FBI put in impossible position by Clinton chicanery

Donald Trump’s bombastic response can be discounted, of course. He told a rally on hearing of the FBI’s bombshell intervention yesterday that the Hillary Clinton email affair is “bigger than Watergate.” No, it isn’t. Watergate was  a plot that involved anti-democratic activities, the burglary of rivals and a cover-up that went to the very top. In contrast, the latest emails being examined by the FBI do not even seem to be from or to Clinton. She was extremely sloppy when it came to online security when she was Secretary of State and obfuscatory when it was investigated. It barely compares to what the Nixon White House did in the early 1970s, however.

Trump’s over the top response – that infuriating way he moves his little fingers round in the air to emphasise a point, while pouting and spouting rubbish – is simply yet more evidence that he is inherently unfit. A carnival huckster and blowhard narcissistic bully should not be President of the United States. Even so, the conduct of the FBI director James Comey in the last 24 hours may give Trump a way back into a race he was losing badly.

Newsweek has a good account of the details of the latest twist in the case. In essence, in investigating Anthony Weiner, the ridiculous and estranged husband of key Clinton aide Huma Abedin, the FBI found emails that may have been transferred between Abedin’s various accounts, and maybe even to her husband’s accounts. Why? The whole email scandal happened because the Clinton team thought the security procedures over the top and annoying. Hillary also liked stuff printed out to read on paper – a sensible generational thing – and that proved difficult to manage from State computers, hence the moving emails around between other accounts. The suggestion has always been that this put national security at risk, because enemies of the US may have exploited the situation to find out what the US government was up to.

Incidentally, men are not coming out of the 2016 race well, from Trump’s alleged groping and nastiness, to Weiner’s activities, to the failure of the Republican field to stop Trump earlier.

But the intensity of the whole farrago, the closeness of polling day, the extraordinary decision of an FBI director to take action that could swing an election, has produced something approaching hysteria from the Clinton campaign and from its surrogates in the media. Comey has won it for Trump! We’re all going to die! And so on.

But the unfortunate truth – for those who do not want to die in the Trump Apocalypse – is that Clinton is largely to blame. She is only in this position because of the original sloppiness around emails and the dysfunctional conduct of some of her closest associates. And the failure to account for it all cleanly and quickly enough.

A word in defence of Comey, who is being denounced by Clinton supporters, and by anonymous sources within the FBI who fear he has committed a historic blunder which taints the organisation.

A straight-shooting public servant clearly felt he had no choice. Having said that Clinton should not be prosecuted, new evidence emerged suddenly in another investigation connected to Clinton’s closest aide. Comey’s mistake was to be so vague and non-transparent that his letter to Congress alerting them to new activity in the investigation could be misrepresented as a fresh look at Clinton herself, which it seems not to be. But imagine if he had said nothing, and a partial account leaked next week. Or worse, it emerged only after election day and it became clear the FBI director had known of potentially significant new information and said nothing in public. For his organisation there is always the spectre of 1972, when the FBI had failed to pursue Watergate properly before Nixon’s re-election that year. So, he acted.

Comey will no doubt get all the blame, which is somewhat unfair. We – the poor, sane citizens of the Western World – are only in this position, fearing the election of the most unsuitable President of the United States ever, because he is up against Hillary Clinton, a tarnished candidate who is at risk because she has made herself vulnerable by sloppiness and worse.