I sent the note below to a reader on the evening of October 29, 2016, after FBI Director Comey decided to re-open the Hillary Clinton e-mail case.
This is an incredibly high-stakes game.
High stakes for Hillary; high stakes for Huma; high stakes for Weiner; high stakes for Lynch; high stakes for Comey. Limiting discussion to Huma - Comey - Weiner.
1. I think you could be correct, up until this past week: Loretta to Comey -- "Color inside the lines. Don't go rogue. This is bigger than you. You can say that Hillary was an idiot when it came to technology/e-mails, but you will not bring it up to the level of criminality. Remember Vince Foster. The Clintons know where your family lives."
2. Weiner may or may not have the "smoking gun." FBI agents may or may not have found new evidence in the sexting scandal. My hunch is that Weiner is an idiot, and is not the whistle-blower in this at all. It does not matter. Whether he is a potential whistle-blower or not, we still end up where we are today.
3. Comey conflicted: one week ago, he was living with fear -- "Color inside the lines. Don't go rogue. This is bigger than you. Remember Vince Foster. The Clintons know where your family lives."
4. Something happened this week, something huge happened this week for him to send his letter to Congress and re-open the case. Whether it was something that is in Weiner's e-mails or not, it does not matter. The sexting investigation provided him the cover he needed to go rogue.
5. He went rogue because he realized that the house of cards was beginning to fall. It might have been something in Weiner's e-mails. It might have been "mass resignation" by FBI agents. We may or may not the specific "thing" that resulted in Comey going rogue. But whatever it was, I think it was his realization that he was facing "conspiracy to obstruct justice."
6. The "conspiracy" may have begun earlier, but if not, it certainly began when Hillary's husband met face-to-face with Loretta Lynch. That is truly beyond the pale. A husband of a woman under investigation meets face-to-face with the prosecuting attorney and less than 24 hours later, the "case is closed." When Comey agreed "to color inside the lines; don't go rogue" he knew he was participating in a conspiracy to obstruct justice.
7. Whether there is something new in Weiner's investigation or not, doesn't matter -- Comey weighed "conspiracy to obstruct justice" vs "we know where your family lives."
8. What/who pulled the card? Divorces are messy. That's where Huma comes in. We haven't heard a word from her. Her life is falling apart. Her husband will probably go to jail as a sex offender. Treated with kid gloves by the FBI earlier this summer, she is now cooperating with the FBI. (If you read her comments at the NY Times, she sounds incredibly naive). She has broken. It could simply be the stress of everything. It could be her anger at Weiner -- huge messy divorce. It could be that some FBI agent said something that (he wasn't supposed to) that Huma finally realized she was part of a conspiracy.
9. Until I hear differently, Comey, as a lawyer, knew "everyone" from Loretta Lynch to Bill Clinton to the IT guys to Huma and he were involved in a conspiracy to obstruct justice. Weiner is simply a doofus that caught up in collateral damage; he is simply the village idiot, guilty as hell when it comes sexual endangerment of minors but probably not particularly part of the conspiracy.
10. In this case, I could be wrong, and you are could be correct: that Weiner himself was collecting / saving e-mails (purposefully / accidentally) to save himself / plea bargain with the FBI.
11. For me, whatever FBI agents found/didn't find with regard to Weiner, matters not. As Bernstein (Washington Post noted) there had to have been a huge bombshell. If this was simply "more of the same" then everyone in Congress (Dem and GOP) would have supported his decision not to comment on a case in the last 60 days of a presidential election. Something huge had to have happened. I think it was Comey's realization that the house of cards had started to fall, and someone soon was going to raise the issue of "obstruction of justice." Maybe it was Weiner, like you are suggesting. But again, I can't emphasize this enough: whatever changed Comey's mind, it had to be huge: "This is bigger than you, Comey. Color inside the lines. Don't go rogue. Remember Vince Foster. The Clintons know where your family lives."
12. The nice thing for me about this, I have a "theory" and now as the rest of the story comes out in dribs and drabs, the theory can be modified or scrapped as the case may be.
13. This last paragraph is simply rambling. Where does it go from here? I have no idea. I think Monday is going to be very, very interesting. This is what I would be watching for: a) if anyone spots Weiner? What's he doing? b) if anyone spots Huma; What's she doing? c) if anyone in the mainstream media starts raising the "obstruction of justice question." If that gets raised, that could change things. I can't wait to see polls about the middle of next week. The mainstream media is going to try to play this story down on Monday. It may die Monday if mainstream Monday doesn't cover it. Like everything else with the Clintons, it may simply be another story that goes away. But Huma and Weiner -- one of them is toast, probably both of them. I don't think Huma turns on Hillary; she is too loyal. But it's very likely Huma is simply pretty dumb and has said things with all the stress that she (or the Clintons) wish she had never said. Hillary can handle stress; my hunch is that Huma cannot handle the stress she is under. The article in the NY Times really suggested that she is really dumb. Remember, she does have a child. That also changes the equation. All one FBI agent had to ask Huma was who will take care of your child if you go to prison? The next thing to watch: Hillary's medical condition. Is this stress enough to aggravate her underlying medical condition?
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