emptywheel

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.

This is a longer convo but it’s not true that he did the first presser because of the plane incident. Planned it all along without telling DOJ. Goal was more than just avoiding a bad option, it was furthering the St Jim thing (which he probably believes).

Too long for twitter maybe, but I think this boils down to DOJ can't investigate high-profile politicians without a special counsel in a modern partisan environment, and Comey tried to straddle that gap and fell down the middle.

it wasn't his place to appoint a SC tho.

That's not a claim I made.

No. But Comey had to operate within the choices made by Lynch, no?