Nine days ago, Director James Comey sent a letter informing congressional leaders that the FBI was reviewing newly discovered e-mails. He said they “appeared to be pertinent” to its yearlong investigation into Hillary’s use of a private e-mail server. Unsurprisingly, the immediate leaking of that letter shocked the world.
Politicians and pundits (of every partisan disposition) reacted to that letter as if it were a criminal indictment. For them, the proverbial other shoe had dropped, and Hillary’s presidential campaign was doomed.
By contrast, here is the sober, albeit incredulous, note I sounded in “Hey, FBI, Scavenging Hillary’s E-mails Is No Way to Disrupt Terrorist Plots,” November 1, 2016:
Comey admitted he had no idea if these newly discovered e-mails might cause the FBI to change the conclusion it came to in July. Back then, even though it found that she was “extremely careless” in handling classified e-mails, the FBI concluded that Hillary did nothing to warrant prosecution. Comey affirmed in congressional testimony that it was ‘not even a close call’…
There seems little chance agents will discover anything to incriminate Hillary… [Not to mention] the Keystone-esque absurdity of 147 FBI agents scavenging through the veritable haystack of e-mails on Weiner’s computer, searching for the needle of a smoking gun they could not find on Hillary’s server…
This e-mailgate is sheer madness.
Hence, even though the timing surprises me, this “breaking news” does not:
Nine days after upending the 2016 presidential campaign, FBI Director James Comey announced Sunday that Hillary Clinton would not face charges over newly discovered emails found on a separate computer.
In a letter to Congress, Comey said he would not revisit his initial conclusion, announced in July, that Clinton acted carelessly, but not criminally, when she used a private email account as secretary of state.
(Huffington Post, November 6, 2016)
Unfortunately, this comes as little consolation to Hillary. After all, fodder from Comey’s initial letter landed like a cluster bomb on her campaign trail, cratering her seemingly smooth path to the White House.
Nothing betrayed the devastating effect quite like Trump’s campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, gloating about the damage Comey had done. Trump’s rise and Hillary’s fall in the polls since then speaks volumes….
Nonetheless, instead of bemoaning this manifest unfairness, Hillary should “go high.” She should leave it to her surrogates to damn Trump and his surrogates for baying at the FBI to “lock her up;” you know, like tin-pot dictators do to their political opponents in Banana Republics.
Hillary should have no illusions, however, that Trump’s shoot-first-question-later temperament will cost him any votes, After all, he has vindicated this outrageous statement time and again:
I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters.
(Washington Post, January 23, 2016)
It hardly matters to them that his stump speeches have always been little more than a string of exaggerations, misrepresentations, and “big” lies, all of which he uses a teleprompter these days to deliver with Orwellian persuasion. Most brazen among his latest lies is that Hillary is under investigation for all kinds of crimes and will end up in jail. Because he knows full well that the FBI and Department of Justice have now cleared her twice; and, once in the White House, pigs will fly before rabid Republicans impeach and convict her.
By the way, remember when Trump used to mock Hillary and Obama as “dumb losers” for using a teleprompter? Now he’s “teleprompter Don.” This man’s hypocrisy knows no bounds.
In any event, what I find most interesting about this latest disqualifying episode is the way his surrogates have betrayed a cult-like mission to proselytize Trump’s most ignorant and reckless blather. None of them has distinguished himself more dubiously in this respect than former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani.
As a former federal prosecutor, he is the last person who should be preaching Trump’s self-serving message that the FBI is rigged and Hillary is guilty. Again, the director of the FBI said that no reasonable prosecutor would even charge Hillary in this case. It follows therefore that Giuliani has reduced himself to nothing more than just another political hack.
Remarkably, though, he seems to have derived perverse satisfaction from serving as Trump’s consigliere throughout this campaign. But he will soon learn that this does not compensate for sacrificing his reputation, goodwill and title as America’s mayor … all at the altar of Trump.
But imagine a Trump presidency, during which Yes Men like Giuliani are continually reassuring him that he’s the smartest, richest, sexiest, and most beloved man in the world.
His running mate, Indiana Governor Mike Pence, telegraphed this foreboding spectacle at a rally tonight. You’d think a man in his position would admonish the restive mobs at campaign rallies to respect the FBI’s conclusion. Not least because Trump has proclaimed himself the “law and order candidate.”
Instead Pence fed them red meat; saying in effect that the FBI conclusion does not matter. After all, Trump orthodoxy holds that any FBI conclusion that does not serve his political interest must be rigged … just like any poll that does not show him in the lead.
But nothing could be more foreboding than the willingness of no less an establishmentarian than Pence sacrificing democratic institutions and political norms at the altar of Trump’s ego. Perhaps you’ve seen him affecting that constipated countenance of sincerity as he mutters Trump-whispering words. He strains credulity not only because nobody can make sense of the contradictory and often “fact-free” things Trump says (or tweets), but also because Pence clearly knows he’s making no sense when he tries to do so.
Only in America, folks.
NOTE: If you’re a citizen, 18 or older, I urge you to join the enlightened masses casting ballots on Tuesday to ensure that this ignorant, narcissistic, xenophobic, racist, sexist, misogynistic, bullying, thin-skinned, vindictive, petulant man-child (to list his most-defining traits) does not become the next president of the United States.
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Hey, FBI…
* This commentary was originally published yesterday, Sunday, at 8:23 p.m.