Edward Snowden is helping Donald Trump understand just how quickly the FBI can work.
Eight days after discovering a trove of new emails, FBI director James Comey upheld the agency’s earlier decision to not charge Hillary Clinton for keeping a private email server. Trump responded by claiming that the system is “rigged,” telling a crowd of supporters that it isn’t possible that the FBI looked through all 650,000 emails in just over a week.
“Right now she’s being protected by a rigged system. It’s a totally rigged system,” Trump said during a campaign speech in Michigan following Sunday’s announcement. “You can’t review 650,000 new emails in eight days. You can’t do it, folks.”
While many of the Republican nominee’s supporters echoed his statements on Twitter, others were less inclined to believe him. Jeff Jarvis, a journalism professor, tweeted at NSA whistleblower and former CIA agent Edward Snowden to ask how long it would take to go through all those emails. Snowden quickly explained in a single tweet that eight days is more than plausible:
Drop non-responsive To:/CC:/BCC:, hash both sets, then subtract those that match. Old laptops could do it in minutes-to-hours.
— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) November 7, 2016
Clinton currently holds a 4-point lead over Trump in the latest ABC/Washington Post poll, while FiveThirtyEight puts her chances of winning at about 70%. Betting sites are putting her chances at more than 80% (and gamblers are known to have an accurate pulse on election outcomes).