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| Republican US presidential candidate Donald Trump |
Sensing a potential turning point, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is portraying Democrat Hillary Clinton as unfit to lead the country after the latest chapter in her email controversy unfolded.
With the Nov. 8 election only 10 days away, Trump devoted much of his speech on Saturday to the FBI’s disclosure that it was investigating more emails as part of a probe into Clinton’s use of a private email server and the possibility she had broken standard security practices such as sending unsecured classified information. She later claimed she did not know that ‘C’ stood for ‘confidential’. During the initial FBI investigation it also emerged that thousands of emails had been deliberately scrubbed from the private email server.
Little is known about the extent and focus of the new FBI review but it comes on top of the steady drip of WikiLeaks emails that have proved damaging to the Clinton campaign in recent weeks including her closed-door speeches to Wall Street bankers that revealed she holds ‘private and public’ contradictory positions on major issues such as free trade and open borders.
Trump declared his rivl “guilty” at rallies in Phoenix and in Golden, Colorado, declaring that she is symbolic of a type of public corruption that is a “grave threat to our democracy.”
Trump charged that the Justice Department, populated by appointees of Democratic President Barack Obama, is trying to help Clinton, given news reports that top department officials did not want FBI Director James Comey to reveal his new review.
Comey had decided in July not to go ahead with charges against Clinton though he confirmed that classified emails had been sent to and from the private server. He called her ‘careless’. The Justice Department and AG Loretta Lynch had said they would go along with what the FBI decided when it came to pressing charges.
Lynch recused herself from making a decision as she had accidentally bumped into Bill Clinton on an airport tarmac shortly beforehand. She testified during hearings that it had left her ‘compromised’ when it came to making a decision whether or not to prosecute Hillary Clinton.
Trump said in Phoenix that Hillary Clinton’s corruption was corrosive “to the soul of our nation and it must be stopped.” “When the outcome is fixed, when the system is rigged, people lose hope. They stop dreaming. They stop trying,” Trump said.
Trump had already begun to narrow the gap in public opinion polls between him and Clinton nationally and in some battleground states where the election is likely to be decided.
Trump’s is to campaign in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on Sunday and in Michigan on Monday, two states that have voted Democratic in recent presidential elections.
