Donald Trump
Donald TrumpReuters

After former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton won her party’s nomination at the 2016 Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, Republican nominee Donald Trump looked to reignite the long-running email scandal which dogged Mrs. Clinton throughout the primary season.

Calling for Russia to retrieve thousands of lost Clinton emails which were deleted prior to the handover of her private email server to the FBI, Trump said hackers revealing the missing Clinton emails would be “rewarded mightily”.

“It would be interesting to see, I will tell you this, Russia, if you're listening I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” Trump said. “I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”

In an attempt to remind voters of Clinton’s use of a private email server to handle classified government material, which FBI chief James Comey called “extremely careless”, and rekindle fears her server may have been hacked by foreign agents, Trump later implied hackers may already be in possession of Clinton’s lost emails.

“If Russia or any other country or person has Hillary Clinton's 33,000 illegally deleted emails,” Trump tweeted on Wednesday, “perhaps they should share them with the FBI!”

But Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan rejected Trump’s statements, calling Russia “a global menace” and demanding Putting “stay out of this election.”

Others, however, played down Trump’s comments, calling them humorous jabs at the Democratic nominee.

"The media seems more upset by Trump's joke about Russian hacking than by the fact that Hillary's personal server was vulnerable to Russia," former House Speaker Newt Gingrich posted on Twitter.