What happens now?
In the coming days, the F.B.I. will begin conducting a smaller version of the larger investigation it completed in July. Agents will go through the emails found on the laptop to determine whether they contain classified information.
If so, the bureau will again look at the question of whether anyone intentionally committed a crime. Clinton campaign officials have said that Ms. Abedin gave the authorities all of the electronic devices that she believed had work-related emails on them. Many of the newly discovered messages are likely to be duplicates of others that the F.B.I. has already examined, investigators say. The review will be conducted by the same Washington-based F.B.I. agents who led the investigation into Mrs. Clinton’s emails. F.B.I. agents are all but certain that it will not be completed by Election Day, and believe it will take at least several weeks.
Neither Justice Department officials nor F.B.I. agents say they know what to expect from Mr. Comey over the coming days. Normally, investigations are conducted secretly, but Mr. Comey’s public remarks have opened him up to demands from both campaigns that he make as much information public as possible as soon as it is available.
