Has Hillary Clinton developed a newfound respect for transparency in the wake of FBI director James Comey’s decision to reopen the investigation into her use of a private email server during her tenure as secretary of state?
No. In fact, the only thing transparent about Clinton’s reaction to the announcement is her transparent attempt to exploit it for political gain.
In her first public appearance after the announcement Friday, Hillary said, “We are calling on the FBI to release all the information that it has … let’s get it out.” Clinton campaign chief John Podesta also called on Comey to “immediately provide the American public more information than is contained in the letter [to Congress announcing the decision].”
The notoriously secretive Clinton is likely betting that the FBI won’t review the new trove of emails or make a statement about them in the 11 (now 8) days before the election. By calling on the FBI to release the information, Clinton can get credit for appearing to encourage transparency, which may leave some voters thinking that she wouldn’t be doing so if she had something scandalous to hide.
But she very well may have something to hide. As the Washington Examiner‘s Friday editorial noted, “it would be surprising for Comey to throw such a bombshell into the election without having already received some indication that the newly discovered emails contain something pointedly relevant to deciding whether Clinton or her staff committed crimes.”
As my colleague David Freddoso noted on Friday, Clinton’s performing a bluff that she’s made before. “[Clinton’s] team discussed making exactly this same bluff in emails that have since been illegally stolen and released by WikiLeaks. When the State Department had her emails, Clinton’s team could safely call on officials there to release absolutely everything. They did so in public, while expressing in private the belief that this would not happen, and in fact (as Philippe Reines put it) that almost none of the emails would ever be released.”
This time, while Team Clinton calls for the FBI to release everything it has, they’re also raising the specter of conspiracy (or a rigged election?) should they be made public. Podesta said the release “just 11 days out from a presidential election” is perfectly timed to affect the results.
But it really isn’t. It’s unlikely that agents will be able to review the new emails before the election. Comey said on Friday that he could not “predict how long it will take us to complete this additional work.” But FBI agents told the New York Times that they are “all but certain that it will not be completed by Election Day, and believe it will take at least several weeks.”
Comey gave Congress the impression earlier that the investigation was over. But it turns out there’s a new loose end, and so he owes it to their constituents to clarify.
Daniel Allott is deputy commentary editor for the Washington Examiner
