Trump: FBI investigation into Clinton emails ‘likely to yield indictment’

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said Thursday that the FBI review of a closed investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server last week would “likely yield an indictment.”

The controversy surrounding Clinton’s emails resurfaced through a separate investigation of former New York congressman Anthony Weiner, who sent sexually explicit emails to a 15-year-old girl. Weiner is the estranged husband of Huma Abedin, a longtime Clinton aide who now is a top official on her campaign staff. According to the The New York Times, the emails were found on a computer they had jointly used. The couple announced in August they were separating.

“The [FBI] investigation is described as a high priority,” Trump said at a campaign rally in Jacksonville as part of a two-day Florida swing. “It’s far-reaching and has been going on for more than one year. It is reporting that an avalanche of information is coming in. The FBI agents say their investigation is likely to yield an indictment.”

Trump said questions surrounding the email scandal would follow Clinton into the White House if she wins and she would “be under investigation for many years,” evoking the bitter impeachment battle of the 1990s.

“Here we go again with the Clintons — you remember the impeachment and the problems,” he said at the rally, adding “that’s not what we need in our country, folks. We need someone who is ready to go to work.”

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Trump has relentlessly attacked Clinton in recent days after FBI Director James Comey announced that the bureau was looking into emails that may be connected to Clinton’s private server when she served as secretary of state. Over the summer, Comey declined to recommend criminal charges against the Democratic nominee.

Clinton’s shrinking lead has given Trump’s campaign a glimmer of hope, one he’s trying to broaden into breakthrough before time runs out.

That means courting the moderate Republicans and independents who have been the holdouts of his campaign, voters turned off by Trump’s controversies but equally repelled by the possible return of the Clintons.

But Trump’s path to victory remains narrow. He must win Florida to win the White House, no easy feat. Still, his campaign has been buoyed by tightening polls there and in other key battlegrounds, as well as by signs that African-American turnout for Clinton may be lagging.

Clinton’s team will try to drive up enthusiasm in the final weekend, capping its efforts by bringing Clinton and Obama together, along with their spouses, for a final pre-election rally in Philadelphia on Monday evening.

Trump’s wife, Melania Trump, was to campaign in a suburb of Philadelphia on Thursday, her first turn on the trail since the Republican convention in July. The former model is trying to counter the Clinton campaign’s pounding attacks on her husband as anti-woman.

In excerpts of Melania Trump’s prepared remarks, distributed by the campaign, she said, “I come here today to talk about my husband, Donald, and his deep love and respect for this country and all of its people.”

Donald Trump isn’t the first Republican to raise warnings of a new cycle of scandal and investigation. Republicans lawmakers have recently threatened to block Clinton’s Supreme Court nominees, investigate her endlessly or even impeach her over her use of private emails as secretary of state.

House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi on Thursday hit back, saying any effort to impeach Clinton “would be a brazen attempt to nullify the vote of the American people” and would be a waste of time and taxpayers’ money. Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Kaine said he was “really despaired” by the talk.