Clinton campaign hit again by email questions

The State Department is to review the new emails provided by the FBI and then decide which ones can be released - that is, which are deemed to have been work-related - and whether any information should be withheld or redacted for security reasons.

It must also determine which of the new emails uncovered by FBI analysts are different from the thousands of emails previously released by the department.

Clinton - who faces Republican Donald Trump in the presidential election on November 8 - has been dogged for over a year by questions regarding her use of a private email account and a personal computer server while she was secretary of state from 2009-2013, during President Barack Obama's first term.

The emails were recovered as part of the FBI's investigation into the handling of sensitive information that passed through Clinton's private home server during her time as secretary of state, a probe that is now closed, with Clinton cleared of criminal wrongdoing last month. Clinton had a private email server at her home in Chappaqua, New York.

The Justice Department concluded after a lengthy investigation that there was no basis for recommending that charges be brought against her. FBI Director James Comey did call her handling of the emails "extremely careless."

Department lawyers said they anticipated releasing the first batch of the new emails in mid-October, which could prove embarrassing for the Clinton campaign as the November 8 election day approaches.

Clinton's opponent, Donald Trump, has made much of what he calls Clinton's untrustworthiness, and the email development comes as the conservative group Judicial Watch releases hundreds of pages of emails from Clinton's aide Huma Abedin that it alleges show Abedin provided access to Clinton and the State Department on behalf of Clinton Foundation donors.

Do as I say, not as I do?

Meanwhile, former Secretary of State Colin Powell has rebuffed accusations made by Clinton that he suggested she use her private email account for nonclassified information and that he found using a private email account facilitated communication within the State Department.

"People" magazine reported in a Twitter message that Powell said that Clinton's "people have been trying to pin" her email scandal on him.

jbh/sms (Reuters, dpa)