Obama casts FBI director letter as like a 'leak'

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama criticized the decision by his FBI director to alert Congress on Friday about the new emails being investigated to see if they are connected to Hillary Clinton, implying that the FBI violated investigative guidelines and trafficked in innuendo.

"We don't operate on incomplete information," Obama said with the online outlet NowThis News. "We don't operate on leaks. We operate based on concrete decisions that are made.

"When this was investigated thoroughly the last time, the conclusion of the FBI, the conclusion of the Justice Department, the conclusion of repeated congressional investigations was that she had made some mistakes but that there wasn't anything there that was prosecutable," Obama said.

The president did not mention the FBI director, James Comey, but it was clear Obama was referring to him.

[INTERACTIVE: 2016 election coverage]

Declaring that he had "made a very deliberate effort to make sure that I don't look like I'm meddling in what are supposed to be independent processes for making these assessments," Obama nonetheless expressed confidence in Clinton.

"I trust her," he said. "I know her. And I wouldn't be supporting her if I didn't have absolute confidence in her integrity and her interest in making sure that young people have a better future."

White House officials later downplayed Obama's remarks about the FBI and insisted he had not meant to criticize Comey.

"The president went out of his way to say he wouldn't comment on any particular investigations," Eric Schultz, a White House spokesman, told reporters on Air Force One while Obama was en route to North Carolina to campaign for Clinton.

Schultz characterized Obama's remarks as mirroring those made in recent days by White House spokesman Josh Earnest, who had said that while the White House would not criticize Comey's decision to update Congress on the status of an ongoing investigation, Obama believed that rules intended to keep such investigations confidential were good ones and should be followed.

For the past several days, the FBI has been analyzing emails belonging to Huma Abedin, a top adviser to Clinton. Agents discovered the emails last month in an unrelated investigation into Abedin's estranged husband, the former U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-N.Y.

In a letter to Congress, Comey said those emails might be pertinent to the investigation into Clinton's use of a private email server. Authorities concluded that case in July with no charges. But the letter, sent over the objection of the Justice Department, led to controversy because it deviated from long-standing guidelines.

It is unlikely that agents will finish their work on the emails by Election Day, FBI officials said. They said there was a chance they could offer updates before next Tuesday.

The renewed interest in Clinton's emails is preoccupying the final days of the presidential campaign.

Much is unknown about the new emails, including why they were on Weiner's laptop in the first place. Abedin, through her lawyers, has denied using that laptop, which people with knowledge of the matter have said was identified in court papers as a Dell model. People with knowledge of the matter have said that the emails may have ended up on the laptop because they were inadvertently backed up or downloaded onto an older computer and then transferred from the older computer to the laptop's hard drive when the older computer was replaced.

Trump in Florida

Along the campaign trail, Clinton's rival, Republican Donald Trump, has been putting all his chips on one state: Florida.

There was late action Wednesday in such unlikely arenas as Arizona and Michigan, too -- and in North Carolina, where Obama tried to energize black support for Clinton.

Trump, in his third multiday-visit to the Sunshine State in recent weeks, lashed out at "Crooked Hillary" and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, in Miami, predicting that a Clinton victory would trigger an "unprecedented and protracted constitutional crisis."

"Haven't we just been through a lot with the Clintons? Right? Remember when he was impeached for lying? He can't practice law, he doesn't have the right to practice law. Didn't we just go through this?" he asked.

"She's got bad judgment," Trump said. "Personally, I think she's a very unstable person."

The Republican nominee, without presenting specific evidence, also said Clinton "probably" received a heads-up about questions in her debates against him. He pointed to the revelation by the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks that Donna Brazile, the interim Democratic National Committee chairman, provided Democratic primary debate questions to Clinton's campaign.

Clinton, too, has been a frequent visitor to Florida. She posed for pictures and shook hands during a surprise visit Wednesday morning to a south Florida Caribbean-American neighborhood.

Later, Clinton campaigned in the West, both in Nevada and in Arizona. The latter is a reliably Republican state where Democrats see an opening against Trump given his unpopularity with Hispanics.

Speaking to a union-heavy crowd in Las Vegas, Clinton urged voters to imagine what life would be like if Trump is inaugurated on the steps of the U.S. Capitol in January. For Hispanics, she said, that would mean having a president "who doesn't see you as Americans." And for blacks, she said it would mean having a president who believes their lives are consumed by "crime and poverty and despair."

Democrats acknowledge that the FBI's renewed attention to Clinton has helped rally reluctant Republicans behind their nominee. That's given Trump an enthusiasm boost in Florida and across Midwestern battlegrounds long considered reliably blue territory.

Bill Clinton was making an unannounced appearance Wednesday night in Detroit to meet privately with black ministers, the mayor and other city leaders. Hillary Clinton planned to spend part of Friday in Detroit as well.

Obama rallies blacks

Early voting numbers in some states suggest that Clinton is receiving underwhelming support from black voters.

Obama, the nation's first black president, offered an urgent message to North Carolina voters Wednesday: "The fate of the republic rests on your shoulders."

He also criticized Trump's history of insensitive comments about women and his initial reluctance to disavow white supremacists. They continue to rally behind the Republican nominee, though he rejects that support.

"If you accept the support of Klan sympathizers," Obama said, "then you'll tolerate that support when you're in office."

Speaking earlier on the Tom Joyner Morning Show, a syndicated program with many black listeners, Obama pressed black voters to turn out for Clinton to protect the policies he has implemented.

"I know there are a lot of people in barbershops, in beauty salons, in the neighborhoods who are saying to themselves, you know, we love Barack, we especially love Michelle, so it was exciting, and now we're not excited so much," Obama said. "I need everybody to understand that everything we've done is dependent on me being able to pass the baton to somebody who believes in the same things I believe in."

He continued: "I'm going to be honest with you right now, because we track -- we've got early voting, we've got all kinds of metrics to see what's going on. And right now the Latino vote is up, overall vote is up, but the African-American vote right now is not as solid as it needs to be."

Meanwhile, Trump's children were fanning out across key battlegrounds to campaign on his behalf on Wednesday. Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump, Tiffany Trump and Eric Trump were covering Colorado, North Carolina, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

As the final-days scramble for votes intensifies, Florida remains a critical swing state.

The New York businessman campaigned in three Florida cities Wednesday -- Miami, Orlando and Pensacola -- and will follow up with a stop in Jacksonville today.

"We don't want to blow this," he told rowdy supporters in Miami. "We gotta win. We gotta win big."

While Trump has devoted perhaps his most valuable resource -- his time -- to Florida, Clinton has built a powerful ground game, backed by a dominant media presence, that dwarfs her opponent's. The Democratic nominee has more than doubled Trump's investment in Florida television ads. Overall, the state has been deluged with $125 million in general election advertising -- by far the most of any state.

Information for this article was contributed by Gardiner Harris, Adam Goldman, William K. Rashbaum of The New York Times; by Steve Peoples, Jonathan Lemire, Lisa Lerer, Julie Bykowicz, Josh Lederman, Julie Pace and Thomas Beaumont of The Associated Press; and by Jenna Johnson, Abby Phillip, Sean Sullivan, John Wagner, Anne Gearan and David Nakamur of The Washington Post.

A Section on 11/03/2016