Minutes after FBI Director James Comey’s announcement on Sunday that Hillary Clinton won’t face charges over recently uncovered emails, supporters of Donald Trump broke out the conspiracy theories:

IMPOSSIBLE:

There R 691,200 seconds in 8 days. DIR Comey has thoroughly reviewed 650,000 emails in 8 days? An email / second? IMPOSSIBLE RT — General Flynn (@GenFlynn) November 6, 2016

It took 1 year to review 60K and 8 days to review 650K? Smart machines or not, something does not jive. Thoughts? — General Flynn (@GenFlynn) November 6, 2016

Leaving aside the false assumption that just one agent would have to read all of the emails found on former Congressman Anthony Weiner’s laptop, it turns out “machines” are a lot smarter than Flynn seems to think.

Reports indicated that nearly every email on the laptop was a duplicate of messages the agency had already examined ― something NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden said the FBI would’ve been able to figure out within hours.

In response to a question from Jeff Jarvis, professor and director of the Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism at the City University of New York’s Graduate School of Journalism, Snowden explained how to sort the duplicates:

@jeffjarvis Drop non-responsive To:/CC:/BCC:, hash both sets, then subtract those that match. Old laptops could do it in minutes-to-hours. — Edward Snowden (@Snowden) November 7, 2016

If Snowden is correct, the real question isn’t why the examination of the emails was over so quickly, it’s why it took so long to clear up the mess Comey made with his Oct. 28 letter to Congress.