Mrs Clinton's EMails

For John, BLUF:  No sale on this editorial.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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No, Hillary Clinton’s Emails Will Never Go Away

From the Editorial Board of The Old Gray Lady, 15 June 2018.

Here is how it starts out:

As political bombshells go, this one proved to be something of a dud.

For months, the White House and Congress had been anxiously awaiting the report from Michael Horowitz, the Department of Justice’s inspector general, on a host of politically ticklish moves made by the F.B.I. and the Department of Justice during the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server.

President Trump in particular had been itching to brandish the findings as proof of a sprawling “deep state” plot to bring him down — a plot that, as best anyone can tell, exists wholly within the fever swamp of the president’s imagination.

The report, released Thursday afternoon, ran a whopping 500 pages, but its conclusion can be summed up pretty tidily: Plenty of people did plenty of breathtakingly stupid things, but there is no evidence that political bias affected the outcome of the F.B.I.’s investigation.

As such, if any of the bureau’s errors had any impact on the outcome in 2016, it seems clear that the most consequential was the decision by the former F.B.I. director, James Comey, less than two weeks before the election, to announce that the investigation into Mrs. Clinton’s email was being reopened, a move that almost certainly aided Mr. Trump.

I believe their Lordships at The Times miss the fact that many—in places where the Electoral College was decided for Candidate Trump—had already sized up Mrs Clinton and made up their mind as to how to vote.  That is to say, Mr Comey's action just accelerated what was already the trend.

Regards  —  Cliff