James Comey's integrity is now seriously in question - and with just 8 days to go before election day - voters need some answers - fast.
When news broke Friday about
Comey's letter to Congress revealing existence of emails that might - just might - have something to do with the Clinton email investigation - everyone immediately assumed the worst.
Here - we all thought - was the October surprise we'd all been waiting for.
But with the vantage of three days of leaks and counter leaks behind us - things look a lot more complicated.
We now know - for example - that the
emails in question were not actually to or from Hillary Clinton herself.
They were instead found on Huma Abedin's laptop during an investigation into her husband Anthony Weiner's alleged relationship with a 15-year-old girl.
We also know that the
FBI hadn't even looked at these emails when Comey went public with them, and we know that the Justice Department told him NOT to write his now infamous letter to Congress because they didn't want him interfering with the presidential election.
Oh yeah - and we ALSO know that these emails may not even contain any new information - just that they COULD contain new information.
In other words - this is all still very much in the air - which is why almost a hundred
former Justice Department officials -- Republican and Democrat alike -- have now condemned Comey's actions as a dangerous breach of protocol.
Senate Majority leader Harry Reid has gone even farther and suggested that the FBI director may have broken the law that bans federal employees from taking part in political activity.
The sympathetic reading of this situation is that Comey just went public with these emails just because he felt like he had a personal and professional obligation to.
He promised Congress he would keep it updated with any new developments in the Clinton case - and on Friday that's exactly what he did.
But again - that's just the sympathetic reading of the situation.
It assumes Comey didn't know what he was doing - which is impossible because the Justice Department told him in very plain English the explicit consequences of what he was doing.
There are two possible scenarios here:
One, Comey either knew he was breaking protocol but didn't DIDN'T think it could throw the election into chaos or Comey knew he was breaching protocol and WANTED to throw the election into chaos.
Either way he should probably lose his job.
-Thom
(What do you think? Tell us
here.)
