Reaction to the Hillary/Weiner Email ‘Bombshell’ is Hilarious, Hypocritical, & Predictable

So, did you hear? Donald Trump is going to be president! Hillary Clinton has finally been brought down by her emails and in the most delicious way possible! She has been caught up in the Anthony Weiner “sexting” scandal! The REAL October Surprise wasn’t about pussy grabbing, it was about Weiner stroking!

We know all of this because FBI Director James Comey (remember him?) sent a letter to Republican committee heads in Congress indicating that his office came across new information that was possibly relevant to the Clinton email investigation. Reports following up on this odd development indicate that the emails were not from Hillary’s private server but apparently came to light in process of looking into the sexting scandal of Clinton aide Huma Abedin’s estranged husband, Anthony Weiner.

Other than that, while there is tons of wild speculation, it appears we know almost nothing else for sure (not that such a thing matters to Twitter!). Literally nothing.

We don’t know for sure if these new emails involved Hillary directly at all, though some seemingly solid reporting indicates that they are from Abedin to her and were found on a laptop (or maybe her phone?) the married couple shared. We don’t know if they involved classified information or not. We don’t if there is even a hint of illegality, or a breach of national security. We don’t even know if the content of these emails is remotely scandalous, or even embarrassing.

Frankly, even in this short attention span era of constant rush to judgment it is difficult to recall a situation where more was made out of less information than this one. Could this be a big deal? Sure, but at this point there is no indication that it is and, if anything, it appears to more likely to be much ado about nothing (Dick Morris immediately called it a “game-changer,” so the opposite is almost certainly true). To this point all we know is that Hillary’s emails are under investigation, as is Weiner’s sexting. Other than learning that there MAY be a tenuous connection between to the two, none of that is remotely new information.

The response to this development exposed almost everyone as hyper-reactive and hypocritical. Donald Trump suddenly concluded that Comey isn’t such a bad guy after all and that maybe the system isn’t as “rigged” as he thought. His supporters, who have been claiming for months that Comey is a fraud for not seeking an indictment against Hillary, instantly hailed him as a hero and put enormous credibility behind his very nebulous and possibly extremely insignificant letter. Meanwhile, liberals, who previously praised Comey for restraint, were castigating him for using the power of his office to try to influence a presidential election.

I must say that one of the many elements of the Clinton email scandal which has always confused me is what the “conservative” narrative about Comey is supposed to be. If he knows that he should have indicted her but didn’t because he was “in the tank,” or simply too afraid to effectively take out a major presidential nominee, then today’s action obviously makes no sense at all, especially since all the leaks surrounding the story seem to downplay the factual basis for Comey’s letter.

How or why did Comey go from super-cautious to hyper-aggressive? How did his shackles suddenly come off just before an election?

To me, you have to remain at least somewhat consistent in your narrative for it be credible, and conservatives especially have been all over the place with Comey. Unless he is some sort of schizophrenic, their theory, what there is of one (Rush Limbaugh theorized today that this is both a conspiracy to help Hillary as well as one to get on Trump’s good side before he is elected!) simply doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.

While I don’t claim any special insight here, it seems to me that there’s a fairly logical scenario to explain what happened here. Comey faced a very close call the first time around and decided that it was probably best for the country to let a relatively minor/technical legal violation that would be very difficult to prove in court pass with just a rebuke rather than dramatically disrupt a presidential election.

Then, in the course of the Weiner investigation, these new emails were found and he was faced with another Solomon-like decision. If he didn’t disclose this information and it turned out to be a big deal after Hillary was elected president, it would bring the FBI into great disrepute and cause there to be a huge shadow over the new administration. So, out of “an abundance of caution,” he decided to make this development public.

The problem here though is that, with such a short time before voting is over, there is no way to get to the bottom of this situation and its stigma alone (the fact that this could theoretically be related to the investigation of the sexting of an underage girl can’t be overlooked) could theoretically impact the election. In a weird way, not having the investigation remotely completed before November 8th, actually puts Hillary in the worst of all worlds.

She is now forced to defend herself against Halloween ghosts while the other side free to speculate, unrestricted, about how horrible these unseen emails are. Here the unknown is likely far worse for her than the known would be. At the same time, the fickle news media, desperate for a new storyline and fearful of an anti-climactic election night, are all too eager to jump on the speculation train for all it is worth (especially with the possible “sexting” angle and the fact that they really don’t like Hillary nearly as much as the average Democrat).

Whether Comey intended it to turn out this way or not, his letter is effectively a “make up” call from a referee in football game where the winning team got a break earlier but hasn’t quite put the contest away. The real question is whether the “make up” call put too much weight on the scale favoring the other team.

While there is certainly the chance that this situation alters the trajectory of the race, I still believe that we are talking about only reducing her margin victory. While there is no way this development is good for her, there is the upside that it should end concerns about Democrat complacency and I would expect her to get more aggressive against Trump again, rather than simply running out the clock as she had been.

The reality is that Hillary, Trump, the GOP, and the news media would all be very happy with a narrow Clinton victory. It should be no surprise that it seems that this is where we are now headed.

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John Ziegler, who has worked as a pollster, is a nationally-syndicated radio talk show host and documentary filmmaker. You can follow him on Twitter at @ZigManFreud or email him at johnz@mediaite.com

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This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.