FBI probe likely to weigh on Clinton’s prospects

Even as the US Federal Bureau of Investigation obtained a warrant to review newly discovered emails connected to Hillary Clinton’s email server investigation, media outlets around the world were locked in a vigorous debate last week over the controversy.

“Political tension is running high in the United States, extraordinarily so, we’d say. And so it behooves everyone in a position of official responsibility to do everything he or she possibly can to help maintain stability — while avoiding all avoidable provocations — until the bitter competition between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump runs its ugly course on November 8,” said the Washington Post in an editorial. “That is the context for Friday’s announcement by James B. Comey... that his agency is again looking into Ms. Clinton’s private email server in light of newly discovered emails. Mr Comey may have had good reason to inform Republican committee chairmen in Congress of the review, but his timing was nevertheless unfortunate, given its potential to affect a democratic process in which millions of people are already voting,” the paper said.

Taking into account the assurance by Clinton’s campaign manager John Podesta that the probe “will not produce any conclusions different from the one the FBI reached in July,” the paper asked: “If so, the question will be how badly damaged was Ms Clinton’s candidacy by the 11th-hour re-eruption of a controversy that never should have generated so much suspicion or accusation in the first place.”

The Chicago Tribune meanwhile called for Clinton to step aside from her candidacy and said: “Has America become so numb by the decades of lies and cynicism... that it could elect Hillary Clinton as president, even after Friday’s FBI announcement that it had reopened an investigation of her emails while secretary of state? It’s obvious the American political system is breaking down. It’s been crumbling for some time now, and the establishment elite know it and they’re properly frightened. Donald Trump, the vulgarian at their gates, is a symptom, not a cause. Hillary Clinton and husband Bill are both cause and effect.”

The USA Today asserted that “nothing has emerged to contradict Comey’s original conclusion, reasonable in our view, that Clinton’s private server arrangement was extremely careless but not criminal. But the last thing the Clinton campaign wanted, less than two weeks before the election, was a spate of news stories containing the words email, FBI investigation, sexting and Anthony Weiner.”

Yet, it said, the FBI in this case was caught between bad choices. “Imagine the uproar had Comey kept mum and word of the Weiner-related inquiry leaked out even closer to Election Day. If Clinton wins, she’ll be able to point to the FBI director’s letter as further refutation of Trump’s bogus assertion that the election is rigged against him. She might even want to thank Comey.”

“No election has a global impact to match a US presidential contest. Few White House races have been more bitter than the current one between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. So any public official who intervenes in it, 11 days before polling, needs to be very sure what they are doing,” thundered the Guardian. “Such interventions don’t come bigger than the FBI director James Comey’s announcement that the bureau is reopening its probe of Mrs Clinton’s private emails. The potential impact is huge. Until last Friday, Mrs Clinton was looking on course to hand Mr Trump a decisive beating. It may still happen. But that is now all up in the air,” the newspaper said in an editorial.While admitting that Clinton “is in many respects the author of her own problems on the email row,” the paper still blamed the FBI director on the bitter row that has now broken out. “Mr Comey took exactly the wrong decision. If the emails needed investigation, he should have authorised one behind closed doors, carried it out thoroughly, reported it to prosecutors and made an announcement, if one was necessary, in the fullness of time. This is called due process and it is a bulwark of the rule of law, not rule by politicians — least of all rule by a potential tyrant like Mr Trump. Instead, Mr Comey has rocket-fuelled a venomous contest just when Mr Trump was desperate for a lifeline.”