Glen Thrush has a “nice” look-back at the 2016 presidential campaign (nice if you have the stomach to revisit what for me is a gaping wound) up at Politico, “10 crucial decisions that reshaped America”. Near the end of the piece, commenting on Hillary’s reluctance to engage in non-stop campaigning (in part, one suspects, a function of her age), Thrush remarks “That hesitation about “the campaigning part” was why, despite their confidence Clinton would pull out a win, many in her camp came to see the campaign as a high-stakes game of musical chairs: The candidate who had the worst final news cycle would probably lose.” Thanks to the cowardice of FBI Director James Comey, Hillary did have the worst news cycle, and she did lose, just barely.
So why did Comey did what he did, why did he send a letter to eight House committee chairs (all Republicans, of course), knowing that they would release the “information” to the press however they chose—that is to say, in the most unscrupulous and dishonest manner possible? Because he was afraid they would cut his balls off if he didn’t, and I don’t mean that as a figure of speech.
When Comey first testified before the House Oversight Committee on July 7 regarding his decision not to recommend the prosecution of Hillary Clinton on charges of mishandling classified information, he (probably) expected that if he explained himself honestly and fairly, Republicans on the committee would realize that he had been honest and fair. He soon learned, however, that Republicans on the committee did not want an honest, fair account of what James Comey had done. What they wanted was Hillary Clinton’s head on a pike, and until he gave them that, they would loathe him with the same unreasoning hatred as they loathed Hillary herself. And it is a rare federal bureaucrat with the courage to stand up to the loathing of Congress.
As a result, when the bare possibility of “new evidence” arose, Comey, in what was very likely a trembling mixture of cowardice and cunning, decided that he had a “duty” to inform Congress that the case might have to be reopened. But he had no such duty. The head of the FBI officially reports to the attorney general, and to the president. He is a member of the executive branch, not the legislative. In any event, no one is entitled to “progress reports” on an ongoing investigation—or, rather, the possibility of such an investigation.
I’d like to believe that Comey’s action didn’t turn the election. After all, Hillary Clinton “mishandled” the issue of her private email server a thousand times over, beginning with the decision to use such a server in the first place. If she hadn’t used a private server, she surely would have been elected president. If she had had the sense to argue against the Libyan intervention as strongly as she argued for it, she would have won in a walk. But Comey’s duplicity, and complicity in Republican hysteria and bloodlust, have added the final, disfiguring touch to what has been the ugliest election in our history. Thanks, Jim.
