WASHINGTON — The FBI on Monday began loading e-mails belonging to a top aide to Hillary Clinton into a special computer program that would allow bureau analysts to determine whether they contain classified information, law enforcement officials said.
The software should allow them to learn relatively quickly how many e-mails are copies of messages they have already read as part of the investigation into the use of Clinton’s private server. The FBI completed that inquiry in July and, along with prosecutors, decided not to bring any charges against Clinton or her aides.
“This is not a manpower issue,’’ said one senior law enforcement official. “It’s an issue of getting the e-mails into a program that can allow agents to look at them.’’
Whether they will be able to complete their review by Election Day is unclear, although investigators have been under intense pressure from both political parties to do so since Friday, when FBI Director James B. Comey revealed the existence of the e-mails in an explosive letter to Congress.
The e-mails belong to Huma Abedin, a top adviser to Clinton. Agents discovered them on a laptop seized by the FBI that belongs to her estranged husband, Anthony Weiner, who is under investigation for allegedly exchanging illicit text messages with a 15-year-old girl.
The FBI was granted a warrant on Sunday that allowed agents to begin searching the messages.
While investigators found hundreds of thousands of e-mails on Weiner’s computer, they are focusing on a small portion of the total. The review is being led by the same Washington-based team of agents that conducted the investigation of Clinton’s server.
While the hunt for classified information is the bureau’s first priority, it is not the most significant issue for either Abedin or Clinton. Investigators have already determined that Clinton and her aides improperly sent classified information on her private e-mail server.
The Justice Department concluded, though, that it could not prove they did it intentionally, which would be a crime. Finding more classified information among Abedin’s e-mails would not immediately change that conclusion.
What could cause problems for Abedin — and by extension Clinton — is if the FBI finds evidence that anyone tried to conceal these new e-mails from investigators.
Abedin has said she turned over all her e-mails to the FBI months ago and does not know how e-mails ended up on Weiner’s laptop. And officials have said there is no indication that Abedin or Clinton tried to conceal information from the authorities.
Clinton focused Monday on Ohio, a state Donald Trump’s team concedes he must win.
‘‘There is no case here,’’ Clinton said of the FBI examination. ‘‘Most people have decided a long time ago what they think about all this.’’
Clinton on Monday launched a television ad revisiting the famous 1964 ‘‘Daisy’’ ad about nuclear weapons. It features Monique Luiz, the same woman who, as a girl, plucked petals from a flower in the original ad, which President Lyndon Johnson aimed at GOP nominee Barry Goldwater. The ad expresses a frequent Clinton theme: that Trump, the Republican nominee, is reckless, and unfit to be commander in chief.
“The fear of nuclear war that we had as children — I never thought our children would ever have to deal with that again,’’ Luiz states in the ad. “And to see that coming forward in this election is really scary.’’
