US President-elect Donald Trump will not pursue a further investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails, to help her “heal”, his spokeswoman has said.
A Trump spokeswoman said he would back down from his pledge to appoint a special prosecutor to look into the former Secretary of State.
Trump had threatened to “jail” Mrs Clinton, and at his rallies his supporters often chanted “Lock her up!”
The FBI cleared Mrs Clinton, but criticised her private server.
Senior Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway told MSNBC that “when the president-elect… tells you before he’s even inaugurated he doesn’t wish to pursue these charges, it sends a very strong message – tone and content”.
“And I think Hillary Clinton still has to face the fact that a majority of Americans don’t find her to be honest or trustworthy, but if Donald Trump can help her heal, then perhaps that’s a good thing,” she added.
The right-wing Breitbart News Network, which aligned itself with the New York billionaire early in the election, swiftly decried the climb-down as a “broken promise”.
Democrats also attacked Trump for even having suggested in the first place that he could pursue charges against Mrs Clinton.
“That’s not how this works,” US Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut tweeted. “In our democracy, the President doesn’t decide who gets prosecuted and who doesn’t.”
In other developments:
*Trump is meeting New York Times executives after briefly cancelling the face-to-face, accusing the newspaper on Twitter of changing the terms of the meeting
*Trump’s charitable foundation admitted it violated a ban on “self-dealing” by transferring income or assets to a “disqualified person”, according to its 2015 tax filings made public this week
*He promised that on his first day in the White House in January he would torpedo the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, a cornerstone of President Barack Obama’s foreign policy
*The UK ruled out replacing its ambassador in Washington after Trump tweeted that Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage “would do a great job”
During the second presidential debate in October, Trump pledged that if elected, he would appoint a special prosecutor to look into Mrs Clinton’s private email use, suggesting she would be prison.
His threat raised questions about whether a President Trump might flex his political muscles over the Justice Department.
If Trump had followed through on the pledge, it would have been the first time in recent history that a president ordered his attorney general to prosecute a political rival.
In a call to donors following her shock election defeat, Mrs Clinton blamed her loss on the FBI’s last-minute intervention.
The law enforcement agency’s director James Comey shook up the presidential race when he announced a new inquiry into Mrs Clinton’s private email server 11 days before the election, only to drop the matter two days before Americans voted, reports the BBC.
The development revived an investigation that had been declared over in July, when Comey said Mrs Clinton’s handling of sensitive classified material was “extremely careless” but did not warrant criminal charges.
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