The FBI was under "substantial pressure" to tear through a review of newly uncovered emails pertinent to the investigation of Hillary Clinton's private email server, former FBI assistant director Ron Hosko said Sunday.
In an interview with Neil Cavuto on Fox News Channel's "Your World," Hosko said FBI Director James Comey's letter last month to lawmakers in Congress — coming 11 days before Election Day – "obviously lit off a firestorm of controversy on both sides.
"I think that the director and the FBI were under substantial pressure to move with… speed to sort out the emails, the new emails they took from Mr. [Anthony] Weiner and Miss [Huma] Abedin, and try to make sense of it."
"The director's notification to Congress obviously lit off a firestorm of commentary in both sides. They felt pressure. They were bound to try to get through it as quickly as possible…"
On Sunday, Comey told Congress the agency hasn't changed its opinion that Clinton should not face criminal charges after a review of the newly uncovered emails.
He also suggested an FBI investigation of the Clinton Foundation could be headed nowhere, too.
"From the information I am hearing, the Clinton Foundation [investigation] will go failure," he said.
But Hosko scoffed at a call from Democratic Rep. Nancy Pelosi to "finally close" what she slammed as "this Republican sideshow."
"Pelosi is going to blow hot political winds across this because the Democrats and the Republicans are both all about getting their candidate elected," Hosko said.
"My sense is the viewer, the listener, has to flip that to the side and write it off to shear politics," he added. "The director did put himself in a tight place. The timing of this is unfortunate."
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