THis definitely doesn't make sense. The e-mails came to light in the fall of 2005. That's when the republicans "dealt" with this issue, and considered the matter closed.
There is no reason that the FBI would have been told in July of 2006 that the republicans "would handle it". If the story said the republicans said they had already "handled it", it might have a modicum of credibility.
An anonymous FBI source is on record as saying that the original e-mail just didn't look criminal. There's no reason to believe there is more to it than that, especially since newspapers found the same thing, nothing to report about.
BUT, this is another example of someone sending this information to people to get some traction. WHO SENT THE E-MAIL to the FBI? It wasn't the republicans, who dealt with it in 2005. It wasn't the page who got the e-mail, he didn't want anything to do with the story. So it must have been someone else who wanted to cause trouble.
Officials from the liberal-leaning group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington said yesterday that they received copies of the Louisiana e-mails on July 21 and turned them over to the FBI the same day.
The emails were not the problem, the Instant Messages were the problem. The emails came to light in 2003. The Instant Messages came to light in July 2006.