Just wondering out loud: What took the FBI so long?
Pundits and Hillary Clinton critics posited months ago - even about the time that Clinton was in double-digit hours of testimony before a congressional committee about her emails and Benghazi - that her most trusted aide might somehow have given her erstwhile sexting husband, Anthony Weiner, unwitting access to classified information.
Mind you, that could be all three of the improperly received or sent classified emails that the FBI and at least nine different investigations managed to find - mismarked as they were - on Clinton's private email server.
And never mind that Clinton's server and her private email were apparently more secure than the government email system which, according to information in many of the same Clinton email investigations that made headlines for months now, has been hacked at least once by foreign computer thugs.
So - again just wondering out loud - if crack government and Republican witch hunt committee investigators have known all that and known that crazy sexting Weiner could possibly be in on secrets, then why, oh why, is it just now something to look at? Just now something to subpoena? Just now - in the final 10-9-8-7-6-5... days and counting to the election?
Why? Politics. Really dirty Republican politics.
When the FBI director, James Comey, sent a vague, 166-word statement to Congress, it seems clear he felt pressured by fellow Republicans who were unhappy and extremely critical of him and the FBI investigation that resulted in his July statement that though her use of personal email and a personal server was "extremely careless," there was no wrongdoing and no charges would be filed.
Comey's newest statement said agents had uncovered new emails that could be connected. There was no indication that there might be classified material in those emails, and in fact the emails hadn't even been read yet. Moreover, the FBI then had not even sought a court order to open the emails. Since when does the FBI make such a statement?
Even the way the emails tale unfolded is suspect. The claim is that the FBI last month began investigating allegations that Weiner had exchanged new sexually explicit messages with a teenager. (In June 2011, when he publicly apologized for sexting at least six women, he said all he knew about some of them was what they posted on social media and he "believed" they were all adults.)
Since when does the FBI investigate sexting from a man who's already resigned from Congress? Does anyone really believe this was never aimed at Clinton? But on Oct. 3, agents in New York executed a search warrant to obtain Weiner's iPhone, an iPad and a laptop. Searching the laptop, they found evidence of a trove of emails similar to ones that had been examined in the Clinton investigation.
Now Comey's murky letter has opened the way for Trump and congressional Republicans to level wild charges against Clinton.
On Sunday, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid accused Comey of both a double standard and of breaking federal law by violating the Hatch Act, which prohibits partisan politicking by government employees.
Reid contrasted how Comey has treated the Clinton email probe and how he has handled what Reid described as "explosive information about close ties and coordination between Donald Trump, his top advisers, and the Russian government."
"The public has a right to know this information," Reid wrote in a letter to Comey. "I wrote to you months ago calling for this information to be released to the public. There is no danger to American interests from releasing it. And yet, you continue to resist calls to inform the public of this critical information. By contrast, as soon as you came into possession of the slightest innuendo related to Secretary Clinton, you rushed to publicize it in the most negative light possible."
Folks, aside from the Russian hacking - also under investigation by the FBI - we already know Trump University was a fraud. We already know there have been illegal campaign contributions made from the Trump Foundation to the Florida attorney general. Trump was fined. The only thing not already proven is that the contribution was "pay for play" to get the Florida AG to decide not to investigate Trump U in her state. We know that before the payment, she said she would investigate it. After the payment, she announced she would not.
But we're left to guess that it would be an abuse of power and violation of the Hatch Act to subpoena the Russian business dealings of a candidate who suggested Russia hack his opponent's email.
Clinton called Comey's letter to Congress "deeply troubling." She was taking the high road of understatement.
Comey's action and Republican response amount to yet another witch hunt and act of GOP desperation, designed to spread the same blanket of slime they have been using for two years.
If it were not nothing, it would have been a front-and-center accusation, subpoena and lynching - months ago. Republicans would have loved to have put this election to bed a month after the primary.
They didn't because they couldn't.
And nothing has really changed.