Both leading presidential candidates, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, have now been recipients of October surprises.
One can argue which is more damaging — the “Access Hollywood” recording of Trump bragging about sexually molesting women, or the FBI’s announcement Friday that it was reviewing material with possible bearing on the email controversy that has dogged Clinton for most of her campaign — but damaging they both are.
In the case of the “Access Hollywood” recording, the issue has been fairly well vetted since it first became public knowledge. You have Trump on tape claiming that he kissed and groped women without their consent; you have Trump’s claim that this was all empty boasting (“locker room talk,” he says) but not action; and you have about a dozen women contradicting Trump and saying yes, he did sexually assault them. Thus, voters can choose whether to believe Trump or his accusers, and whether this matters enough to influence their vote.
The problem with the disclosure of FBI Director James Comey is that it says so little to draw any fair conclusions about it. Reporters have ferreted out, from confidential sources, that this latest development sprang from an unrelated investigation into the sexting scandal of disgraced former Congressman and all-time weirdo Anthony Weiner, who also happens to be the estranged husband of one of Clinton’s longtime and closest aides. While looking into reports that Weiner had online sexual banter with a 15-year-old from North Carolina, federal authorities supposedly found emails on his electronic devices that might — and might not — be relevant as to how Clinton handled classified information while she was secretary of state. Comey did not say the FBI is reopening the probe, which it closed in July without filing criminal charges, into Clinton’s use of a private email server, although plenty have already jumped to that inaccurate conclusion.
Understandably, Comey faced a dilemma. By dropping this bombshell less than two weeks before Election Day, he has potentially changed the trajectory of the race that was, by most accounts, going Clinton’s way. However, had he kept his confidence until after the election, and if these emails in Wiener’s possession contained information of national security substance, and if Clinton was responsible in some way for him receiving them, then Comey would have opened himself and his agency to more criticism from Trump and other Republicans that the FBI was acting in a partisan way. It was a no-win situation.
Now that Comey has dropped the bombshell, though, he needs to come out with it all. What’s in those suspect emails, who sent them, and what was Clinton’s role if any in their transmission? Both the Trump and Clinton camps have asked for full disclosure from the FBI. They deserve it, and so do voters who don’t know what to believe.
Admittedly, this is not the norm for the FBI. It appropriately likes to stay out of politics and not go public with what it knows until it has completed an investigation, and then usually only if there are criminal charges to be filed.
But this is not a normal situation. The FBI is part of this bizarre election now. The only way to extricate itself is to lay as much as it knows out on the table, no matter how imperfect its knowledge, and to do it now.
Of course, the candidates will apply their spin to the information, but at least the voters will have it and can draw their own conclusions about what’s true and what matters — just like with the “Access Hollywood” story.
