By David Harsanyi
Friday, January 13, 2017
Democrats have reacted to Donald Trump’s victory in a
number of ways: they’ve demanded the Constitution be retroactively changed;
they’ve pinned the blame on “fake news;” they’ve allowed paranoia about Russia
to corrupt their thinking; and they’ve blamed the loss on the FBI, specifically
the “Comey letter,” which is most perplexing excuse of all.
In response to pressure from congressional Democrats, the
Justice Department inspector general will now review how the FBI and Justice
Department handled certain aspects of the Hillary Clinton email investigation.
(Perhaps the inspector general could also look into why Attorney General
Loretta Lynch reportedly asked Comey not to send the letter even though she had
promised not to get involved in the investigation. While they’re at it, maybe
the inspector general can find out why Lynch attended an off-the-record meeting
on a tarmac with the husband of the person under investigation?)
It’s all very dramatic. The importance of all of this is
to create the impression that something corrupt has happened. Paul Krugman has
claimed the FBI “rigged the election.” Nate Silver (in a nonpartisan argument)
says late-deciding voters broke strongly against Clinton in swing states,
enough to cost Hillary the states of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.
Others have come to the same conclusion.
The idea that the Comey letter, which merely confirmed
something most voters already believed about Hillary, would push hundreds of
thousands of people into the Trump camp seems, to be kind, implausible. Voters
have often broken late in national elections for unknown reasons. It’s also
worth mentioning that many of the same experts making these argument got much
of 2016 very wrong, so it’s a bit difficult to trust them to know voter
motivations now.
Still, I only read polls. I’m in no position to argue the
science behind them. So for the sake of this post, let’s concede that the Comey
letter, in some part, helped secure the election for Trump.
Good. Or, as
“good” as any other reason.
Democrats seem to be functioning under the belief that
2016 was Hillary’s to lose, and anything that spoiled the plan is a perversion
of democracy. Yet Comey’s letter to Congress is legitimate. And voters had
every right to plug it into their electoral calculus.
That’s mostly because the letter informing Congress that
the bureau had found a cache of new evidence relating to a criminal
investigation of Clinton was entirely Clinton’s fault. She’s the one who
initially set up a secret server to circumvent transparency, likely to hide
favor-trading related to her foundation. She’s the one who sent unsecured
classified documents through that server, although she almost surely knew it
was wrong. (Many experts, as
this New York Times piece points out,
believe chances are high her documents were intercepted by foreign powers.)
She’s the one responsible for attempts to destroy all evidence related to that
server. Her people, as Comey noted in his congressional testimony, had “cleaned
their devices in such a way as to preclude complete forensic recovery.” Her
aide failed to inform the FBI about emails on her computer.
Lastly, Hillary is the one who lied to the American
people about the incident. If she was innocent, and there was no there there,
she could have cooperated and none of this would have mattered — certainly not
the Comey letter.
Simply because the FBI didn’t think the case met a
prosecutable standard — and after giving her staff immunity, there would be
little chance they could indict — doesn’t mean she was innocent in the eyes of
the electorate. The FBI simply couldn’t prove intent. Donald Trump was not
prosecuted for saying despicable things about women, yet many voters weighed
the NBC tapes before determining their vote.
Let’s also remember that Comey had little choice but to
send his letter to Congress after being notified that pertinent evidence had
been uncovered on a computer used by both Anthony Weiner (through an
investigation into his texting with an under-aged girl) and his estranged wife Huma Abedin.
If Comey had been in possession of this information and
sat on it until after the election, even after informing Congress that he would
keep them apprised of new evidence, then the FBI would have been acting in a
political manner rather than simply reacting to events. Comey had an ethical
duty to inform Congress. There was no way he could do this without it becoming
political. Hillary put him in that position.
Then there is the preposterous notion (see tweet below)
that the news media should treat leaks reporting a dossier that might be
nothing more than disinformation, compiled by oppo research firm on Trump, as a
legitimate FBI investigation. Moreover, the idea that The New York Times — authors of the Rubio yacht story and numerous
other hit jobs — was running interference for Trump is going to be a tough one
to prove.
Now, perhaps the inspector general will uncover new
evidence we haven’t heard. We shouldn’t discount that possibility. But the fact
is, to many voters, the Comey letter represented a culmination of decades of
lying and corruption that have marred Hillary’s career. If you want to blame
someone, blame Democrats. Blame her.
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