Obama critical of FBI chief President implicitly criticises bureau’s director for acting on the basis of ‘innuendo’

President Barack Obama has implicitly criticised FBI director James Comey over the new inquiry into Hillary Clinton’s email use.

He said US investigations should not operate on the basis of “innuendo” or “incomplete information”.

The FBI is now investigating emails that may be linked to its probe into Mrs Clinton’s private email server.

Mr Comey has faced a fierce backlash for announcing the move just 11 days before the election.

Mr Obama’s remarks are his first public comments since Mr Comey’s announcement on Friday that the FBI had discovered a new batch of emails that may or may not be relevant to an earlier investigation into Mrs Clinton’s handling of classified information.

“I’ve made a very deliberate effort to make sure that I don’t look like I’m meddling,” Mr Obama said.

But he added: “I do think that there is a norm that when there are investigations we don’t operate on innuendo, we don’t operate on incomplete information, we don’t operate on leaks.

“We operate based on concrete decisions that are made.”

It emerged in March 2015 that Mrs Clinton had been breaking federal rules by operating a private email server while she was secretary of state from 2009-13.

Her lawyers combed through the server and provided the state department with 30,000 work-related emails, but her campaign deleted another 33,000 messages, saying they were personal in nature.

Mr Comey concluded in July that Mrs Clinton had been “extremely careless” in handling classified information, but there were no grounds for any charges.

The latest emails were found in a separate investigation into allegations that former congressman Anthony Weiner sent illicit text messages to a 15-year-old girl.

Mr Weiner is married to one of Mrs Clinton’s closest aides, Huma Abedin.

The FBI has reportedly obtained a warrant to search the cache of emails belonging to Ms Abedin, which are believed to have been found on her estranged husband’s laptop.

Mr Comey and Attorney General Loretta Lynch said they are working quickly to sift through the emails.

Democrats have demanded that Mr Comey rapidly make public what the agency knows.

On Sunday, the Democratic Senate leader Harry Reid said that, by revealing the bureau was investigating emails possibly linked to Mrs Clinton, Mr Comey was violating an act that bars officials from influencing an election.