Yep, in an extremely long and thorough way, the report scorches James Comey for unfairly detailing Hillary’s conduct after he had already concluded that she committed no crime.
And further, in an extremely long and thorough way, the report scorches James Comey for announcing on the eve of the election that the FBI had discovered a huge new trove of Hillary’s State Dept emails on Anthony Weiner’s unsecure laptop, when he just should have kept that to himself so as not to affect her chances of winning the election.
“[Comey] should have kept [Weiner’s laptop] to himself so as not to affect her chances of winning the election.”
Not sure that was his best option. As I understand some of the facts, I would say Comey was in a very bad political position. The laptop’s contents were known for at least a month by the FBI; Comey learned about it much later. Had he said nothing until after the election:
(1) if HRC won, he would be crucified by both the left and right and be out of office - the left because he was tainting her victory and the right for obvious reasons of failure to impartial justice and political favoritism.
(2) if HRC lost, the FBI and DOJ would no longer be in the position to write a position exonerating her like it did before and she would be in very real legal jeopardy. He might be allowed to remain in office in the new administration.
Since he announced days before election day, and then promptly dismissed any further investigation, there was not enough time to let things soak in to significantly affect the political discussion and change the few DEM voters who would be open to change and not to vote for HRC. This definitely was not going to change REP votes. All voters pretty much had their minds made up, and NY, CA and IL were in the bag - HRC was going to be elected.
Comey had to disclose the laptop before the election, then quickly remove her from the “FBI’s suspicion”, as the least risky position to HRC, but more importantly to himself. How could they review so many files in such a short time - don’t bother to ask, the MSM was running protective cover. What he did not count on was that it would come out relatively soon after the election that he exonerated HRC months before the “investigation” was completed. So his exoneration of HRC a second time w/out complete investigation to the laptop’s contents becomes plausible. And it protects her from a REP WH. I theorize that he had no choice to exonerate HRC the first time as BHO ordered it, and the message was delivered to him by Lynch. He already played this card once, not surprised he did it again.
If Comey were a true statesman, he would have resigned during the original HRC investigation once he knew that no matter what the FBI found as evidence against her, she was not going to be prosecuted.