Donald Trump ignores opinion polls when they are unkind to him but he has been talking about them again lately as he shrinks Hillary Clinton’s lead in the final days of the race for White House.

The Republican nominee tweeted on Tuesday morning about a Washington Post-ABC poll that put him ahead of the Democratic rival by 1 point. “Wow, now leading in @ABC /@washingtonpost Poll 46 to 45. Gone up 12 points in two weeks, mostly before the Crooked Hillary blow-up!” Trump tweeted.

The Democrat, however, continues to lead in the average of polls, although by a shrinking margin. In the RealClearPolitics average of national polls, Clinton’s lead was down to 2.2 points, from over 7 points on the eve of the first presidential debate.
The “blow-up” in Trump’s tweet was a reference to FBI director James Comey’s letter to congress last week about the discovery of new emails “pertinent” to the investigation of Clinton’s use of a private email server as the secretary of state.

Comey has come under withering attacks from Democrats and some Republicans for trying to involve himself into the election.
Comey has been compared to J Edgar Hoover, who had tried to tip the 1948 presidential election in favour of Thomas E. Dewey, a Republican, by providing his campaign damaging bits of information on the incumbent president Harry Truman, a Democrat.

Reports have also surfaced of the FBI opening an investigation into former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort’s ties to Russia as a Washington DC lobbyist, which the investigating agency has neither confirmed nor denied. Manafort called those reports “an outrageous smear” driven by the Clinton campaign and other Democrats.

With the FBI in full play, the US department of justice, which oversees the investigating agency, moved on Monday to contain the damage telling congress in a letter it will work with the investigating agency and “dedicate all necessary resources and take appropriate steps as expeditiously as possible”.

There was no word yet on the content of the emails that the FBI discovered on the laptop of Anthony Weiner, estranged husband of Clinton aide Huma Abedin, while investigating him for texting exploit pictures of himself to a minor girl.

Comey set off a firestorm sending a letter about these emails to congressional leaders last Friday calling them “pertinent” to the investigation about Clinton’s private server which he had announced closed in July, saying she had been “extremely careless” but there was no prosecutable evidence of wrongdoing.

In his Friday letter, Comey was seen, specially by Republicans, to have signaled he has reversed his earlier decision and reopened the investigation. Trump is happily fanning that notion renewing his call for Clinton to be not allowed to run.