FBI Director James Comey is under fire once again for statements around Hillary Clinton's emails with allegations that his claims about Huma Adebin forwarding classified emails to ex-husband Anthony Weiner were false.

Comey told the Senate Judiciary Committee that on investigating the laptop of former Respresentative, Anthony Weiner, the estranged husband of Abdein, they found "hundreds and thousands" of forwarded emails, some of which contained classified information. Comey said they thought this was "regular practice" for Abedin and they thought it was so she could get Weiner to print the messages.

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The claims were first put into doubt by ProPublica, who reported that FBI officials said that Comey mistated the findings of the investigation to the Senate Committee. Two sources told the organisation that Abedin had only forwarded a few emails, not hundreds and thousands and that the majority of those found on Weiner's laptop were as a result of Abedin backing up her phone to the device.

A report by CNN backed up ProPublica's story, adding that none of the emails were marked classified though some were found to have classified information –it's not known whether the classified information was found on forwarded emails or not.

During the same hearing, Comey defended his controversial letter to congress, sent 10 days before the election between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, which said the investigation into Clinton's use of a private email server had been re-opened. Comey said that not revealing the information would have been "catastrophic".

In a rare public appeance at a Women for Women forum, Clinton put particular focus on Comey's letter as a reason for her loss in an election that she was roundly predicted to win. "Did we make mistakes? Of course we did. Did I make mistakes? Oh my gosh, yes." Clinton said: "The reason why I believe we lost were the intervening events in the last 10 days."

James Comey Hillary Clinton Donald Trump US Election