There’s a few theories going around about why the FBI Director Comey would recommend against charges against Hillary right after telling the world all about all the things Hillary had done wrong…

There’s the ‘I don’t want to die’ theory, which makes for an amusing meme I must admit. All the more interesting to see this meme popping up all over facebook and all over other pop culture sites as well, including ones moderated by people I would guess to be left / Democratic leaning. It seems that the skepticism towards this decision runs deep and wide.

But I don’t buy it. I don’t think fear of reprisals was the motivator… I think he had to ‘pay the piper’.

Comey has a long history of investigating the Clintons, finding all manner of wrongdoing… and then pressing / recommending no charges. And when I say ‘long’, I mean, many decades.

Time magazine reported on it, but buried it deep in the article, let me quote the relavent portions:

Comey’s first brush with them came when Bill Clinton was president. Looking to get back into government after a stint in private practice, Comey signed on as deputy special counsel to the Senate Whitewater Committee. In 1996, after months of work, Comey came to some damning conclusions: Hillary Clinton was personally involved in mishandling documents and had ordered others to block investigators as they pursued their case. Worse, her behavior fit into a pattern of concealment: she and her husband had tried to hide their roles in two other matters under investigation by law enforcement. Taken together, the interference by White House officials, which included destruction of documents, amounted to “far more than just aggressive lawyering or political naiveté,” Comey and his fellow investigators concluded. It constituted “a highly improper pattern of deliberate misconduct.” Comey parlayed the Whitewater job into top posts in Virginia and New York, returning to Manhattan in 2002 to be the top federal prosecutor there. One of his first cases as a line attorney in the same office 15 years earlier had been the successful prosecution of Marc Rich, a wealthy international financier, for tax evasion. But on his last day as President in 2001, Bill Clinton pardoned Rich. “I was stunned,” Comey later told Congress. As top U.S. prosecutor in New York in 2002, appointed by George W. Bush, Comey inherited the criminal probe into the Rich pardon and 175 others Clinton had made at the 11th hour. Despite evidence that several pardon recipients, including Rich, had connections to donations to Bill Clinton’s presidential library and Hillary Clinton’s 2000 Senate campaign, Comey found no criminal wrongdoing. [Emphasis added]

By all accounts, Comey is a straight shooter and serious investigator. He certainly didn’t cut Clinton any slack in his monologue the other day, damning her repeatedly with ready-made anti-Hillary campaign lines… It’s been pointed out that if he were going to recommend charges, he would have started his speech exactly the same way, with exactly the same damning conclusions. But there’s a pattern here. After all the findings of wrongdoing, no charges are laid or recommended… yet again.

The Bernie Sanders campaign are of course pushing this as hard as they can, still clinging to the dream that the FBI will end Clinton’s presidential bid. Click that link to see their take on another time the Clinton’s and Comey’s paths crossed… and Comey once again let them off lightly.

Here’s my take on it. If Comey is half the investigator he’s supposed to be, and half as good a lawyer / prosecutor, then he would know very well that there’s no ‘intent’ required to commit felonies with national secrets. The whole point of the ‘gross negligence’ language used in the law is to explicitly make it clear that intent is not required… whether someone means it or not, if they have, or cause, secret information to be transmitted in a non-secret manner, they’re guilty. Comey repeatedly confirmed that Hillary did exactly that, with over 100 emails, maybe a lot more! He also confirmed that Hillary had lied repeatedly, including perjury, about her handling of the emails. And yet after all this, he claimed a lack of evidence, and used a lack of ‘intent’ as an excuse to recommend against prosecution even though intent is irrelevant to the law.

Given all of the above, and their long history, my conclusion is that Comey is bought and paid for by the Clintons. He wouldn’t be the first person, and doubtless won’t be the last. Or at the very least if he’s not bought and paid for, then he knows very well that no one gets anywhere in the public service if they piss off the Clinton machine. It seems to me that he’s treading very lightly, possibly against his own conscience, and probably because he’s had enough run-ins with the Clintons to know you don’t want to be on the bad side of them. Not necessarily in fear of his life (although that’s not impossible) but almost certainly in fear of his career and maybe his freedom.

After all, if the Clinton machine decided they wanted to ‘investigate’ someone, what are the chances that person wouldn’t be found guilty of… something? Do you really think that people who have gamed the legal and governmental systems for a living, for the last 30+ years, really wouldn’t know how to make your life miserable? Really wouldn’t be able to find a junior prosecutor with grand ambitions who would happily ‘investigate’ the crap out of you to curry favor with one of the most powerful families in the world?

Comey’s decision may not be as clear cut as ‘I want to live’, but there’s little doubt in my mind that self-preservation of career or freedom played a significant part. And the power to get away with… seemingly anything, makes the Clintons the most dangerous family in the world. People are warning of a Trump fascist dictatorship, and while I’m no fan of Trump (I’d describe him as a ‘buffoon’ unfit for power) I’m far more fearful of what the Clintons might do with absolute power, now that they seem immune to the law.