The Weiner October Surprise

The Hillary Clinton Presidential campaign is now in full farce mode.

Anthony Weiner, sent to the curb by his long suffering wife Huma Abedin, Clinton’s closest aide, is back -- in a manner of speaking.

FBI Director James Comey, who previously gave Clinton a pass on criminal violations involving the improper use of a private server, has now advised relevant members of Congress that he is supplementing his previous testimony. Here is Comey's letter in full:

“In previous Congressional testimony, I referred to the fact that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had completed its investigation of former Secretary Clinton’s personal email server.  Due to recent developments, I am writing to supplement my previous testimony. 

 “In connection with an unrelated case, the FBI has learned of the existence of emails that appear to be pertinent to the investigation. I am writing to inform you that the investigative team briefed me on this yesterday [October 27, 2016], and I agreed that the FBI should take investigative steps designed to allow investigators to determine whether they contain classified information, as well as to assess their importance to our investigation. 

 “Although the FBI cannot yet assess whether or not the material may be significant, and I cannot predict how long it will take to complete this additional work, I believe it is important to update you about our efforts in light of my previous testimony.”

Attorneys used to dotting “I’s” and crossing “T’s” advise us that Comey is not “reopening” a case he had previously closed. He is “supplementing his prior congressional testimony.” Comey’s letter indicates that the criminal case against Clinton has never been closed.

The letter supplementing Comey’s previous testimony to Congress is tantalizingly suggestive, and speculation is running rampant.

Comey, it will be recalled, declined to prosecute former Secretary of State Clinton because the FBI Director was unable to find in the emails available for examination sufficient “intent” on Clinton’s part to trigger a prosecution.

In an interrogatory with U.S. Representative Trey Gowdy, Comey acknowledged that the Clinton emails contained confidential information, previously denied by Clinton; that Clinton had not retained all of her work-related emails, previously asserted by Clinton; that Clinton used more than one devise to transmit non-personal emails and that her actions fell well outside federal regulations she should have observed. Gowdy argued, plausibly, that “false exculpatory statements” made by Clinton could be used to determine intention and consciousness of guilt, but Comey stuck to his guns, and so the possibility of a criminal prosecution faded from the headlines.

Anthony Weiner is partly responsible for Comey’s Second Act.  An investigation into Weiner’s email activity exposed thousands of missives exchanged between Clinton associates and Weiner’s former wife. The emails may contain “classified information” and other tidbits that might be “important to our investigation” of Hillary, who presently is leading her arch nemesis, Donald Trump, by slender margins in national Presidential polls. This unexpected cache of new Weiner/Abedin data cannot be attributed to Clinton’s recent piñata, Vladimir Putin, Czar of all the Russians, including, as he has forcefully demonstrated, displaced Russians in Crimea, which he annexed from Ukraine while President Barack Obama was facilitating his Secretary of State’s adventures in Libya, Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East.

Comey’s supplemental attempt to salvage the honor of a battered FBI, which may be yet another Potemkin Village distraction to draw attention away from recent emails relating to The Clinton Foundation, re-slashes a recent wound and give the lie to a pretense Clinton has been attempting to kneed into her highly misleading campaign – namely, that she is an innocent bystander in her own unmaking.

The most recent twist in Hillary’s on again off again email crimes is at least as farcical and perhaps as morally reprehensible as Obama’s Middle East “lead from behind” foreign policy, his destruction of the U.S. Health Care industry and other easily forgotten failures. Thankfully, there is no whisper of evidence that Obama cheats on the First Lady, who supports the return to the White House of a First Husband who has creditably been accused of assaulting and raping one women and serially molesting several others. But one never knows; in modern politics, the truth usually follows Presidents out the door as they leave their jobs to attend to the construction of their libraries and their tattered legacies.

The Clintons, overseers of a Foundation that puts Teapot Dome to shame, are too busy hauling in barrels of cash from foreign donors  to worry overmuch about their tattered legacies.