Is the email trouble over?

This week saw FBI Director Comey issue the results of their investigation. That, in itself, was unusual.  The spectacle of the Director making the open public statement regarding their conclusions, if they had in fact indicted Hillary, would have been hugely prejudicial to her ability to get a fair trial.

In any event, if you watched the presser, Comey, laid out all of the many things that Hillary and her staff did to jeopardize national security. (his language, not mine.) But then, he indicated that based on context, no reasonable prosecutor  would bring a case against  her, lacking intent to ..


Well there is the rub. Intent to do what?  Intent to deliver secrets to the enemy? No, this was not an espionage investigation. Intent to mishandle classified information. Well, there was no doubt that she set up a home server, a server that  Comey stated was less secure than your Gmail account.

The issue of intent is the crux of Comey's decision. But it is also a mischaracterization of the statute. The law is broken by reckless mishandling- Comey said she was extremely careless.  Is extremely careless, reckless? Let's parse some more words.

What seems clear is that Comey did not want to be the decider of history.  But ,the web once tangled weaves a very tight web.  Hillay  testified under oath, and she said that she did not use more than one device, that there were no classified documents, that her lawyers looked at every email and sent every work-related email to the State Department. And of course, the House Committee is now asking for a criminal referral for perjury.

No one knows where this may lead, and as far as the election is concerned, it most likely will not create an image problem for her- he  bad numbers are baked in.  But this race looks ever more likely like a race to the very, very bottom.  Who do the majority of disengaged, frustrated voters NOT want to be President more.

And my prediction of neither Hillary and Trump now seems like naive wishful thinking.

Unless, the screw turns yet again. And given the bizarrro world we all have entered, that may be a very good bet.