The Chicago Cubs won a thrilling game against the Cleveland Indians on Sunday night. But they still trail 3 games to 2 in this best-of-7 World Series. Game 6 is tonight, when I expect the Indians (my team) to extend the fabled Cubs’ 108-year losing streak.
With all due respect to this fall classic, however, the presidential election is still the biggest story in America, if not the entire world. And it will be thus until Election Day on November 8, especially with rolling October surprises that are now metastasizing like this:
A group of former federal prosecutors signed an open letter Sunday evening criticizing FBI Director James Comey for alerting Congress to new emails pertaining to Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton so close to Election Day…
In its criticism of Comey’s decision, the letter cites the lack of details around the [650,000] emails in question, which came from a computer owned by former Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) – who is currently under investigation for allegedly sexting with a minor – and his estranged wife, Clinton aide Huma Abedin.
‘[T]he Director’s disclosure has invited considerable, uninformed public speculation about the significance of newly-discovered material just days before a national election.’
(Huffington Post, October 31, 2016)
In July, Comey announced that the FBI was closing the investigation into Hillary’s use of a private e-mail server without indicting her. That had Democrats hailing him as the paragon of law-enforcement officials; Republicans damning him as a political hack.
On Friday, Comey alerted Congress that the FBI was reopening this investigation. This has Republicans hailing him as the paragon of law-enforcement officials; Democrats damning him as a political hack.
Their bipartisan hypocrisy is such that I spewed a pox on both their parties in “Biggest October Surprise Ever: FBI Reopens Investigation Into Hillary’s E-mails,” October 28, 2016.
But no “politician” has been more shameless in this respect than Donald Trump: In July, he was damning Comey as corrupt; today, he is hailing him as beyond reproach.
Of course, this is the same charity-robbing, tax-dodging, woman-groping racist who spent his entire presidential campaign cheering opinion polls when they showed him ahead, jeering them when they showed him behind; praising reporters when they reported positive things about him, damning them when they reported negative things; and promising he will accept the election results if he wins, warning he might reject them if he loses.
(For a little gallows humor, just imagine the scandals, blunders … and tragedies that would befall a Trump presidency, given his pathological inclination to encourage advice that reinforces his ignorant bluster and discourage advice that challenges it.)
More to the point, Trump has denounced Hillary relentlessly for deleting or hiding e-mails, which should put this evidence of congenital projection (aka hypocrisy) into instructive relief:
Over the course of decades, Donald Trump’s companies have systematically destroyed or hidden thousands of emails, digital records and paper documents demanded in official proceedings, often in defiance of court orders. These tactics — exposed by a Newsweek review of thousands of pages of court filings, judicial orders and affidavits from an array of court cases — have enraged judges, prosecutors, opposing lawyers and the many ordinary citizens entangled in litigation with Trump.
In each instance, Trump and entities he controlled also erected numerous hurdles that made lawsuits drag on for years, forcing courtroom opponents to spend huge sums of money in legal fees as they struggled — sometimes in vain — to obtain records.
(Newsweek, October 31, 2016)
It just so happens that I presaged this Newsweek report months ago as follows:
Trump calling for the charitable Clinton Foundation to be shut down if Hillary is elected is perhaps the ‘yugest’ example of pot calling kettle black in American political history. The psychopathology afoot here is called projection. It is defined by people attributing to others traits, faults, and blame that inhere in themselves. And it explains almost every insult Trump has hurled at his opponents throughout this presidential campaign.
So when you hear him calling other people crooked, insecure, weak, beholden to special interests, liars, etc., be mindful that he’s just revealing self-conscious truths about himself, dimwittedly.
(“Forget the Clinton Foundation. Shut Down the Trump Organization,” The iPINIONS Journal, August 26, 2016)
Mind you, the way Trump questioned the integrity of the original FBI investigation should have been disqualifying. But then, so much of what he has said throughout this presidential election should have been. Remember the indignant way he dismissed the FBI and 16 other U.S. intelligence agencies when they fingered the Russian government for hacking the e-mail accounts of key Democratic officials? Not to mention the disqualifying fact of having his top staffers so beholden to Russian oligarchs (aka mafia bosses), the FBI is now investigating their compromising ties….
Incidentally, Republicans have declared their intent to cripple Hillary’s presidency with more investigations than the infamous ones they launched to cripple her husband’s.
But it behooves anyone voting for Republicans to bear in mind that their attempts to cripple Bill’s presidency were not intended to and did not improve the life of a single American. Yet, despite their efforts, his presidency rates as one of the most successful in U.S. history – highlighted by record-breaking economic growth and job creation.
What’s more, having nominated Trump, all of the character flaws that made Republicans feel morally obligated to investigate Bill no longer obtain. After all, even “never-Trump” Republicans are on record damning Trump as the most rhetorically vulgar, professionally corrupt, sexually predatory and intellectually bankrupt person ever nominated for the presidency of the United States.
At the Republican National Convention in July, Senator Ted Cruz famously called on Republicans to vote their conscience, which clearly precludes voting for Trump. They would do well to heed his call. This, notwithstanding the disqualifying leadership Cruz and other Republicans, like Speaker Paul Ryan and Senator Marco Rubio, are displaying in this regard.
After all, despite repeatedly denouncing Trump as, among other things, a con man, a racist, and a pathological liar, they have all pledged to vote for him. Here’s to their profiles in cowardice foiling their still-scheming presidential ambitions.
By sterling contrast, the Republican governor of the swing state of Ohio, John Kasich, made a public show yesterday of announcing that he voted early and wrote in Senator John McCain’s name, instead of voting for Trump.
That said, the criticisms being hurled at Comey have merit. For it is simply incomprehensible that he alerted Congress given the circumstances. Not least because, in doing so, he not only violated FBI protocol, but might have violated the Hatch Act, which prohibits disclosure of any information that might influence or affect the result of an election.
Indeed, it speaks volumes that (fair-minded) Republicans and (aggrieved) Democrats alike are blasting Comey for making an FBI investigation the galvanizing issue in the final days of this election, especially given that voters are already casting their ballots. They all fear he may have tipped the scales in Trump’s favor, even if unwittingly.
Perhaps most incomprehensible, though, is that Comey admitted he had no idea if these newly discovered e-mails might cause the FBI to change the conclusion it came to in July. Back then, even though it found that she was “extremely careless” in handling classified e-mails, the FBI concluded that Hillary did nothing to warrant prosecution. Comey affirmed in congressional testimony that it was “not even a close call.”
But I’d be remiss not to note the dubious way the agency reopened this case against Hillary. Because it stemmed from related e-mails popping up in an unrelated investigation into the Monica-esque stain Weiner left with his sext messages to an underage girl.
There seems little chance agents will discover anything to incriminate Hillary. Alas, the same cannot be said for the legal jeopardy into which Weiner has sexted not only himself but his deceived and humiliated wife to boot.
In any event, I shall end by alerting you to the Keystone-esque absurdity of 147 FBI agents scavenging through the veritable haystack of e-mails on Weiner’s computer, searching for the needle of a smoking gun they could not find on Hillary’s server.
Everybody is so focused on spinning this farce to propagate plainly political perspectives that nobody seems bothered by the opportunity cost inherent in the FBI continuing this scavenger hunt.
The original accusation, you may recall, was that Hillary’s carelessness jeopardized national security. But this investigation has done and will do nothing to disrupt any terrorist plot that might be afoot. On the other hand, agents would be far more likely to connect the diabolical dots if they were scavenging through 650,000 e-mails belonging to suspected terrorists, instead of those belonging to a sexting pervert and his once-enabling wife.
This e-mailgate is sheer madness. I fear, however, that it will take another 9/11 for selfie-obsessed Americans, and the craven politicians who pander to them, to come to their senses. Only then will they appreciate (anew) what is truly necessary to ensure national security (e.g., unleashing the NSA).
Related commentaries:
October surprises…
Forget Clinton Foundation…
Snowden and NSA…
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