(CNN) – Federal prosecutors released Tuesday the search warrant application FBI agents used to justify their search of Anthony Weiner’s laptop that jolted Hillary Clinton’s campaign, as the bureau initially said the emails could have been “pertinent” to her private email server.
Eleven days before the 2016 presidential election, FBI Director James Comey announced that the FBI had possibly discovered emails in the Clinton probe “in connection with an unrelated case,” as investigators took possession of multiple computers in early October related to Weiner, a former New York congressman and the estranged husband of top Clinton aide Huma Abedin, allegedly sexting a purportedly underage girl.
The search warrant and supporting documents, ordered unsealed by a federal judge Monday, shed new light on how the FBI framed its argument for access to the emails, including allegations that “(t)he Subject Laptop was never authorized for the storage or transmission of classified or national defense information” and “there is probable cause to believe that the Subject Laptop contains correspondence between [REDACTED] and Clinton …”
Clinton was ultimately cleared by the FBI two days before the election.
