emptywheel

Worth remembering that the DOJ/FBI decision to publicly confirm a “security review” or whatever euphemism they used for the investigation of Clinton came well before the Comey press conference.https://twitter.com/qjurecic/status/947234437636509696 …

And was triggered by a public referral from the State Dept IG.

still wasn’t Comey’s call to make. Hard to get past that one.

Sure. But his call was in July, not in October, and was triggered by a series of other gross and mostly forgotten errors which had damaged the public perception that the FBI could reach an impartial and apolitical conclusion.

Not forgotten by me. None of them justified his making the call on his own or, even worse, passing judgment on Clinton’s conduct. And then Oct was a whole other chain of mistakes.

All of the options at his disposal in July were terrible. But the October letter was a nothing-burger softball designed to insulate President Clinton from a disaster when she became President, and the campaign then fell into Chafetz' trap by playing it in a completely insane way.

Similarly, consider what it looks like for Dir FBI to say "no charges, no comment" days after AG meets Bill on a plane.