Embattled FBI Director James Comey informed Congress that the bureau had "not changed its conclusions" on the private email server maintained by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a week after having dropped a bombshell that investigators were looking into a new cache of recently discovered emails.
Comey drew widespread criticism for his disclosure on October 28, when he informed Congress that a separate investigation into former Democratic Congressman Anthony Weiner had uncovered thousands of emails that may have been connected to Clinton's server. Wner is the estranged husband of Clinton' aide Huma Abedin.
The report upended the dynamic of the 2016 presidential race, after Comey's said the newly uncovered emails may be relevant to its probe of Clinton's server. The news gave momentum in the polls to GOP nominee Donald Trump, and for a while suggested the case into Clinton's private server could be reopened.
However, in a letter to Congress on Sunday, Comey threw cold water on that speculation. Although he said the Bureau continued to work "around the clock' to determine whether the emails contained sensitive information, Comey added that "based on our review, we have not changed our conclusions that we expressed in July with respect to Secretary Clinton."
A Clinton campaign spokesperson told NBC News the campaign is "glad to see" Comey re-affirmed his July conclusions and that "the matter is resolved."
A senior law enforcement official told NBC News that the FBI's review of the thousands of emails on the Anthony Weiner laptop concluded that nearly all were duplicates of emails previously seen by FBI agents investigating the email server. Weiner is a former congressman from New York and the husband of Clinton aide Huma Abedin.
Trump did not immediately have a response, but former House Speaker Newt Gingrich —one of Trump's chief surrogates —appeared to suggest Comey had succumbed to political pressure. Only a week after defending Comey, the real estate mogul's camp swung back to their default position of skeptics.
The Trump campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, tweeted at the Clinton campaign.
Then why did you, your colleagues, and your candidate attack Comey and his credibility
The FBI's maneuvers, and the resulting poltical firestorm, injected uncertainty into financial markets. Investors, many of which have been operating under the presumption that Clinton would prevail over Trump, had begun re-calibrating their expectations for a possible Trump victory.
"This is good news for investors who have an appetite for risk in this environment," said Naeem Aslam, a market analyst at Thinkmarkets. "The base case scenario for most of the traders is that Hilary Clinton will be a winner of the US election.
— NBC News contributed to this article