The FBI’s ‘starkly different’ investigations may have cost Hillary Clinton the election

The New York Times published a lengthy retrospective on Saturday about FBI Director James Comey’s decision to revisit the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails 11 days before the presidential election, offering fresh insight into Comey’s thinking and sparking a new debate over whether he cost Clinton the election.

Nate Silver, the editor in chief of FiveThirtyEight, said The Times’ report showed “the case that the Comey letter — or the media’s handling of the letter — cost Clinton the election is painfully obvious.”

On October 28, Comey wrote a letter to Congress saying that the FBI had learned of “the existence of emails that appear to be pertinent” to the investigation into Clinton’s email server, which had originally been closed in July. The emails were discovered as the FBI was examining former Rep. Anthony Weiner’s laptop, which he shared with his wife, Huma Abedin, a top Clinton aide.(Weiner had been accused of exchanging sexually explicit texts with a 15-year-old girl.)

The letter was promptly released by Utah Rep. Jason Chaffetz, the chair of the House Oversight Committee, and dominated the headlines of major media outlets in the days leading up to the election.

Read the whole story from Business Insider.

Featured image courtesy of Reuters.