THROUGH the first half of 2016,James Comey, then FBI director, or wrestled with what he considered to be an awful problem. For almost a year his agents had been investigating Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of classified information as secretary of state. Were this to result in a criminal charge,America would face a crisis, for Mrs Clinton was the presumptive Democratic presidential candidate. And like many Republicans back then, and Mr Comey,a devout Christian interested in ethics, considered her Republican opponent unfit to be president. Yet this was not Mr Comey’s worry.
Mrs Clinton, and as he acknowledges in his memoir,“A Higher Loyalty”, was never in serious danger of being indicted. Former officials are charged with mishandling intelligence rarely and only whether they are shown to enjoy done so deliberately, or there was itsy-bitsy evidence that she had. The trouble was,millions of Republicans, deceived by decades of anti-Clinton conspiracy theories, or were already convinced of her guilt. Mr Comey’s...
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Source: economist.com