Sources: Investigators Worked Around the Clock to Sift Through E-mails
ROMANS: All right. Welcome back to EARLY START. The final moment or the final, final stretch of this campaign. Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have dueling up-eds in this morning's USA Today. Both candidates write about their policies but Trump uses most of his space to hammer Clinton. Promising to fix a rigged system in which political insiders can break the law without consequence. He also mentions Clinton being the subject of an FBI investigation but fails to say she was cleared on Sunday by FBI Director Comey. In her op-ed Clinton writes, quote, "My opponent has run his campaign on decisiveness, fear and insults and spent months pitting Americans against each other. Now we have to decide who we are." This extraordinary campaign season ending in extraordinary way with the FBI clearing Hillary Clinton in the e-mail investigation for the second time. This happening on a weekend. This happening after with nine days of FBI controversy marinating and some would say dragging down the Clinton campaign. Joining us now to look ahead, CNN political commentator John Phillips, a top radio host, columnist for the Orange County Register and Trump supporter, CNN commentator Symone Sanders, former national press secretary for the Bernie Sanders campaign and now Clinton supporter, Ellis Henican, political analyst and bestselling author, you've seen here some time bright early in the morning with us, and senior media correspondent, Brian Stelter, host of CNN's Reliable Sources. Let's listen to Donald Trump. I mean, Donald Trump, he has -- he has hammered, you heard in that op-ed, have been hammering Hillary Clinton saying that she breaks the law without consequence and now he's hammering the FBI on this -- the second FBI decision. Let's listen.</s>TRUMP: You can't review 650,000 new e-mails in eight days. You can't do it, folks.</s>ROMANS: Brian Stelter, what is so interesting to me is that the Clinton campaign can't get those days back.</s>BRIAN STELTER, CNN SENIOR MEDIA CORRESPONDENT: True.</s>ROMANS: And Donald Trump still has a very powerful message that he's going to hammer here in the couple of -- the next couple of days, less than two days.</s>STELTER: Yes. And there is resentment inside the Clinton campaign about how this was handled by the Director Comey. No doubt about it. We even heard Clinton aides speak about that overnight. Frankly, though, they do not want the candidate talking about this. They do not want e-mails to be overshadowing the last two days of her campaign. She went to big events in Pennsylvania and other states in the final two days. But I was struck by Trump's comment there saying it's impossible to review all the e-mails in such a short period of time. He knows how Google works, he knows how e-mails servers work. So, he knows you could do a key word search, you could do a series of actually calculated database searches in order to find out if there's duplicate e-mails or if there's new e-mails and find out what's in them. So, I do think it makes sense. The FBI -- the FBI has hundreds of engineers and programmers, they were able to look through these e- mails. Trump's argument that it was impossible doesn't seem to stand up to scrutiny.</s>BERMAN: Here's interesting, Brian. If you read the New York Times yesterday talking about Trump's closing moment, he doesn't use a computer and he doesn't really know too much about it. So maybe he does -- maybe he doesn't know how Google works in key words searches work at least base on the New York Times reporting. Ellis Henican, is this better on balance for the Clinton campaign? When this broke yesterday, I thought for a second, well, gosh, this just makes e-mails a story again for a few hours all be it one that is better for Hillary Clinton but do you think they welcome this in the last 24 hours?</s>ELLIS HENICAN, POLITICAL ANALYST: On balance is definitely better. I mean, Brian is right. You know, those nine days you don't get back and anything that happens in the last 72 hours say of the campaign very hard for voters to absorb, but let me tell you, John. You'd better have an upper trajectory than a downward one. And the Hillary campaign particularly does need something - something to smile about and they got it with this.</s>ROMANS: You know, Symone Sanders, let me ask you, do you think that people who are undecided are going to be swayed by the second FBI revelation this weekend? Or I mean, is there not enough time for people to ruminate on this and react if you're undecided voter?</s>SYMONE SANDERS, FMR. BERNIE SANDER'S NATIONAL PRESS SECRETARY: I think for undecided voters -- I mean, clearly they haven't gone to the polls. If we look at people in New Hampshire, folks in New Hampshire traditionally they take their vote down to the wire. OK? They are going into the polling place saying I'm still trying to decide who I'm voting for. So, for those undecided voters that have not yet cast their ballot, yes. I think this could definitely make a difference, that and the closing argument you have seen from Secretary Clinton. But I do think that there had been a surge in early vote numbers and we know that that traditionally favors some democrats. When you talk about in person voting, absentee voting is another issue. But, you know, I think I can speak for everybody in America, I'm glad we have put this e-mail -- I'm going to speak for all of America right now, we have put the e-mails to rest.</s>JOHN PHILLIPS, KABC TALK RADIO HOST: Now there's no need for me to talk.</s>SANDERS: Here we go.</s>BERMAN: No, no, no. Where will you go, with early voting, look, Michigan, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire which are all key states effectively have no real early voting that matters here which is where this argument now all comes down to at the end. John Phillips, Donald Trump said the whole system was rigged with the FBI beforehand then when Comey opened the review, not so rigged. Now we're back to rigging, rigged again. You know, does Donald Trump have credibility if he keeps changing his tune on this?</s>PHILLIPS: This is why people believe in conspiracy theories. If they could go through the e-mails this past why didn't they do that before he made the whole argument?</s>BERMAN: Well, that's a whole separate argument.</s>ROMANS: Yes.</s>BERMAN: That's the arguments democrats are making.</s>SANDERS: Then Director Comey and his nonpolitical bone in his body, yes.</s>PHILLIPS: But this is why people believe in conspiracy theories. Now on the whole, look, I think that this is probably a good thing for Hillary Clinton. The best case scenario for Donald Trump is Hillary appearing on an episode of cops outside her home in Chappaqua getting arrested with the knee dropped to the back. The best case scenario for Hillary Clinton...</s>BERMAN: She just spoke for all of American. John is going to have one on his camp.</s>PHILLIPS: The best case scenario for Hillary Clinton would be to make -- to have the announcement that there are no charges that are going to be filed and then to walk back that initial press conference where he really essentially went out there and slammed her. He didn't do that but he gave her more than half a loaf I'd say.</s>ROMANS: Sloppy, but not criminal. That's where we are. We're back to the beginning, right? I mean, we're back to the beginning with the FBI thing, you know. Brian Stelter, and but all that time people have been hearing that Donald Trump has been able to capitalize on this, you know, crooked Hillary, crooked Hillary.</s>STELTER: And Richard Meadow (Inaudible) had a great point last night, people's view to these candidates essentially have not changed in over a year. People are stuck where they are and the e-mail server, you know, it didn't actually effect people's perception that much, it might have been affected the polls a little bit last week but not in a dramatic way.</s>BERMAN: You'll never know. You'll never know, will you?</s>ROMANS: Right.</s>BERMAN: But because of the one hand there were people, you know, that was when Hillary Clinton was starting to look at Arizona. She just really with her travel schedule with travel to Arizona. Arizona, Georgia, they were looking to expand and then all of a sudden they're fighting for Michigan and Pennsylvania. All right, guys. We have got a lot more to talk about over the next couple of hours. Don't go anywhere. Don't go anywhere, they're not. CNN will be on the air with that live election coverage and will continuously through tomorrow night every race, every result, stay with us, stay with CNN until the last vote is counted.</s>BERMAN: All right. All right. No republican has ever won the presidency without winning the state of Ohio. I am sure I am the first person to ever tell you that. Polls there have been very, very close. Both candidates pulling out all the big guns to try to win that state, we're going to visit it next.