FBI Fallout: Democrats Reverse Course on ‘Rigged’ System

The Democrats and the media have rediscovered their rhetorical distrust of the political system.

Despite all the talk of respecting government officials’ decisions and of respecting election outcomes, on Saturday the Democrats and their allies in the media worked to vilify the very system they defended less than a week ago from critiques lobbed by Republican presidential nominee Donald J. Trump.

“It’s pretty strange to put something like that out with such little information, right before an election.”

And not just any part of the system — the FBI. It almost sounds like the Democrats are complaining about a “rigged” legal system.

On Friday, FBI Director James Comey told congressional leaders he was reopening the investigation into Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s emails. Democrats reacted sharply, falling just short of openly denouncing Comey for his extraordinary message to Congress that the investigation had been renewed.

Comey sent the letter to Congress because the FBI discovered new emails pertaining to Clinton’s illegal private server at the State Department from 2009 to 2013, which had been investigated earlier this year. The newly discovered emails are said to be on a laptop shared by top Clinton aide Huma Abedin and her estranged husband, former Rep. Anthony Weiner, a Democrat from Queens, N.Y.

[lz_ndn video= 31572415]

Weiner was being investigated for sexting with a minor earlier this month when law enforcement made the discovery.

Yet none of that matters to Clinton and her Democratic supporters at this point. In Daytona Beach, Florida, on Saturday, she suggested Comey was entirely to blame for the uproar. Clinton, like many of surrogates in the Democratic Party and the media, suggested the proximity to the election should have nixed any talk of new emails or a new investigation.

“If you’re like me, you probably have a few questions about it,” Clinton said at the Florida event. “It is pretty strange. It’s pretty strange to put something like that out with such little information, right before an election.”

The night before, Clinton also suggested — two different times at a news conference — that Comey had sent the letter only to Republican members of Congress. That implication was immediately, if not reluctantly, debunked by the media who noted the letter was also sent to many Democratic leaders in Congress, alongside GOP committee chairmen.

“The FBI has a history of extreme caution near Election Day so as not to influence the results,” wrote Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat,  of California. “Today’s break from that tradition is appalling.”

How things change. On July 5, the same day Comey initially declined to bring charges, Feinstein praised Comey for “a thorough, objective review” and said “the email review process was repeatedly distorted by Republicans for political gain with little care for the facts.”

Many of Clinton’s most vocal allies in the media also felt free to attack Comey head on.

Paul Krugman, am economist and New York Times columnist, tweeted the “real scandal” was not of Clinton’s making. Instead, it was how Comey handled Clinton’s scandal.

Norm Ornstein, the longtime liberal analyst at the American Enterprise Institute, poured it on thick in a hysterical tweet.

“Comey is a rogue actor endangering American democracy,” said Ornstein.

[lz_third_party align=center includes=https://twitter.com/NormOrnstein/status/792418773890375680]

At the newspapers, the tone was a bit more sedate. A bit.

“James Comey needs to clean up his mess,” wrote Greg Sargent, left-wing blogger for the Washington Post. Sargent then compiled the typical laundry list that Clinton’s defenders are using: The emails may be duplicates; the emails may not even be to, or from, Clinton; and Comey was too cryptic in describing the situation.

Katie Couric of Yahoo News liked Sargent’s reasoning so much, she tweeted the column out.

The Washington Post itself, annoyed it has to cover the email scandal again, decided that their slant on their top Saturday story would be how Comey broke with Justice Department policy — not what he said about the emails.

“Senior Justice Department officials warned the FBI that Director James B. Comey’s decision to notify Congress about renewing the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server was not consistent with long-standing practices of the department,” the Post reported.

[lz_related_box id=”234835″]

But it didn’t stop there. The Post quoted an annoyed Justice Department official who said “[Comey] is operating independently of the Justice Department. And he knows it.”

Which is quite a thing to say about an FBI chief.

But there is indication even from some left-leaning news sites that Comey was likely forced into communicating with Congress because of the extraordinary position the FBI is in now. The Daily Beast reported on Saturday that Abedin swore under oath, on June 28, that she turned over all computers that had State Department-related data on them.