In a move that sent shockwaves through both presidential campaigns, James Comey said in a letter to Congress that an investigative team is seeking to determine if any of the emails contain classified information and whether any of them are 'significant'.
With just 11 days until the presidential election, Clinton was on a plane with no WiFi coverage when the announcement was made.
Donald Trump hailed the move as a chance to right 'a miscarriage of justice' as a crowd of supporters in Manchester, New Hampshire, chanted 'lock her up'.
The sense of a new Clinton crisis came as her poll lead collapse to four points in the latest nationwide survey.
Comey said that after learning about the emails he advised the bureau to take 'appropriate investigative steps' to review them.
Clinton, a former secretary of state and the Democratic nominee for the White House, leads Republican presidential nominee Trump, by four points in the latest polling.
Comey sent the letter to heads of the of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, Judiciary Committees and two Appropriations subcommittees that deal with justice issues, as well as the House's Oversight Committee and the Senate's Homeland Security Committee.
'In connection with an unrelated case,' Comey told them, 'the FBI has learned of the existence of emails that appear to be pertinent to the investigation.'
Comey said that after becoming aware of the new information yesterday he 'agreed that the FBI should take appropriate investigative steps designed to allow investigators to review these emails to determine whether they contain classified information, as well as to access their importance to our investigation.
'Although the FBI cannot yet access whether or not this material may be significant, and I cannot predict how long it will take us to complete this additional work, I believe it is important to update your Committees about our efforts,' he wrote.
Clinton was in the air, on her way to Iowa, when the news broke. Campaign officials gaggled with reporters earlier in the flight but had decamped the press section by the time the FBI investigation news reached 30,000 feet.
Clinton arrived in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Friday shortly after news of the stunning development broke in-flight.
After a prolonged delay on the tarmac while her motorcade waited outside her campaign plane, the candidate emerged, followed by the photographer Annie Leibowitz who had been conducting a photoshoot on the plane.
Clinton waved to reporters and didn’t respond to shouted questions about whether she had been informed that the FBI had reopened its investigation. She then got into her motorcade and headed to her first campaign rally of the day.
Asked to react to the FBI announcement a senior Clinton campaign spokesperson told NBC News: 'No idea.'
At the top of an early afternoon campaign rally in Manchester, New Hampshire, Trump took a victory lap and congratulated the FBI for deciding to take a second look at the case.
'The FBI has just sent a letter to Congress informing them that they have discovered new emails pertaining to the former secretary of state Hillary Clinton's investigation,' he said, as 1,600 people erupted in a chant of 'Lock her up!'
'And they are reopening the case into her criminal and illegal conduct that threatens the security of the United States of America.'
'Hillary Clinton's corruption is on a scale we have never seen before. We must not let her take her criminal scheme into the Oval Office,' Trump declared.
'I have great respect for the fact that the FBI and the Department of Justice are now willing to have the courage to right the horrible mistake that they made. This was a grave miscarriage of justice that the American people fully understood, and it is everybody's hope that it is about to be corrected.'
He added a moment later: 'With that being said, the rest of my speech is going to be so boring! Should I even make the speech?'
His jubilant crowd screamed: 'Yeah!'
'The news this morning is – this is bigger than Watergate,' Trump said later in his speech.
House Speaker Paul Ryan meanwhile said in a statement that Clinton 'has nobody but herself to blame' for re-opened investigation.
'She was entrusted with some of our nation's most important secrets, and she betrayed that trust by carelessly mishandling highly classified information,' he said.
'This decision, long overdue, is the result of her reckless use of a private email server, and her refusal to be forthcoming with federal investigators.
'I renew my call for the Director of National Intelligence to suspend all classified briefings for Secretary Clinton until this matter is fully resolved,' Ryan said.
Daily Mail
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