OK, discuss the latest FBI revelation here. I’ve no idea what to think.
[Saturday-morning update]
Oh, this is fun. The Dems are panicking:
The Democratic Coalition Against Trump filed a complaint with the Department of Justice Office of Professional Responsibility on Friday against FBI Director James Comey for interfering in the Presidential election, following the FBI’s decision to open up an investigation into Secretary Clinton’s emails this close to Election Day. Federal employees are forbidden from participating in political activities under the Hatch Act.
“It is absolutely absurd that FBI Director Comey would support Donald Trump like this with only 11 days to go before the election,” said Scott Dworkin, Senior Advisor to the Democratic Coalition Against Trump. “It is an obvious attack from a lifelong Republican who used to serve in the Bush White House, just to undermine her campaign. Comey needs to focus on stopping terrorists and protecting America, not investigating our soon to be President-Elect Hillary Clinton.”
As well they should be. She wasn’t “cruising to election.” Her poll numbers were plummeting even before Comey’s letter.
[Update mid-morning]
So the Justice Department isn’t happy. I’ll bet. I think that Comey is basically daring Obama to fire him. Which would be the modern-day equivalent of the Saturday Night Massacre.
[Update a few minutes later]
If you don’t want the FBI involved in elections, don’t nominate someone who’s being investigated by the FBI
— Allahpundit (@allahpundit) October 29, 2016
An idea so crazy it just might work!
[Update a few minutes later]
Do we want to put a criminal in the White House?
No. He can be impeached and removed. She can’t.
[Update a few minutes later]
Clinton insiders in anger and disbelief:
They said they were “dumbfounded” by the revelation that the new FBI review may have been spurred by a separate investigation into Anthony Weiner sending lewd texts to a minor. Weiner is separated from wife Huma Abedin, one of Clinton’s closest aides.
And they worried that Clinton’s unconventional email arrangement had finally caught up to her and might imperil her presidential bid less than two weeks before Election Day.
“I’m livid, actually,” one Clinton surrogate told The Hill. “This has turned into malpractice. It’s an unforced error at this point. I have no idea what Comey is up to but the idea this email issue is popping back up again is outrageous. It never should have occurred in the first place. Someone somewhere should have told her no. And they didn’t and now we’re all paying the price.”
Another ally called the campaign’s mood something akin to “paralysis,” and blamed Weiner’s behavior for railroading the campaign.
One strategist said the developments would further cement the notion that Clinton has something to hide.
You don’t say. I wonder if/when they’ll get beyond anger and disbelief to bargaining, and acceptance?
[Update a few minutes later]
Yes:
ou need to put out there the real scandal: how did FBI not seize laptop used by Clinton’s top aide until now? Suggests DOJ obstructionism/hamstringing.
It may be that Comey was frustrated in his inability to do a proper investigation, and the discovery of the emails in the investigation of Weiner’s wiener was a joyous gift.
[Update mid-afternoon]
Apparently cognizant of the frivolousness of his constitutional claim, Comey concurrently relies on Justice Department tradition: Even if not invalid, 793(f) should not be applied, because the Justice Department nearly never applies it. This circular argument leads to the director’s astonishing conclusion that prosecuting Mrs. Clinton would amount to unequal protection of law: one punishing standard for her, a forgiving one for everyone else.
This is absurd. Mrs. Clinton’s case may be singular, but that is because of the breadth of its audaciousness. No official of such high rank has ever systematically conducted government business through unauthorized, unlawful channels, with the inexorable result that thousands of classified e-mails were generated and tens of thousands of government files — e-mails involving government business, whether or not classified — were destroyed (and even more had their destruction attempted). It is not invidious selective prosecution to subject an offense of unprecedented scope to prosecution under a perfectly fit statute, no matter how infrequently that statute has been used.
As someone once said, quantity has a quality all its own.
Just as significantly, several people have been prosecuted for gross negligence in mishandling classified information. The fact that these are military cases, not Justice Department prosecutions, does not nullify them, as Comey implies. In federal prosecutions, low-level U.S. officers were sent to prison and subjected to other penalties. Director Comey’s factitious distinguishing of these cases is meritless. They involve officials many rungs below Mrs. Clinton’s status who engaged in misconduct geometrically less serious in scope. So yes, there is a different standard of justice for Clinton, but it is laughable to suggest that she got the short end of that stick.
All this legal hocus-pocus was the cleanest way for the administration to effectuate a foregone conclusion: Mrs. Clinton was not going to be prosecuted. Perversely, the FBI’s year-long, forensically meticulous investigation was sold as an exoneration arrived at only after thorough review, rather than a measure of the prodigious amount of evidence against Clinton. The more one kicks the tires, though, the more one sees there was only one way this investigation would end.
Yes. And what happened yesterday doesn’t really mitigate it. The only way for him to have done the right thing was to resign, given how politicized this Justice Department is.