EEEEMMAAAILLLSSS!!!

It's the issue that wouldn't die.

So here's the deal:

During Hillary Clinton's tenure as Secretary of State, she did what several other SoS' have done and had her emails handled on a private server, the reasoning is unclear, perhaps out of fear that the State Departments servers are too vulnerable, or too open to FOIA requests, or perhaps the internal system and firewall were just too damn difficult to work with, either way she chose to handle her business on a private server.

This is a no no, but wasn't anything that anyone particularly cared about until Clinton did it, now the reasoning for why it's a no no is sound, the State Department understandably doesn't feel like having it's employees discuss issues related to national security outside of Department systems is a very safe option, this was ironically proven untrue as during Clinton's tenure the Department was hacked and she wasn't, but the point remains.

It is unclear just how much she realized she was breaking the rules, if at all, and I won't give her the benefit of the doubt there as she is a smart lady and probably had at least an inkling of the idea that she shouldn't have done it, but there is a possibility the idea didn't cross her mind.

So anyway, the news comes out and her opponents, not all of them Republican, lose their minds, queue one investigation and hearing after another until America is tired of hearing about it, then earlier this summer, the FBI, in the person of James Comey, announced that there was no evidence of intentional abuse by Clinton and that all the emails on the server that they could find were not actually classified Top Secret at the time they were sent, which means it didn't really matter what system they were on.

The alt-right lost their minds again here, accusing Comey of being a Clinton stooge and there being a huge coverup and oh god my eyes are glazing over, Donald Trump of course picked up the line, but not actually understanding any technology more complicated than a rock, was unable to really generate any good attacks with it, despite that chants of "lock her up" became standard at his rallies because his supporters are equally stupid.

Anyway outside the fringe elements the issue was largely at rest, no one outside the GOP cared anymore and focusing on it was costing them the public's attention. The investigation was closed and we thought we had moved on.

However we reckoned without James Comey being an enormous toolbox. yesterday he announced, in a letter to Congress that mysteriously wasn't sent to a great deal of Democratic leaders, or even to Hillary Clinton, that there were some more emails that the FBI had discovered and were looking into.

Now here's the thing, the case HAS NOT been reopened, the emails were discovered on devices recovered during the FBI investigation of Anthony fucking Weiner's latest scandal, and are likely communications between Clinton and Huma Abedin, Wiener's wife and one of Clinton's top campaign aides, the FBI does have to do due diligence and review them, but odds are they already have seen them from the "other side" off of Clinton's server.

What didn't have to happen was an essentially open letter to congress about the emails 11 days before the election, James Comey is playing politics in a way that anyone with a sense of history should find a bit unsettling from the director of the FBI. At the time he wrote his letter to eight Republican committee heads that he had to know would not remain private for more than a minute, he had no idea what was on the emails or what their relevance is, he knew exactly how the public would take this announcement and purposefully crafted it to be as vague and full of potential for interpretation as possible.

Suddenly he has gone from Clinton Stooge to crusader for freedom in the eyes of the alt-right, and now we have to spend the next couple weeks hearing about the fucking emails day in and day out once again.

What are his motivations? Fuck if I know, he has to know Clinton will make his life hell if she is elected, as he is almost certain to be, I don't know if the president can fire the director of the FBI, but I bet we'll find out pretty quick if she can. Perhaps he is setting himself up for a post election position as a Fox News commentator, or maybe he is writing a book, or maybe he is just that dumb and literally had no idea what he was doing, but I kinda doubt the last one.

Either way it's pointless, anyone who cares about the damn issue isn't going to change their mind either way at this point in time, it isn't like ten percent of the electorate will look at this story and go "Wow this vague and detail-less letter has convinced me to vote for Donald Trump in stead of Hillary Clinton" At best it increases turnout for Trump supporters, but even that I find a bit doubtful as the average Trump supporter has the IQ of trout and it is in doubt that they even know how to vote, or when.

Anyway, that's my take on it. And this is the last time I will ever talk about the Clinton emails in this space unless one is leaked proving that she ordered the death of Justice Scalia, or David Bowie, or something.