RUTHFULLY YOURS

FBI Director James Comey’s revelation on Friday that the bureau was reviewing new evidence related to a previously completed investigation of Hillary Clinton’s email practices roiled the presidential race just 11 days before Election Day. It also provided the latest chapter in a long history of October Surprises.

Republicans seized on Mr. Comey’s notification to Congress to attempt to reinvigorate Donald Trump’s campaign, while Mrs. Clinton and other Democrats challenged the Federal Bureau of Investigation to release the pertinent evidence promptly.

The October Surprise has been a staple of American politics for decades. The phrase refers to an 11th-hour revelation or turn of events that, whether intentionally or not, has the potential to shift the direction of the presidential race. Sometimes October Surprises appear to have altered the course of a campaign, sometimes not.

Here are notable examples:
1972

In October 1972, Richard Nixon was coasting to re-election against Democratic South Dakota Sen. George McGovern; polling showed him leading by as much as 26 points that month.

Though his campaign seemed little in need of a late boost, on Oct. 26, Nixon’s national security adviser Henry Kissinger declared “peace is at hand” in Vietnam, and that a final cease-fire agreement with the North Vietnamese communists could be reached within days.

Rather than applaud the Nixon administration, Mr. McGovern credited the anti-war movement for the development. He questioned why it had taken Nixon four years to “put an end to this tragic war” and declined to speculate on the effect on his chances at winning the election.

Mr. Nixon won re-election in one of the most lopsided landslides in U.S. history. And peace wasn’t, in fact, at hand. The war continued another 2½ years, ending with the fall of Saigon, now known as Ho Chi Minh City, in April 1975.
1980

The release of U.S. hostages in Iran was the October Surprise that never surprised.

In November 1979, Iranian student activists stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran and took 52 Americans hostage. The Americans were still held a year later. In the thick of President Jimmy Carter’s re-election campaign against former California Gov. Ronald Reagan, Mr. Reagan warned repeatedly that Mr. Carter would unveil an “October Surprise” to turn the election around at the last minute, possibly securing the release of some or all of the hostages.

“Presidents can make things happen, you know,” Mr. Reagan said in a Florida television interview on Oct. 10. In an interview with the Associated Press earlier that month, he said he was “bracing myself for an October Surprise,” noting the Iranians “are not exactly supporters of mine.”

Ultimately, the hostages weren’t freed before the election. Mr. Reagan won a resounding victory—and the hostages were released the day he was sworn into office.
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It appears the FBI agents investigating Anthony Weiner for sexting an underaged girl have done the job that the FBI agents investigating Hillary Clinton for mishandling classified information didn’t or weren’t allowed to do.

Agents reportedly found thousands of State Department-related emails ostensibly containing classified information on the electronic devices belonging to Weiner and his wife and top Clinton aide Huma Abedin. The discovery has prompted FBI Director James Comey to, on the eve of the election, reopen the Clinton case he prematurely closed last July.

How did agents examine the devices? By seizing them. It’s a common practice in criminal investigations, but one that clearly was not applied in the case of Clinton or her top aide — even though agents assigned to that case knew Abedin hoarded classified emails on her electronic devices.

The two special agents who interviewed Abedin on April 5 noted as much in their 302 summary of their interview, which took place at the FBI’s Washington field office and notably was attended by the chief of the FBI’s counterespionage section.

On page 3 of their 11-page report, the agents detail how they showed Abedin a classified paper on Pakistan sent from a State Department source which she, in turn, inexplicably forwarded to her personal Yahoo email account — an obviously unclassified, unencrypted, unsecured and unauthorized system. The breach of security was not an isolated event but a common practice with Abedin.

“She routinely forwarded emails from her state.gov account to either her clintonemail.com or her yahoo.com account,” the agents wrote. Why? “So she could print them” at home and not at her State Department office.

The FBI bombshell is not necessarily a gamechanging event. The Clinton campaign, and its mainstream media extension, have weathered with surprising ease the fainting episode on September 11.

In the next two days they will focus on:

the possibility (they will claim likelihood) that Anthony Weiner’s/Huma Abedin’s server does not contain any emails not known to the FBI already, let alone those designated confidential, classified, secret or top secret – that was Hillary Clinton’s predictable immediate reaction;
that the FBI will not be able to sift through thousands of emails quickly enough to provide a clear answer to (1) before the election, which is the coded message behind the Clinton camp’s demand for a “detailed and thorough” investigation – demands for “immediate” disclosure notwithstanding – and an unnamed official has already indicated that it was not likely that the FBI’s review of the additional emails could be completed by Election Day; and
that the FBI was acting under political pressure from Clinton’s foes: Sen. Dianne Feinstein has already declared that “the FBI has a history of extreme caution near Election Day so as not to influence the results. Today’s break from that tradition is appalling.”

The one truly appalling event in this saga was James Comey’s decision last spring not to ask for a grand jury, without which the entire investigation into Clinton’s emails was predictably sidetracked. On that inglorious form, his surprise Friday announcement may indicate that the potential for scandal is so great that his options for further damage limitation in Clinton’s interest were extremely limited.

However . . . In 1982 I interviewed for the BBC World Service one of Ireland’s best respected diplomats and political commentators, Connor Cruise O’Brien, at his home by the cliffs above the Irish Sea. In passing he mentioned Ireland’s scandal-ridden prime minister of the day, Charles Haughey, who had managed repeatedly to survive numerous disclosures of corruption and wrongdoing. O’Brian said that if he saw Charlie Haughey “buried at midnight at a crossroads with a stake driven through his heart, I should continue to wear a clove of garlic around my neck, just in case.”

WASHINGTON — A new trove of emails that appear pertinent to the now-closed investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server was discovered after the F.B.I. seized at least one electronic device shared by Anthony D. Weiner and his estranged wife, Huma Abedin, a top aide to Mrs. Clinton, federal law enforcement officials said Friday.

The F.B.I. is investigating illicit text messages that Mr. Weiner, a former Democratic congressman from New York, sent to a 15-year-old girl in North Carolina. The bureau told Congress on Friday that it had uncovered new emails related to the Clinton case — one federal official said they numbered in the tens of thousands — potentially reigniting an issue that has weighed on the presidential campaign and offering a lifeline to Donald J. Trump less than two weeks before the election.

In a letter to Congress, the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, said that emails had surfaced in an unrelated case, and that they “appear to be pertinent to the investigation.”

Mr. Comey said the F.B.I. was taking steps to “determine whether they contain classified information, as well as to assess their importance to our investigation.” He said he did not know how long it would take to review the emails, or whether the new information was significant.

Mr. Trump has fallen behind Mrs. Clinton in most national polls and in many key states. Polls have been tightening in recent days, however, amid the daily release of hacked Clinton campaign emails published by WikiLeaks.

Mr. Trump seized on the F.B.I. action on Friday at a rally in New Hampshire. To cheers of “lock her up” from his supporters, Mr. Trump said: “Hillary Clinton’s corruption is on a scale we have never seen before. We must not let her take her criminal scheme into the Oval Office.”

After deriding the F.B.I. for weeks as inept and corrupt, Mr. Trump went on to praise the law enforcement agency.

The FBI has renewed its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s secret emails, Director James Comey told Congress in a new letter Friday, heightening the stakes for the Democratic presidential nominee with less than two weeks before Election Day.

The FBI has renewed its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s secret emails, Director James Comey told Congressin a new letter Friday, heightening the stakes for the Democratic presidential nominee with less than two weeks before Election Day.

Mr. Comey said his agents learned of new emails “pertinent” to their probe while working on an unrelated case. He said his agents need to review those messages to see whether they contain classified information and whether they affect his previous decision.

In July, Mr. Comey announced that while he determined Mrs. Clinton did mishandle classified information, she was too inept to know the risks she was running, so he couldn’t prove she did it intentionally — undercutting a criminal case.

His new announcement Friday threatened to upend the presidential campaign.

Donald Trump is taking the high road in the wake of the October surprise of the director of the FBI, Jas. Comey, who announced earlier this afternoon that the bureau will reopen — if that’s what it’s doing — the investigation in respect of Secretary Clinton’s email. Mr. Trump, in remarks made but minutes after the announcement, praised both the FBI and the Justice Department for “courage.” Mr. Comey’s letter, in any event, is quite the October surprise.

“In previous Congressional testimony, I referred to the fact that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had completed its investigation of former Secretary Clinton’s personal email server,” Mr. Comey wrote to committee chairmen at Congress. “Due to recent developments, I am writing to supplement my previous testimony. In connection with an unrelated case, the FBI has learned of the existence of emails that appear to be pertinent to the investigation.”

“I am writing to inform you that the investigative team briefed me on this yesterday, and I agreed that the FBI should take appropriate investigative steps designed to allow investigators to review these emails to determine whether they contain classified information, as well as to assess their importance to our investigation. Although the FBI cannot yet assess whether this material may be significant.”

Even with the vagueness the development is huge, coming as it does ten days before an election in which the candidate at the center of this probe is regarded by the public with record distrust. It is a tragedy for Mrs. Clinton, but people don’t trust her. That, more than the sex scandals and Donald Trump’s rough-hewn temperament, is the central character question in this campaign. CONTINUE AT SITE

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has uncovered and is reviewing new evidence in connection with its investigation of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s email server, a probe that the FBI had closed this summer.

In a letter to Congress, FBI director James Comey said the FBI had discovered new emails in an unrelated case that “appear to be pertinent to the investigation” into whether Mrs. Clinton or her aides mishandled classified information while she was serving in the State Department.

“I am writing to inform you that the investigative team briefed me on this yesterday, and I agreed that the FBI should take appropriate investigative steps designed to allow investigators to review these emails to determine whether they contain classified information, as well as to assess their importance to our investigation,” Mr. Comey wrote Friday to a group of congressional committee chairmen and ranking members.

The emails in question were found during the search of a device in the FBI probe of former Rep. Anthony Weiner, who is being investigated for allegedly sending sexually explicit messages to a minor, a person familiar with the case said.

Mr. Weiner is married to Huma Abedin, a longtime senior aide of Mrs. Clinton who recently announced she was separating from Mr. Weiner. Ms. Abedin was questioned earlier this year by the FBI in the Clinton email probe.

On Friday, Mr. Comey said it wasn’t clear whether the new emails would be important to the probe. “The FBI cannot yet assess whether or not this material may be significant, and I cannot predict how long it will take us to complete this additional work,” he wrote.

Mr. Comey recommended no charges against Mrs. Clinton or her aides when the investigation was closed this summer.

The announcement of a renewed probe into Mrs. Clinton’s handling of sensitive and classified information comes with just 11 days left in the increasingly bitter presidential contest between her and Republican opponent Donald Trump. CONTINUE AT SITE

WASHINGTON — One of the eight GOP committee chairmen notified by FBI Director James Comey about new emails pertaining to the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s private server urged the bureau to finish its review before Election Day.

Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), who leads the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies, responded to Comey’s notification to Congress that he green-lighted “appropriate investigative steps designed to allow investigators to review these emails to determine whether they contain classified information, as well as to assess their importance to our investigation.”

Comey stressed that “the FBI cannot yet assess whether or not this material may be significant, and I cannot predict how long it will take us to complete this additional work.”

The emails in question reportedly were recovered from electronic devices belonging to Huma Abedin and her estranged husband Anthony Weiner during the FBI’s probe of the former congressman sexting a 15-year-old. CNN reported that the new emails were not written by Clinton.

In his letter today, Shelby requested that the FBI “expeditiously and thoroughly conduct its review” due to “the serious nature of this matter.”

“Unfortunately, it has now become apparent that the FBI, with all its extensive resources and highly-trained personnel, closed an incomplete investigation that resulted in only partial findings. I firmly believe that the American people deserve to know the facts – all of them.” The emphasis on those last three words was added by the senator.

Shelby, who is up for re-election this year but expected to keep his seat, added that how the investigation is conducted is “critical to the integrity of the FBI and the American people’s ability to place their trust in government.”

On Friday afternoon, the FBI uncorked the mother of all October surprises, announcing in a letter to Congress that it has re-opened its investigation of Hillary Clinton’s “personal email server.” The reason? During an “unrelated investigation”* it uncovered e-mails that “appear to be pertinent” to Clinton’s case. It is seeking to determine whether the e-mails contain classified information and can’t yet determine their significance.

Stripped of the legalese, it means that Hillary is back in legal jeopardy. The FBI doesn’t investigate and recommend enforcement actions against computer servers. It holds people accountable, and Hillary is the person most responsible for her own e-mail. I have three initial thoughts.

First, these e-mails must be prima facie problematic. There is no way the FBI publicly re-opens this investigation on the eve of a presidential election if the new e-mails contained information about yoga routines or wedding plans. Moreover, the very fact that the FBI is trying to determine whether the e-mails contain classified information indicates that their content is setting off alarm bells in the Bureau. In other words, this is serious.

Second, the e-mails could have an impact on the decision whether to charge Hillary or her aides either under the Espionage Act or for obstructing the initial investigation, perhaps by lying to the FBI. Recall that Comey previously exonerated Clinton under a made-up legal standard, but if there are more e-mails — and if Clinton or her aides worked to conceal their existence from the FBI — then their conduct may even rise to the FBI’s arbitrary, higher threshold of lawlessness. At the very least, it renders the FBI’s previous decision not to prosecute even more suspect.

Third, unless the FBI announces the investigation and clears her within the span of basically one work week (an action that would be deeply problematic on its own terms), Hillary’s closing argument to the American people is going to be that Donald Trump is so dangerous that it’s worth gambling your vote on a woman under current criminal investigation.