Last updated on July 17th, 2023 at 09:09 pm
Ever since FBI Director James Comey made the fact-based decision not to recommend charges against Hillary Clinton for her email use, Republicans have repeatedly accused Comey, the FBI and the Justice Department of foul play.
The fix was in, they say, the system is rigged to protect Clinton.
Of course, the partisan anger toward Comey has nothing to do with the evidence in the case – it couldn’t be since the facts clearly indicated there was no criminal activity on the part of Clinton.
The right-wing backlash was instead rooted in anger that they didn’t get to see their political opponent locked up.
In a new memo sent from Comey to employees of the FBI, Comey calls out these naysayers and says that the decision not to recommend charges against the Democratic nominee wasn’t a difficult one at all.
The FBI director wrote:
At the end of the day, the case itself was not a cliff-hanger; despite all the chest-beating by people no longer in government, there really wasn’t a prosecutable case. The hard part was whether to offer unprecedented transparency about our thinking. I explain to our alumni that I struggled with that part, but decided the best way to protect the FBI, the Department of Justice, and the American people’s sense of justice was to announce it in the way we did – with extraordinary transparency and without any kind of coordination.
As Comey noted in the memo, the easy part was the decision not to bring a criminal case against Hillary Clinton. The difficult part – given the fact that the inquiry involved a presidential nominee and many would want her locked up regardless of the evidence – was how to explain that decision to the public.
The FBI director also responded to right-wing critics who like to claim that his decision was politically motivated or influenced, saying anyone suggesting that is “full of baloney.”
Comey continued:
I explain to our alums that I’m okay if folks have a different view of the investigation (although I struggle to see how they actually could, especially when they didn’t do the investigation), or about the wisdom of announcing it as we did (although even with hindsight I think that was the best course), but I have no patience for suggestions that we conducted ourselves as anything but what we are – honest, competent, and independent. Those suggesting that we are “political” or part of some “fix” either don’t know us, or they are full of baloney (and maybe some of both).
There is no chance that Trump supporters and other Republicans will suddenly stop claiming that Clinton is a criminal, whether it’s the email issue or some decades-old conspiracy theory involving the Clintons.
But, as his memo notes, Comey cares more about doing his job the right way than appeasing deranged partisans.
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