FBI Director James Comey threw another big whopper into the presidential campaign yesterday. This time exonerating — again — Hillary Clinton by stating that the new probe he announced last Friday was now closed because all the emails the FBI had “found” were either duplicates of ones the agency had already reviewed, or they were personal.
{mosads}Comey should have kept his mouth shut, reviewed the emails, and all would have been well and good because nothing would have changed. He showed he does not have the spine or the selflessness to be the kind of public servant we need at the helm of an institution as important to our democracy and the nation as the FBI.
Comey’s new announcement was good news no doubt for the Clinton campaign. But it was met, understandably, with frustration and disdain.
The campaign was defiant last Friday as Comey announced finding another set of emails, stating confidence nothing new would show up. They criticized Comey for putting his thumb on the scale of a presidential election 11 days before Election Day.
So how impactful was Comey’s political interference?
We won’t know for sure until we see the outcome of the election. If the result is the same as the polls are now, or if Hillary wins by a bigger margin than we see now, we may ascertain the impact was minimal.
Or maybe we could say that it helped to mobilize Clinton’s voters at the last minute as they sensed an unfair and politically motivated move by the FBI director.
Either way, the race right now has settled back to almost pre-Comey interference numbers, and Democrats are feeling pretty confident in a Hillary Clinton win on Tuesday.
The early voting numbers look very good for the former secretary of State, as she is seeing huge spikes in Latino voter support, high numbers — though not Obama numbers yet, but they may still get there — in the African-American vote, historic numbers in the Asian-American vote, and unheard of numbers for a Democrat with college educated white voters — especially women.
But as good as the election looks today for Hillary Clinton, the disastrous interjection of Comey last Friday robbed her of being free to end on a high note. She is closing positively but Comey robbed her of 9 days of making her forward-looking case to voters cleanly and inspirationally.
Comey robbed her of 9 days of continuing to expand the electoral map, and importantly, he robbed Democrats of a real opportunity to take back the senate by a larger margin than they will probably still do Tuesday.
Critics will say Hillary Clinton brought this on herself by setting up her server in the first place. Yes. And she is the first one to admit that, and has apologized multiple times for it.
But these last 9 days, and the debacle it has been for the FBI, is all on Comey.
It started last July when Comey made the unprecedented move of editorializing his decision to not move forward with any criminal charges against the former secretary of State. Let’s remember he stated this was not a close call. It was a unanimous decision amongst his agents, analysts and investigators.
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Yet his ego got in the way. He could not handle the heat he knew he would get from his decision. So he decided to try to “explain” himself. But it was really an effort to cover his backside.
This rabbit hole led to even more egregious behavior that included testifying for three hours before Congress. This actually helped to exonerate Hillary even further, but it was also an opportunity Republicans exploited as they sliced and diced his comments to further damage Clinton.
Then Comey took another unheard of step in sharing the FBI’s notes they took during the investigation to further inoculate himself.
So since the beginning, Comey has taken this investigation into his own hands, ignoring years of Department of Justice and law enforcement protocol which says that no public pronouncements should be made 60 days prior to a consequential election so as not to interject an agency which should be apolitical, into a messy political environment.
And that is exactly what Comey has done repeatedly.
Additionally, Comey’s inexcusable conduct lead to vile, malicious and false leaks coming from the FBI and echoed by Trump and his cronies, that were aimed to further tarnish Hillary Clinton’s image. Pronouncements of coming “indictments” and that Clinton could end up in jail became — and shamelessly are still — part of Trump’s repeated lies on the stump.
But the American people are decent. And they see through malice, hypocrisy and indecency. They know it is rich when Trump talks about Hillary’s untrue — but effective with his supporters — legal woes, while Trump is the only candidate in the race with a court date on Nov. 28 to face a class action suit from Trump University students who claimed he defrauded and duped them.
It is ironic when Trump talks about Hillary ending up in jail when he is the one involved in more than 3,500 lawsuits.
And it is hypocritical when Trump talks about the rule of law when we just found out that his lovely wife Melania actually was an “illegal worker” in the US for months before she obtained legal permission to work here.
But lying is nothing new to Trump or his campaign. Sleight of hand and political chicanery is par for the course for them. But it should be off limits to the director of the FBI, one of the most important institutions of justice in the United States.
So while the campaign and Hillary Clinton’s supporters complain and rightly so about Comey’s interference, the worst fallout from this embarrassing episode for law enforcement is that it did immeasurable damage to our great democracy and our institutions that should inspire trust and admiration.
Sadly, now, and as long as Comey is at the helm, the FBI will inspire the opposite.
Cardona is a principal at the Dewey Square Group, a Democratic strategist and a CNN/CNN Español political commentator. Follow her on Twitter @MariaTCardona.
The views expressed by Contributors are their own and are not the views of The Hill.