By Editorial Board
Star-Ledger
It may never be determined whether James Comey altered history by introducing a headline-grabbing non-sequitur into the Hillary Clinton email saga on the eve of the election, but this aspect of that false alarm is irrefutable:
The director of the FBI tainted this election by breaking clear rules that establish a wall between politics and criminal investigations, in effect turning the FBI into a political player. That is a scary precedent.
The Trump campaign was a mess before Oct. 28, the day Comey announced that emails found on Anthony Weiner’s computer might be related to Clinton’s case, and therefore should be flung into the media hurricane as potentially “new” and “relevant.”
They turned out to be nothing at all, but that marinated for nine news cycles.
Nine days that clearly energized Trump, who used it as a cudgel at every rally.
Nine days in which Trump and his media allies called for Clinton’s prosecution despite the absence of evidence that a law was broken.
Nine days before Comey said this, on Nov. 6: Oops, never mind.
By then, tens of millions had voted – some who might have otherwise sat this one out, if not for Trump renewing his lock-her-up campaign strategy.
Either way, it was a horrendous intrusion to the democratic process, and Comey butchered it from the start.
