Democrats thought they had this presidential election all locked up. Then FBI Director James Comey threw a wrench in those plans.
Comey informed Congress late last week that new evidence had potentially come to light in the investigation into Hillary Clinton's secret email server. Comey explained in an internal memo to the FBI's staff that his intent was to remain as transparent as possible on the status of the probe. Since Comey had personally briefed Congress on his conclusions — recommending no prosecutorial action based on the evidence at hand — he felt compelled to update his testimony to alert them of new evidence when it appeared.
Predictably, the new twist in an already bizarre election season enraged partisans on both sides. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid had earlier declared Republican criticism of Comey an attempt to politicize the FBI. After Friday, however, Reid not only accused Comey of violating the Hatch Act, but also of covering up some nefarious connections between Russia and Donald Trump that Reid never bothered to identify. Clinton aide John Podesta declared Comey's action a breach of the FBI's protocol to refrain from commenting on ongoing investigations. Former Attorney General Eric Holder wagged his finger at Comey for not following the supposedly sterling ethical standards Holder imposed during his tenure at the Department of Justice.
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Comey fared only slightly better among Republicans. Rep. Jim Jordan, an influential conservative in the House, said the need to notify Congress came from Comey's refusal to properly proceed with a prosecution in July. Senate Judiciary chair Chuck Grassley faulted Comey for not offering more specific information.
But most of the criticism came from Democrats worried that Comey's revelation would cause Clinton to lose on Nov. 8.
Something similar happened on the other side of the aisle when media outlets began dropping oppo-research bombs on Trump at the beginning of October. Republicans reacted by accusing the media of deliberately timing the stories to do maximum damage to his electoral chances.
Put simply, these complaints from both sides amount to nothing more than shifting of blame from where it belongs — the candidates themselves, and the voters who nominated them. Trump has spent most of four decades in the public eye, offering controversial commentary and questionable actions in both his business and personal life. While the media has clearly calculated against Trump, the problems in this case were well known to anyone who paid attention to Trump over the course of his very public life. His detractors within the GOP warned all along that these stories would come out in the final stretch of a general election campaign. Voters chose him despite those obvious liabilities.
The same holds true for Clinton — perhaps even more so, considering the public track record of the Clintons over the past quarter-century. Even before the email story broke, reports of pay-to-play connections between the Clinton Foundation and State Department had begun seeping into the media by early 2015. By spring 2015, plenty of reporting on both made it clear that Clinton would be vulnerable to potential investigations — and sure enough, the FBI began an investigation into the emails in July 2015, six months before the first primary vote was cast. As it turns out, the FBI has run a parallel investigation into the Clinton Foundation as well, despite Justice Department pushback, but the probe into the emails was well known to Democrats.
As for the timing of the new evidence, the fault for that also falls on Clinton. Had she complied with the Federal Records Act while serving as secretary of state, none of this would have happened in the first place. Had she turned over the server immediately without deleting any of the messages on it, this story would likely have concluded in 2015. Had Huma Abedin turned over the laptop that her estranged husband used (possibly to sext an underage girl) at the beginning of the probe, the FBI wouldn't have had to wait until September to discover a trove of emails that hadn't been disclosed.
Rather than acknowledging where the fault actually lies, Democrats and Republicans would rather cry and blame everyone but their own nominees and themselves. But enough is enough. Hillary Clinton has no one to blame for her email scandal but herself.
