NBC's Andrea Mitchell reported Wednesday the FBI is in the process of determining whether emails it recovered from Hillary Clinton's private server at the State Department are personal or work-related.
The FBI is investigating how classified emails were handled by Clinton's account. Clinton told her lawyers to turn the server over last month after the intelligence agency's Inspector General requested the federal probe.
"What is new today is that they are actually able to get them and are now sorting through what they believe is personal from what is work-related," Mitchell said. "The Justice Department has said Clinton had every right to delete the emails, but this ensures there will continue to be a drip-drip-drip from this issue as Clinton tries to campaign."
The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s success at salvaging personal e-mails that Clinton said had been deleted raises the possibility that the Democratic presidential candidate’s correspondence eventually could become public. The disclosure of such e-mails would likely fan the controversy over Clinton’s use of a private e-mail system for official business.
The FBI is investigating how and why classified information ended up on Clinton’s server. The probe probably will take at least several more months, according to the person, who described the matter on condition of anonymity because the investigation is continuing and deals with sensitive information.
A review by Clinton and her aides determined that about half of the 60,000 e-mails she exchanged during her four-year tenure as secretary of state were of a personal nature, the presidential candidate has said.
Mitchell also discussed a new indication that "the campaign is in some trouble," after a new Bloomberg poll showing Clinton's support among Democrats at just 33 percent, tops in the field but only slightly ahead of Vice President Joe Biden (25 percent) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) (24 percent). Biden has seen an uptick in favorability over the course of the summer but has not announced whether he will seek the 2016 nomination.