It opens the door for a pardon. A partner absent an investigation would be hard for most people to take. The ultimate get out of jail free card.
If Hillary is pardoned during an active investigation, Obama can use Gerald Ford's pardon of Nixon as precedent.
Or Comey wants to control the flow of information to protect his own ass.
Either Comey has gone rogue, or the White House knows that they may need to go to Plan B really fast.
Not sure if it's over yet for Hillary, but if the press starts asking her if she's going to step aside, that's it. She's done.
I agree it’s political, but why not wait until after the election?
Maybe there are some patriots in the FBI that stood up to Comey. This letter is horrible news for Clinton. A second clean bill of health a day or two before the election will be more evidence of s rigged system and will not undue the damage to Ma Clinton.
How many days before the election would the optimal time to issue a pardon be?
(Answering own question)
It would have to be almost immediately, as in the next few days or so, before Hillary gets too “damaged” as she is being damaged in realtime right now.
This could roll out like a replay of the Saturday Night Massacre.
An optimal time to issue a pardon for the Democrats is right now, on a Friday afternoon news dump— the classic time for bad news to be released.
But a pardon might trigger other unwelcome chains of events. If there are any Democrats with any integrity left in Congress, it would trigger immediate impeachment hearings. Even if it does not, the effect is about the same among Republicans, conservatives, and some independents.
The source of corruption would be at that point self evident.
Another chain of events would be a mass resignation from the FBI a la Saturday Night Massacre. The FBI’s work is by design and intent supposedly free of politics. A pardon would upend the FBI’s work and perhaps become a fatal scar in its reputation. Mass resignations could also trigger impeachment hearings in Congress.
Finally the worst case is that it could cause violence, especially if more evidence of vote fraud comes to light and a pardoned and supposedly disgraced Hillary nevertheless somehow actually wins the election. At this point, Hillary opponents could claim with some legitimacy that pardoning Hillary is an act that constitutes election tampering, and the results of a presidential election would then become illegitimate in the eyes of about half of the nation. This is a setup for civil war.
Ford’s pardon of Nixon was highly questionable.