On Tuesday, FBI director James Comey removed a dark legal cloud from over Hillary Clinton’s head and replaced it with a political one.
Roughly a year after the case of Hillary’s server was referred to the Justice Department, a preliminary FBI investigation found “reasonable confidence there was no intentional misconduct” on Hillary’s part, and recommended no criminal charges be brought against her.
The timing of the finding could scarcely have been more dramatic, coming just hours before Hillary’s first joint campaign appearance with United States President Barack Obama.
“No charges are appropriate in this case,” Comey concluded in what amounts to an unusually public determination ahead of the justice department’s decision.
Of course this is no usual investigation.
A criminal indictment could derail Hillary’s path to the presidency and help secure a Donald Trump victory in November. But after Tuesday’s announcement, that outcome looks more unlikely than ever.
Federal prosecutors generally seek to avoid having their investigations affect election outcomes, and over at the Justice Department, where the case is now heading, US Attorney General Loretta Lynch has already suggested she will accept the FBI’s findings with regard to the investigation.
Democrats will be foolish to get too complacent, however. If what Hillary received on Tuesday amounts to the beginnings of a legal vindication, she has not received a political one. And she never will.
After all “distrust” for Hillary isn’t so much a dirty word as a condition of existence. And there are a number of explanations for that other than that she’s inherently untrustworthy or, in Trump’s words: “A world-class liar.”
Some of it may be attributable to poor optics. (Bill Clinton bumbled his way into the eye of a political storm last week when a private meeting he had arranged with Lynch became public — a misstep that reflected poorly not just on him, but on his wife.)
And some of it may be attributable to gender. (A study out of the New York University Stern School of Business found women in positions of power are consistently considered to be less trustworthy than men holding the same positions; the study was recently replicated and reconfirmed by Anderson Cooper. And research from the Barbara Lee Foundation pinpoints a pedestal effect, where, when a woman running for office fails to meet a high bar set for her, she is disproportionately dinged by the public, more than her male counterparts.)
But it’s also a function of how long she and her husband have been around in politics and, by extension, subject to partisan-fuelled attacks.
In the 1990s, there was Whitewater. Though the Clintons were never found guilty of any criminal misconduct, the investigator did find a political smoking gun by the name of Monica Lewinsky. Never mind that it wasn’t even Hillary’s misstep, she was accused of everything from covering up for her husband to enabling his bad behaviour.
When it finally looked like the political dust-storm around her had cleared, Benghazi happened. Since then, Washington has dedicated eight Congressional panels and $23 million (Dh84.59 million) looking into any criminal wrongdoing. This time, the smoking gun to emerge was her use of a private email server while at the State Department.
Now once again, it looks like Hillary is poised to be cleared of any legal wrongdoing, but Democrats breathing a sigh of relief today would do well to hold their breath.
For even as Comey helped clear the way for Hillary to be legally exonerated, he rebuked her for being “extremely careless” in using a private email server for classified information, adding that lesser government officials might have faced administrative sanction.
The case ultimately comes down to a matter of intent, something famously difficult to prove. Did Clinton intentionally send out or receive any sensitive information? The FBI’s now on the record saying no, but Clinton’s enemies will say yes. And that means the political witch hunts will begin anew.
More importantly, in underscoring her negligence today, investigators have already given Donald Trump the the Republican party at large the ammunition they need to perpetuate the cloud of distrust around her. In that way, Republican operatives have already accomplished their mission.
— Guardian News & Media Ltd
Lucia Graves is a Guardian US columnist. She was previously a staff correspondent for National Journal magazine and a staff reporter at Huffington Post.
