Horowitz: Email Redux
Tuesday, November 01, 2016
Well, it is clear now that Bernie Sanders is not going to get his wish. This campaign will end as it began with a focus on Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while serving as Secretary of State.
FBI Director James Comey has made sure of that. His decision to inform Congress this past Friday that the FBI had recently discovered emails in an unrelated matter, which could be pertinent to the Clinton email situation ,and that those emails will need to be looked at ensures that Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of email will take up much of the remaining news coverage between now and election day.
This new batch of emails, which have yet to be examined by investigators, were uncovered when FBI agents seized a laptop owned by disgraced former Congressman Anthony Weiner, top Clinton aide, Huma Abedin’s husband, as part of the FBI probe into whether or not he ‘sexted’ a 15 year old girl. It is likely that most of the emails are duplicates of ones already examined by the FBI before Comey made the decision to not charge Clinton or anyone else this past summer. Still, it is only due diligence for the FBI to take a hard look at them.
Given this fact and the prospect of this information leaking, it is understandable why Comey felt the need to communicate with Congress, breaking Justice Department guidelines and the nearly always adhered to policy of not announcing information about investigations--whether new or old--within 60 days or an election. But his cryptic letter to Congress, which failed to spell out in plain English the surrounding facts and context nor explicitly acknowledge that no one at the FBI had read any of the new emails yet, predictably triggered a flood of speculation and gave Donald Trump’s campaign new found life.
In a letter publicly released on Sunday, Comey was blasted by nearly 100 former federal Prosecutors and top Justice Department officials, Republicans and Democrats alike. They wrote that his actions were “inconsistent with prevailing Department policy. We believe that adherence to longstanding Justice Department guidelines is the best practice when considering public statements on investigative matters,” the former Prosecutors continued.
Hillary Clinton’s excellent job of damage control, combining a prompt response, calling on Comey to clarify and release all the information he had, with a coordinated attack on the FBI Director, whose Republican leanings make him a somewhat ripe target, will likely limit the impact of this startling development.
Still, several days of news featuring Hillary Clinton’s email problems are a boost for Trump-- but probably not a big enough boost for him to catch up to her. The mishandling of email is not new information to voters, the overwhelming majority of which have already made up their mind. If this occurred with a more acceptable Republican alternative the impact would likely be much greater. For most voters, Donald Trump has failed to pass the Commander in Chief test. Additionally, 18 million people have already voted with a disproportionate share casting their votes in the battleground states
I agree with opponents of Hillary Clinton in this one respect: the person who is most to blame for this last minute and unfair campaign development is Hillary herself. But she remains fortunate in having Donald Trump as her opponent—a candidate most Americans do not think is qualified to be President.
Rob Horowitz is a strategic and communications consultant who provides general consulting, public relations, direct mail services and polling for national and state issue organizations, elected official and candidates. He is an Adjunct Professor of Political Science at University of Rhode Island
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