【2009 Archives】

009 ArchivesFBI has again managed to put itself at the center of the presidential election.

One of the agency's Twitter accounts, @FBIRecordsVault, started tweeting again just a few days ago after staying silent for more than a year. Then, it promptly sent an eyebrow-raising tweet.

The tweet that caught everyone's attention came on Tuesday.

William J. Clinton Foundation: This initial release consists of material from the FBI's files related to the Will... https://t.co/Y4nz3aRSmG

— FBI Records Vault (@FBIRecordsVault) November 1, 2016

The FBI said the documents linked in the tweet were uploaded as part of a routine response to FOIA requests about them. The tweet seems to be an automated result of the Clinton documents being uploaded on Oct. 31 (a list of "recently added" FBI vault uploads show they have been ongoing, so it's unclear why the Twitter account only recently began to tweet again).

Still, many found it odd that the FBI would pick Nov. 1, one week before U.S. voters decide to elect Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump as their next president, to upload documents from a 2001 investigation into the Clinton Foundation.

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That investigation centered around former president Bill Clinton's decision to pardon Marc Rich, a commodity trader who had been indicted on charges of massive tax evasion. Rich's wife at the time had donated $1 million to the Democratic National Committee.

The investigation turned up no wrongdoing on the part of the Clintons, though the documents recently released by the FBI don't mention that. The recent upload is just part one, and others will theoretically follow.

And all of this comes on the heels of Friday, when the FBI announced it was reviewing emails that may pertain to the agency's investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of a personal email server while she was secretary of state. FBI Director James Comey recommended no criminal charges for Clinton and her staff in July, but said they were "careless" with classified information.

The new emails came to light as the result of a separate investigation into the estranged husband of top Clinton aide Huma Abedin. Her husband, former Congressman Anthony Weiner, is under investigation for allegedly exchanging sexually explicit texts with a 15-year-old girl.

It's unclear whether the emails contain any important information, and it's unlikely we'll know much about their content by Election Day. But the announcement made waves nonetheless. Republican officials pounced on the moment, calling it a "reopening" of a case that was never technically closed, and Democrats accused the FBI of recklessly interfering with the election.

Given the furor surrounding the tweet on Tuesday, that speculation is not likely to die off anytime soon.