1. The news yesterday was the release of a 500-page report by the FBI’s IG looking into James Comey’s handling of the Hillary Clinton email scandal. The liberal reaction has been what you’d expect. Even some conservatives are wondering if she got screwed.
2. But for many of us, the report’s most painful revelation, the one that hurts so very much, was the inspector general’s uncovering of the fact that Comey himself had used a private email service a handful of times to conduct official business.
3. Of all the things that Clinton had to overcome to win, the email scandal was the biggest. Of all the people involved in that story, Comey’s shadow looms largest. Yet here we are.
4. quick reminder: This is the same guy who broke FBI protocol to tell the world that Clinton had been “extremely careless” in using private email rather than government email.
5. This is the same guy who went before Congress weeks before the election to inform lawmakers that his agency had discovered new emails to examine (and that were nothing). This is same guy who, by one authoritative account, may have tipped the election against Clinton.
6. And this is same guy who, after President Donald Trump’s fired him, had the gall to publish a memoir titled A Higher Loyalty.
7. This was my immediate reaction:
8. Before I go on, I want to say that I don’t think Comey tipped the election in Trump’s favor any more than I think any one factor effected his victory. I think a confluence of factors determined the outcome, factors we are still trying to sort through.
9. What we do know only now thanks to this internal report is that an FBI director widely admired for his principles played a key role in the intelligence community’s effort to inform Americans of the Russia's attempt to move public opinion, via social media, in Trump’s favor.
10. Or, more accurately, not to inform.
11. The inspector general’s report included an email from Oct. 5, 2016, that Comey wrote to DNI James Clapper and CIA's John Brennan. In it, he warns against going public about the Kremlin sabotage for fearing of risking the intelligence community’s reputation. 
12. This email is news and it’s staggering.
13. It beggars Comey’s reputation as someone who puts honor and duty above political considerations. It bankrupts any meaning in A Higher Loyalty, unless loyalty was to the FBI rather than the American people the agency is supposed to serve.
14. Because he feared conservative attacks on the FBI, Comey:
A) staged an unprecedented intervention that wounded Clinton and
B) warned colleagues against staging another kind of intervention that radical Republicans would have seen as biased against Trump.
A) staged an unprecedented intervention that wounded Clinton and
B) warned colleagues against staging another kind of intervention that radical Republicans would have seen as biased against Trump.
15. He wasn’t brave. He was scared.
He wasn’t honorable. They were craven.
He wasn’t principled. He was petty.
He wasn’t honorable. They were craven.
He wasn’t principled. He was petty.
16. Instead of acting in the country’s interest, James Comey acted in the FBI’s interest, and, in doing so, wounded the United States.
17. But this pales compared to Washington’s blindingly obvious double standard. Along with Comey, who else used a private email service?
Reince Priebus,
Hope Hicks,
Steve Bannon,
Stephen Miller,
Gary Cohn,
Ivanka Trump,
Jared Kushner,
Scott Pruitt,
Mike Pence.
Reince Priebus,
Hope Hicks,
Steve Bannon,
Stephen Miller,
Gary Cohn,
Ivanka Trump,
Jared Kushner,
Scott Pruitt,
Mike Pence.
18. Did I mention that hackers compromised White House Chief of Staff John Kelly’s phone? Did I mention that the president himself refuses to use a secured phone? (It’s too inconvenient, he says).
19. That means there’s an approximately 100 percent chance foreign spies are listening to virtually everything going on in the Oval Office.
20. If others are guilty of the same sin, why did Clinton alone pay the price?
You know the answer.
You know the answer.
21. In the fall of 2015, Face the Nation host John Dickerson said that given Trump’s and Bernie Sanders’ apparent popularity, it looked like voters wanted a political outsider in 2016.
22. “That puts you in a fix,” Dickerson said, referring to her many years in the public eye and the image of her as the ultimate insider. She laughed. She said, “I cannot imagine anyone being more of an outsider than the first woman president.”
23.
24. She was panned for telling the truth. She was playing the sex card, we were told. She was playing the victim. She was doing whatever. But she was right.
25. It’s all right to use a private email service to conduct official business as long as you are not a woman seeking power. If you are not, you might be president one day.
26. If you are, well, you’ll always be an outsider.
27. Yeah, I'm mad. You should be too. Share this thread, follow me and sign up for my newsletter. Onward together! stoehr.substack.com/p/women-are-st…
