My BFF, Joy Reid: Republicans weaponize Comey to kneecap Hillary Clinton

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/10/29/republicans-weaponize-james-comey-s-fbi-to-kneecap-hillary-clinton.html

That Comey felt pressed to step way outside the bounds of what previous directors have done by making his July statement at all, complete with editorial embellishments about Clinton’s conduct, and then to make new statements about the investigation 11 days before a national election is indeed “unprecedented and deeply troubling,” as Clinton herself put it at a rally Saturday.

Congress, and some of the same committees pursuing email investigations, hold the purse strings over Comey’s agency. And one can only imagine the pressure being placed on the agency by Capitol Hill. The double standard of Comey’s talk about Clinton with his silence regarding whether or not his agency is probing the ties between current and former Trump aides and Russia suggests that whatever pressure the FBI is feeling, it’s coming from just one partisan direction.

Republicans including Chafftez eagerly tweeted out Comey’s news Friday, and Trump supporters (and some media outlets) ran with the erroneous claim that the FBI had “reopened” its Clinton email probe (it never closed it) and that the agency is revisiting its decision not to prosecute Clinton over her email server (there’s exactly zero evidence of that). And since Republicans have openly signaled that they plan “years of investigations” of Clinton should she win on November 8th, it’s not hard to see where this is going. They’re hoping this new “revelation” sinks Clinton, but expecting to use the faux scandal to drag her down over the next four years.

This follows a pattern that dates back to the Bill Clinton administration, when Republicans used the majorities they gained in the House in 1994 to pursue endless, relentless probes of the first family in search of a scandal that could hand the White House back to the GOP. The point of the many “gates” – Filegate, Travelgate, Whitewater and Lewinskygate – was never to advance public policy, or to hold the president and administration accountable to the American people. They were a naked grab for power by means outside the electoral process.

There’s simply nothing on the other side of the aisle that’s equivalent.

SNIP