Ethical Questions Surround FBI Director’s Decision On Email Probe - by Joe Conason

October 29, 2016 12:52 am

With a tweet that trumpeted “Case reopened,” Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) set off a sustained roar of hyperbole about Hillary Clinton’s emails. As chair of the House Oversight Committee, Chaffetz and seven other Republican committee chairs — but none of the ranking Democrats — received a very brief letter on Friday from FBI Director James Comey. In three paragraphs, he informed them that while looking into “an unrelated case,” his agents had found “emails that appeared to be pertinent” to the Clinton server investigation. He had directed investigators to look at the emails, he wrote, and determine their significance.

Nothing could be less surprising than the partisan response to this news by Chaffetz’s fellow Republicans, ever ready to string up someone named Clinton immediately, if not sooner. Reince Priebus, eager beaver RNC chair, leaped to fill the big blank spaces left by Comey’s letter.

“The F.B.I.’s decision to reopen their criminal investigation into Hillary Clinton’s secret email server just 11 days before the election shows how serious this discovery must be,” said Priebus, although Comey had not characterized it at all. “This stunning development raises serious questions about what records may not have been turned over and why, and whether they show intent to violate the law,” he added, although Comey had said nothing to support any such negative inferences.

Donald Trump, conning and clowning as usual, went still further before a raucous crowd in New Hampshire: “I have great respect for the fact that the F.B.I. and the [Department of Justice] are now willing to have the courage to right the horrible mistake that they made. This was a grave miscarriage of justice that the American people fully understand. It is everybody’s hope that it is about to be corrected.”

What Trump thinks everybody hopes will be “corrected” was Comey’s recommendation last July against any prosecution of Clinton in connection with her private email server. He pretended not to notice that the FBI director had said nothing to satisfy the manic desire of Trump and his followers to see Hillary Clinton “locked up.”

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http://www.nationalmemo.com/ethical-questions-surround-fbi-directors-decision-email-probe/