KENT, Ohio _ Hillary Clinton urged voters not to be "distracted" by the FBI's revived scrutiny of her email practices and sought to turn the focus to her Republican rival, casting Donald Trump as an untested leader who can't be trusted with nuclear weapons.
Kicking off the final week of the presidential race with a rally at Kent State University, Clinton acknowledged that voters may be asking what "this new email story is about," or "why in the world the FBI would decide to jump into an election with no evidence of wrongdoing with just days to go."
"That's a good question," she added with a chuckle, before saying investigators "by all means" should examine thousands of emails found on a laptop computer apparently used by the husband of a top Clinton aide, Huma Abedin.
"I am sure they will reach the same conclusion they did when they looked at my emails for the last year: There is no case here," Clinton said of the latest FBI probe.
The former secretary of state insisted, as she has in the past, that she was not making excuses for using a private email server, rather than the State Department's email system, while in President Barack Obama's Cabinet.
But she noted that FBI Director James Comey, whom she did not mention by name, said in July that it "wasn't even a close call" when he determined there were no grounds to pursue criminal charges against her.
"I think most people have decided a long time ago what they think about all of this," Clinton said. "Now what people are focused on is choosing the next president and commander in chief of the United States of America. So in these last days, let's not get distracted from the real choice in this election."
Clinton vowed a week ago, when her campaign appeared on track to an easy victory at the Nov. 8 polls, that she would no longer respond to Trump's harsh criticism of her.
On Monday, after her campaign was put on the defensive by Comey's announcement Friday that the FBI was scrutinizing a newly found trove of emails, she launched into a scathing attack on Trump's readiness to serve as commander in chief.
Clinton questioned whether Trump fully understood the consequences of casual talk about the nuclear arsenal and how many millions of people could be killed with the launch of a single weapon.
She also referred to reports of investigations into some of Trump's business associates and their alleged ties to Russia's president, Vladimir Putin.
Clinton warned that Putin, a "trained intelligence officer" from his days as a Soviet-era KGB officer, viewed Trump as a potential "puppet."
She demanded that the GOP nominee, who has refused to release his tax returns, disclose the extent of his financial ties to Russian interests.
As she highlighted her own national security experience as a U.S. senator from New York and then secretary of state in the first Obama administration, she called attention to Trump's behavior hours after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.
Trump, she said, called in to a local television station to "brag" that, with the Twin Towers collapsed and thousands dead or missing, one of his own buildings was now the tallest in lower Manhattan.
"What kind of person brags at a moment like that?" she asked. "I'll tell you: someone who should never set foot in the Oval Office."
