One thing seems clear in the back-and-forth and finger-pointing over whether James Comey should have done what he did last Friday: Voters need some answers before Election Day.

We urge the FBI to make clear to the nation — as soon as possible — whether the e-mails discovered on disgraced and disgusting former Congressman Anthony Weiner’s personal computer reveal anything new or damaging about Hillary Clinton’s unwise decision to make use of a private e-mail system while working as secretary of state.

Without doubt, answering that one question qualifies as “pertinent” information. Now that Director Comey has alerted the public to this investigation, he needs to give his agents whatever they need to reach a conclusion.

Agents began that work Monday, but with no promise of when the matter might be resolved. We wish them well. They face a tough and regrettable task. So many others created this mess they are now stuck with unraveling. Godspeed!

We also wish to give the beleaguered FBI director the benefit of the doubt. He seems in at least some key ways a victim in the long unraveling of the Clinton e-mail controversy, and his actions last week were likely the correct call. While it is right to question his decision to alert congressional leaders of the existence of the probe, as doing so clearly risks upsetting election results, it is also difficult to imagine how Comey could have looked the other way.

Yes, tradition and rules at the Department of Justice warn against this kind of 11th-hour revelation. But tradition and the rules haven’t applied to the Clinton e-mail saga from the earliest days of the former secretary’s decision to do it her own way.

Tradition and the rules would have required that Attorney General Loretta Lynch make the decision on whether to bring charges against Clinton this summer, once Comey handed over the findings of his agents’ work into the private system. But after Lynch’s ill-advised impromptu tarmac meeting with Bill Clinton prior to that release, the Democratic Obama appointee ceded her judgment to Comey.

Tradition and the rules would have allowed Lynch last week to silence Comey, but how could she now, given the freak-out that would have resulted once the facts came out?

Similarly, Comey’s back-handed exoneration of Clinton this summer kept alive the belief that justice hadn’t been done. Against that backdrop, how could he have kept quiet now, especially when the e-mails in question were on such a creepy laptop?

If nothing pertinent does come up, and Hillary Clinton survives this latest plot twist to win the presidency, we hope she finally learns her lesson. Going forward, her task of uniting this divided land won’t have a prayer if she continues to play by her own rules — or even appears to play by them.

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