For Hillary Clinton and her campaign, the 11 days until the presidential election just got a little longer. The FBI announced on Friday that it's reviewing new emails "pertinent to the investigation" of the agency's probe into Clinton's use of a personal email server during her tenure as secretary of state. At first, Republicans hyped the statement as a "reopening" of the investigation and the so-called "October surprise" that could wreck her campaign. But as more information came out, it began to appear that the new emails might not be quite as big of a bombshell as the GOP was making it out to be. No matter how it unfolds from here, it renewed attention on this story at a time when the Clinton campaign wanted to focus on anything but her use of a personal email server. The review will almost certainly last through the election. FBI Director James Comey said his agency won't be able to determine the significance of the new emails for some time. The FBI announced in July that Clinton and her team had been careless in handling their emails, but said they had done nothing criminal. Comey did say that some of Clinton's staffers might have been professionally reprimanded had they still worked at the State Department. The issue has been a drag on her campaign from the beginning, the subject of seemingly endless news cycles as the FBI reviewed emails sent and received by Clinton and her staff, then dumped them online for journalists to comb through. Her rival, Donald Trump, has threatened to throw her in jail over the issue if he is elected. Supporters of Trump often sport "lock her up" t-shirts in reference to the email investigation, and chant the same slogan at the Republican presidential candidate's rallies. Republicans quickly took advantage of the statement as news broke. The supposed reopening was even enough to get Donald Trump to say that the government is not as "rigged" as he has claimed. "The FBI, I think they are going to right the ship and they are going to save their reputation by doing so," he said Friday. The FBI's statement was vague enough that journalists were unsure what to make of it. Parsing of "reopened" or "taking a new look" just shows how vague Comey's letter is. Comey says "FBI had completed its investigation" But, slowly, news that the Clinton campaign hadn't initially withheld these emails began to make the rounds on Twitter. .@PeteWilliamsNBC adds: There is no sense that any of this was due to withholding of evidence. New emails discovered on "another device" 3/ Then, The New York Timesreported that the new emails were found after the FBI got a hold of "electronic devices" that belong to Clinton's right-hand woman, Huma Abedin, as well as Abedin's husband, Anthony Weiner, as part of a separate investigation into sexual allegations against Weiner. Weiner was a rising star in Democratic political circles until his life (personal and professional) was derailed by a series of sexual scandals that involved tweets and text messages. Weiner was a fiery New York congressman when he tweeted a photo of a man's swelling penis in 2011. The photo was quickly deleted, but this was the beginning of the end of his career. The then-congressman first complained that his account had been hacked, but little more than a week later he was tearfully telling the world that the tweet was his own. He resigned from Congress only to resurface as a surprisingly strong candidate for mayor of New York City in 2013, but his resurrection was destroyed by yet another sexting scandal. Weiner himself has since faded into professional obscurity, but his name -- for now -- remains attached to Abedin, and therefore continues to pop up in headlines. The latest round of those headlines involved allegations that he had exchanges sexually explicit texts with a 15-year-old girl in North Carolina. The FBI is investigating the possibility. The story has already changed a bunch in just half an afternoon, and we'll report more as we know it. Whatever does happen with these new emails, it is likely to take longer than 11 days to sort it all out. UPDATE Oct. 28 4:34 PM PT: Clinton called on the FBI to release more information about its review at a press conference later on Friday. The Democratic presidential candidate said she's confident investigators won't find information that would cause the FBI to change its decision to close the investigation without filing charges in July. "Let's get it out," she said. TopicsElectionsHillary ClintonPresidentTweet may have been deleted
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