Submitted by Raul Ilargi Meijer via The Automatic Earth blog,

There is so much in innuendo and guesses and biased opinion floating around on this ‘morning after’ the Comey bombshell that the only option we have is to read and watch a ton of stuff and see what sticks. One thing that definitely should stick was published late last night by Paul Sperry for the New York Post.

He scores a solid and massive point that looks as damning for the FBI itself (or at least the superiors), as it does for Hillary Clinton. It is, in that regard, perhaps telling that one of the alleged reasons whispered for FBI director Jim Comey to come forward on Friday is that he feared details of the probe would otherwise be leaked to the press.

Sperry’s point: the emails that are at the center of Friday’s announcement that Hillary Clinton ‘s entire email server investigation will be re-opened -whether formally or not is moot-, were obtained by seizing devices from Anthony Weiner in relation him sexting to a 15-year old girl.

And seizing devices was exactly what was never done in Hillary’s case, though “agents assigned to that case knew Abedin hoarded classified emails on her electronic devices.” They were seized neither from Hillary nor from her closest aide Huma Abedin, who now probably- and probably rightly- fears that she may be thrown under the bus at the first convenient moment.

Hillary doesn’t appear to know what exactly is on the Weiner/Abedin device, but her staff is undoubtedly preparing a defense based on Hillary denying she knew anything about what emails Huma kept and/or sent. Such a defense may well be useless, depending on the contents of the mails. But by now it’s full blown panic danger control in the campaign.

While at the FBI the mood may now be that a second consecutive investigation that would end in a second consecutive ‘dismissal’ would be unacceptable to -a lot of- agents. Something Comey is undoubtedly painfully aware of. His ‘own people’ may have given him an ultimatum: either you do it right this time, or we will.

A few bits from Paul Sperry’s piece:

On page 3 of their 11-page report, the agents detail how they showed Abedin a classified paper on Pakistan sent from a State Department source which she, in turn, inexplicably forwarded to her personal Yahoo email account — an obviously unclassified, unencrypted, unsecured and unauthorized system. The breach of security was not an isolated event but a common practice with Abedin.

This is one of those things that Hillary will likely try to plead innocence on. Not that that should be good enough: the server, illegal as it may have been, was still her responsibility. That either she herself or Abedin would play fast and loose with the confidentiality and classification of the material involved, on top of using a server whose very existence played fast and loose with the law, is the kind of thing that disqualifies her from public office, let alone the presidency.

Hillary’s ‘defense’ has been ‘I made a mistake’, and that was enough for her, for Comey, and for the entire American media. It’s still hard to believe. And it certainly doesn’t look like it will be enough a second time. Just imagine what some FBI agents must have thought when they found out, and when Comey subsequently decided to hush the case.

“She routinely forwarded emails from her state.gov account to either her clintonemail.com or her yahoo.com account,” the agents wrote. Why? “So she could print them” at home and not at her State Department office. Abedin contended that she “would typically print the documents without reading them” and “was unaware of the classification.” Uh-huh. The FBI also pointed out that “the only person at DoS (Department of State) to receive an email account on the (clintonemail.com) domain was Abedin.” “Multiple State employees” told the FBI that they considered emailing Abedin “the equivalent of e-mailing Clinton.” Another close Clinton aide told the FBI that “Abedin may have kept emails that Clinton did not.”

The phrase “the equivalent of e-mailing Clinton” says a lot about how closely the two worked together. And that in turn says something about the odds that Huma acted alone, without Hillary knowing.

In her April interview with the FBI, Abedin incredulously maintained that she “did not know that Clinton had a private server until about a year and a half ago, when it became public knowledge.” [..] .. another witness told agents that he and another Clinton aide with computer skills built the new server system “at the recommendation of Huma Abedin,” who first broached the idea of an off-the-grid email server as early as the “fall (of) 2008.” So if you believe Abedin, she didn’t know the private clintonemail.com server that hosted her huma@clintonemail.com account even existed until she heard about it in the news. Comey was a believer; he didn’t even bother to call her back for further questioning. Case closed.

Yes, Huma knew the server existed, long before she admitted knowing it. That’s a bold faced lie. But wait, didn’t she get immunity? Apparently perhaps not officially (?!), but FBI agents seriously suspect she did:

During research, FBI assets and federal law enforcement sources concluded the only way Abedin could have walked away from the probe without criminal charges was because her legal team struck a secret immunity deal with Justice. “She has a deal in place or (FBI Director James) Comey and (Attorney General Loretta) Lynch let her just walk out the door,” a FBI source said.

Wait a minute! Anybody seen Loretta Lynch lately? Did she know Comey would make his announcement Friday? She’s his boss…

If Huma knew the server existed when she said she did not know, it’s 99% sure Anthony Weiner knew it, too. Which is important in more than one way. They shared at least one device, which means he had access to classified material. That in itself is highly illegal. And in the -year long- first stage of the probe, FBI agents knew this, or could have suspected it, and asked Huma for details. Apparently, that didn’t happen.

Perhaps even more important, Weiner is a huge and obvious risk as a blackmail target. For all we know, he may have already provided classified files to parties threatening to go public with photos he sent exposing his weiner to underage girls.

Was the clinton email server hacked? So far the word is there’s no proof of that, but… Did Huma delete and/or bleach-bit information on her devices the same way Hillary did? We can’t know, because despite Huma’s obvious untruths, these devices were not seized for the earlier investigation.

Why? We can only guess. But to quote Hillary from last night (albeit on a slightly different topic): “your guess is as good as mine, and that’s not good enough”.

What we do know is that, obviously, there is still enough material left for the FBI to re-open the case. They may have found as many as tens of thousands of mails belonging to Huma (well, actually, to the US government) on Weiner’s laptop.

[..] Abedin’s role in this caper begs for fresh scrutiny. Making false statements to a federal agent is a felony. So is mishandling classified information. By forwarding classified emails to her personal email account and printing them out at home, Abedin appears to have violated a Classified Information NonDisclosure Agreement she signed at the State Department on Jan. 30, 2009, in which she agreed to keep all classified material under the control of the US government.

Classified emails sent to an unprotected server and printed out at home. How dumb exactly is Huma Abedin? And how dumb does all this make Hillary?

Let’s see if Comey puts the screws to Abedin and leverages her for information on her boss. If he agrees to cut another immunity deal, we’ll know the fix is still in.

Will the media propaganda caravan now turn on Hillary to save its face? I would predict perhaps not immediately, since they bet a lot on their horse. But give it a few days and they may conclude it’s high time to cut their losses. And so may a lot of other parties involved.