WASHINGTON — Federal investigators have obtained a warrant to begin searching a large cache of emails belonging to a top aide to Hillary Clinton, federal law enforcement officials said Sunday, as prosecutors and F.B.I. agents scrambled to review as much of the information as possible before Election Day.
It remains unclear, though, whether they can finish their work by then. “The process has begun,” a federal law enforcement official said.
Earlier this month, agents in an unrelated investigation of the disgraced congressman Anthony D. Weiner discovered emails belonging to his estranged wife, Huma Abedin, the aide to Mrs. Clinton. That prompted a renewed interest among F.B.I. agents who had investigated Mrs. Clinton for her use of a private email server as secretary state and had concluded their case without charges in July.
A federal law enforcement official said agents had discovered hundreds of thousands of Ms. Abedin’s emails on her husband’s computer, but investigators expected to seize only a portion of the total. Agents will have probable cause to search only the messages related to the Clinton investigation.
Some of Ms. Abedin’s emails passed through Mrs. Clinton’s private server, officials said, which means there is a high likelihood that the F.B.I. has already read them.
Since the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, revealed the existence of the emails in a letter to Congress on Friday, senior Justice Department and F.B.I. officials have been under tremendous pressure to review the messages quickly. Both Mrs. Clinton and her Republican rival, Donald J. Trump, have called for the F.B.I. to say publicly what it knows before Election Day.
Over the weekend, senior Justice Department officials said they would make all resources available to conduct the investigation as quickly as possible, saying Mr. Comey’s letter — just days before the election — gave the matter an unprecedented urgency.
The Justice Department efforts were described by three federal law enforcement officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case.
Late Friday and early Saturday, law enforcement officials said there was no chance the email review could be completed before Election Day.
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