Monday, November 7, 2016

FBI Director Comey: “Never Mind”

Via the Washington Post:

FBI Director James B. Comey said Sunday that the bureau had completed its examination of newly discovered emails connected to Hillary Clinton — an inquiry that had roiled the presidential race for nine days — and found nothing to alter its months-old decision not to seek charges against the former secretary of state for her use of a private email server.

In a letter to congressional committee chairmen, Comey said investigators had worked “around the clock” to review the emails. The investigators found that the emails were either duplicates of correspondence they had reviewed earlier or were personal emails that did not pertain to State Department business, government officials said.

So after nine days of hysterics from the Trump campaign and pundits and bed-wetting and hand-wringing by the usual suspects in the Democratic Party headquarters, it’s all for naught.  Move along, folks, nothing to see here.

The damage, however, has been done.  Millions of votes were cast between the announcement on Friday, October 28 and Sunday, November 6, and commercials cut by Trump and his supporters with dark grainy images of Hillary Clinton “UNDER ANOTHER FBI INVESTIGATION” were shown and are still running.  Even though the polls didn’t show movement away from Clinton in the last few days and the race did its natural tightening as all races do as the finish line approached, the only people who truly benefited from this clusterfuck were the folks at the cable networks who set the advertising rates for the breathless BREAKING NEWS segments.

The losers are both campaigns, the FBI, and in particular Director Comey who won’t be able to get a free lunch in Washington again for the rest of his term.  The Republicans won’t trust him because they think he caved to pressure from the White House and the Clinton campaign, the Democrats won’t trust him because he clearly made a hash of the whole investigation starting back in July when he held that press conference to announce the original findings — maybe he should have just sent an e-mail? — and he’s clearly influenced by the partisan factions in the agency who have it in for the Clintons.

The rest of us just think that for whatever he’s got going for him as a director, he’s completely tone deaf and unaware of the fact that the FBI has a long history going back to the days of J. Edgar Hoover of meddling in politics and his actions have just reinforced the impression he’s a hack.

3 barks and woofs on “FBI Director Comey: “Never Mind”

  1. J. Edgar wasn’t as blatant about his political interference. Comey has been obviously partisan since his July press conference — which was completely unnecessary — in which he did everything he could to smear Clinton while announcing she’d done nothing actionable. He’s just so inept that he’s managed to get everyone p.o.’d at him.

    What should happen is that he should be prosecuted for violating the Hatch Act, but if the Democrats do it, the optics are horrible, no matter whether it’s Lynch or whoever Clinton appoints as AG. I suppose Chaffetz could investigate him — it’s another opportunity to smear Clinton, which is what it would turn in to.

    There’s always wingnut welfare. Maybe, if Fox is full up, he could get a slot at CNN.

    (Do I sound just the least bit cynical? I wonder why.)

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