Chaffetz has long had it out for Hillary Clinton, and today he reportedly spread misinformation regarding her notorious email scandal to attempt to get the upper hand against the democratic presidential nominee. Unfortunately for Hillary Clinton, the falsehood spread by Jason Chaffetz regarding her emails and the investigation into them came just 11 days before the general election, and it got a lot of traction.

And after the Utah rep started the ball rolling with one inaccurate tweet, mainstream media outlets across the country picked up on the story that the FBI had “reopened” the Clinton email investigation. Some even directly linked the alleged reopening of the investigation into the emails to Benghazi. Here’s what Jason Chaffetz had to say about Hillary Clinton and her emails Friday morning.

Hours after the “news” that the case of Hillary Clinton’s emails would be reopened, the truth of the matter became clear, reports Huffington Post. The investigation into the so-called Hillary Clinton email scandal was not being reopened. In fact, the only reason that the FBI is checking out Hillary’s emails again is to dig more dirt on the scandalous behavior of Anthony Weiner.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QPFIExxB5g

As the New York Times reports, the emails that the FBI wants to review have nothing to do with Benghazi at all. Rather, all of the so-called Hillary Clinton emails being reviewed at this time are associated with former Democratic New York congressman Anthony Weiner. Rather than stating that he was opening the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email case, in a letter to congress, FBI director James Comey wrote that he was reviewing emails related to the investigation of Anthony Weiner’s alleged sexting with a 15-year-old.

In fact, in his letter, the FBI director specifies that he wants to review Hillary Clinton emails unrelated to the previous investigation. Either way, Republican politicians such as Utah’s Jason Chaffetz were more than happy to preemptively declare that Hillary Clinton email scandal investigation had been “reopened.” Friday’s allegations that the Clinton email scandal was being born anew grew to such epic proportions early in the day that Speaker of the House Paul Ryan even jumped on the bandwagon, reports Think Progress.

Paul Ryan repeated representative Chaffetz’s erroneous statement that the Hillary Clinton email case was being “reopened”; he then went one step further by demanding that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lose her access to classified intelligence briefings.

To reiterate, the Hillary Clinton emails that the FBI has spoken of reviewing were emails sent between Anthony Weiner and his estranged wife, Huma Abedin. They got tangled up with Hillary Clinton’s name because Huma Abedin is a top Clinton aide. At this point, it is unclear whether or not that FBI has even seen the emails in question.

What is perfectly clear is that James B. Comey made no threat (or even a mention) of reopening the Hillary Clinton email case. He simply said he would be reviewing some of her emails that could be relevant to an unrelated case.

Still, despite the clarification that the release of Comey’s official letter brought to the claims that the Hillary Clinton email case was being reopened, neither representative Chaffetz, nor Speaker Ryan have deleted or clarified the damaging tweets that they sent out less than two weeks before election day.

Hillary Clinton herself took the opportunity to address the erroneous claims made about her emails at a press conference earlier today. In that interview, she called on the FBI to release all information it has as opposed to making vaguely worded and ambiguous statements 11 days before the election. Further, former Secretary Clinton was clearly irate about Mr. Comey’s questionable timing in releasing a public statement related to the matter.

“We are calling the FBI to release all the information that it has. Let’s get it out.”

Clinton’s campaign chairman also spoke out about the timing of the FBI director’s statement.

“Director Comey’s letter refers to emails that have come to light in an unrelated case, but we have no idea what those emails are and the director himself notes they may not even be significant. It is extraordinary that we would see something like this just 11 days out from a presidential election.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6gRxXB8660

Not surprisingly, Hillary Clinton’s rival, Donald Trump, was absolutely jubilant at the media gaffe and its timing. He jumped on the Jason Chaffetz bandwagon, immediately revamping his calls for Hillary to be disqualified from the presidential race at a Friday rally. As he spoke, his rabid supporters chanted “lock her up.”

“Hillary Clinton’s corruption is on a scale we have never seen before. We must not let her take her criminal scheme into the Oval Office.”

For the record, and adding to the inaccuracy of Friday’s tweets from Paul Ryan and Jason Chaffetz, the FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email cannot be reopened, because it was never technically closed in the first place.

By Friday afternoon, media outlets that had erroneously reported that the Hillary Clinton email case was being “reopened” had changed their headlines to reflect the true nature of the FBI director’s Friday statement. However, the damage may have already been done.

What do you think? Was the erroneous reporting of an FBI investigation by a U.S. politician on Twitter criminally libel or simply irresponsible? Should Jason Chaffetz and others who are tweeting inaccurate information about Hillary Clinton and her email investigation publish retractions or delete their tweets? Do you think this faux Hillary Clinton email scandal drama could possibly hurt the Democratic candidate on election day?

[Featured Image by Evan El-Amin/Shutterstock]

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