The media's reaction here feels a bit like a referee who's just realized that he may have gotten suckered into calling a game-changing penalty on a dive. They're pissed off about their initial knee-jerk reaction and trying their damnedest to minimize its effects. It makes it all the worse that it comes from someone they should be able to trust to avoid partisan politics.
While I do think that he was in an unwinnable situation, he could have used much stronger language to avoid the appearance of influencing the election. 'Cannot yet assess whether this material may be significant' makes it sound like a toss-up, 50-50 chance of this being really serious. Language like more along the lines of 'no basis at this point to think that it will change my original recommendations' would have done more to avoid the appearance of influencing the election, and would have been just as factually accurate.
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