Proximity to Election IS Relevant

Oh, my gosh.

All across the grand United States of America, panties are in a wringer, boxers are in a wringer and, let's face it, undergarments of all sorts are in wringers.  Wringers are really stuffed, if not busy, and all because apparently our official national product is hypocrisy.

The hypocrisy is now abundant on the part of the left, the media and the Hillary Clinton campaign, which appear to be pretty much one continuous blob these days.  They're all in an uproar about FBI Director James Comey's revelation to Congress that the FBI had reopened its investigation into Hillary Clinton, eleven  days before the general election.

The uproar stems from the "unprecedented" nature of the action, i.e., any remotely public pronouncement by the FBI that was within 60, or 90, or however-many days before an election that could possibly affect it.  Hillary was particularly whiny about it (could we possibly survive listening to that grating voice for four minutes, let alone four years?)

The Department of "Justice" (the quotation marks remain until Loretta Lynch is no longer in charge of it) apparently does have some kind of "rule" about not speaking about any investigation that might affect an election.  Of course, "rules" aren't "laws", and I would contend that the rationale for not "speaking about an election-related matter" is the same rationale for speaking.

In other words, assume the other FBI investigators, the ones investigating the Anthony Weiner case, discovered emails from Hillary or communicated via her private server containing classified information, forcing them to notify the brother FBI team that investigated Hillary.  You want to bet that would affect the election, right?

Well, here's my point -- not announcing the reopening of the investigation would itself have influenced the election.  Silence would affect the election; announcing the reopening would affect the election.  Either way, the public would react.

Therefore, the FBI, rules notwithstanding, needs to err on the side of providing information to the public.  Why?  Because the public needs to be trusted to the point of making its own decision with the available facts, whatever they might be.  People can decide to ignore what the FBI puts out, or they can decide to take it into account and vote for (or against) a candidate accordingly.

But the voting public cannot take into account what they do not know.

This case is indeed unprecedented, but we have to note that we have not had a presidential candidate under FBI investigation in recent years, certainly not the last 40 years.  Of course there is no precedent, because we haven't had major parties putting forth candidates who have done things like:

- Setting up a private email server to thwart FOIA investigations
- Bleach-bitting computer servers that were under subpoena
- Hammering cell phones into oblivion that were also under subpoena
- Lying to Congress about having submitted all her subpoenaed emails
- Lying to Congress about the existence of many devices
- Lying to Congress about the existence of classified material on her server.

And, let's point out that we haven't had attorneys general meet in private with the spouses of individuals under investigation; that's "unprecedented" too.  Nor have we had those attorneys general try to squash investigations of the spouses of the individuals who appointed them to senior U.S. Attorney positions.

This whole thing is unprecedented.

So let's let the people know, and not bury things under the rug before people are tempted to vote for someone who ends up being indicted.

As hopefully she will be, and soon.  Today would be nice.

Copyright 2016 by Robert Sutton
Like what you read here?  There's a new post from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com at 10am Eastern time, every weekday, giving new meaning to "prolific essayist."  Sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton.