2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: Comey has royally screwed up! He should be standing at attention in Lynch's office. Check this out: [View all]Jarqui
(10,119 posts)and kind of left it in the FBI's hands because of her actions.
So he was kind of put into a position to kind of "decide" even though it was the DoJ's job because of what DoJ AG Lynch did with Bill (poisoned those waters). That wasn't Comey's fault.
Secondly, it was an extraordinary case - with massive media attention. You were not going to get much credibility if a junior law clerk read the results to the media. It should have come from Lynch but since she was so stupid getting caught chatting with Bill, Comey filled in.
And they needed to put it to rest. It was controversial and not clear cut. So they spanked her to give those against her a bit of a bone for carelessly handling classified material and they let her walk to give her campaign life. The result was, a bunch got put to bed and the campaign moved on.
We can nit pick but Comey did alright in that in terms of the big picture. Everyone may have some issue but overall, I think Hillary came out ok - all things considered.
The big thing now is this: are the FBI just speculating and causing a big dust up over nothing that could cost Hillary the election? Or did those FBI experts in Clinton's emails they sent up to New York really turn up something? If it's the latter, Comey's going to come out of this beautifully. If it's the former, he'll be dismissed and tarnished forever. I have a feeling Comey realized the stakes before he wrote his letter but I could be wrong ....