Hillary Clinton is, not for the first time, in the clear. The FBI announced last night its investigation into the latest cache of emails to emerge showed no wrongdoing on the part of the Democrat nominee. Clinton’s spokeswoman Jennifer Palmieri said the they were glad the matter was resolved. But does the exoneration – if you can call it that – come too late for Hillary? Clinton’s poll lead is narrow: she’s currently 1.8 points ahead of Trump, according to the Real Clear Politics poll of polls. And with millions of voters having already cast their ballots, is the damage already done?
The New York Post’s front page is typically rambunctious: ‘Saved at the bell’, the newspaper shouts on its front page. The Post says Clinton is ‘off the hook again’ and looks as if ‘her prayers have been answered’. Yet in its editorial, the paper is much less clear-cut in its vindication of the Democrat candidate. It says whatever the decision of the FBI, the email scandal will undoubtedly rumble on and it points out that ‘other ugly facts keep surfacing’. It says that while some may point the finger at the FBI, the real blame lies at Hillary’s door, because she failed to hand over a chunk of the emails in the first place. If she had done so from the start, the paper suggests, a lid might have been put on the scandal long ago. The paper also points out a worrying thought: could the foreign governments that ‘likely hacked the server years ago’ be hanging on to their data to drop a bombshell further down the line?
There’s no such worry in the Washington Post. Hillary gets a ringing endorsement from the Post’s editorial, in which it says that while the email row shows up Clinton’s ‘flaws’, it doesn’t constitute treason – and nor does it show she shouldn’t be president. Instead, the Post argues that caricatures of Clinton, such as Trump’s depiction of his rival as ‘crooked Hillary’, are ‘more slander than reality’. What’s more, the argument over emails and private servers has once again demonstrated Hillary’s durability in the face of ‘decades of unrelenting conspiracy-mongering, unprecedented scrutiny and outright misogyny’. This, the Post says, shows her to be a politician with ‘discipline and resilience’ and an eye on ‘pragmatic solutions’. ‘Those are the qualities,’ the paper writes, that ‘we hope will result in her being elected president on Nov. 8.’
It’s James Comey, the FBI boss who caused controversy by reopening the investigation into Hillary last month, who comes in for criticism in the Wall Street Journal. The paper says the handling of the investigation into the latest cache of emails ‘was never going to change (the) legal judgment’ – because of the way the case was dealt with in the first place. Instead of putting out a high-profile public statement, it says the FBI should have dealt with things differently – by going to a grand jury shows that the legal charges were never going to be properly vetted. The Journal says that Comey’s handling of the probe was ‘never serious’ and the decision of the Justice Department not to try and properly bring together all the evidence seems troubling. The prospects for Comey – whoever wins tomorrow night – don’t look good is the clear implication here.
The New York Times also points out that while Comey was clear in his letter that the latest emails didn’t show any wrongdoing, his announcement yesterday was ‘otherwise vague’. The paper goes on to say that the message doesn’t say whether ‘agents had completed their review of the emails, or that they were abandoning the matter in regard to her aides’ – potentially spelling trouble for Hilary even if she does manage to win the White House. The paper also quotes Trump’s campaign manager Kellyanne Conway, to show that Republicans aren’t happy either, with Conway saying that ‘the investigation has been mishandled from the beginning’. It points out that ‘criticism of Mr. Comey from both parties is likely to persist after the election’. For now though, the Times says, ‘Mr. Comey’s letter swept away her largest and most immediate problem’. But does the FBI’s latest intervention come too late for Hillary?
There’s criticism for the FBI in the Daily Beast as well. Joy-Anne Reid says ‘the rot’ at the heart of the organisation is obvious, writing that: ‘the events of the past two weeks have made it all but impossible to have much faith in the FBI now’. Her piece argues that many FBI agents are the kind of people who would vote for Trump: ‘mostly white, mostly male, mostly right of center.’ Reid worries that this means that the FBI has it in for Clinton whatever happens and writes that ‘if the agency is indeed, ‘Trumpland’ (then) God help Hillary Clinton.’
Finally, the Los Angeles Times says that despite Hillary’s vindication, many Democrats are still fuming by what has happened. The paper questions why Comey chose to step in, since it has emerged that many of the fresh batch of emails turned out to be ‘duplicates of emails the FBI already had read’. The LA Times joins other newspaper in pointing out that the trouble might not be over yet though. It says that Republicans remain unhappy with the conclusion of the latest probe and suggests that even if Hillary triumphs tomorrow night, ‘Democrats fear the renewed controversy surrounding her emails — which dominated news headlines for more than a week — damaged their prospects in several close Senate races that could determine control of the chamber.’ Whoever wins the White House, this won’t be the last we hear of Hillary’s emails, it seems.
After the American people have voted, what next for the US and the rest of the world? Join panellists including Sir Christopher Meyer, KCMG, former British ambassador to the US, for a discussion chaired by Andrew Neil on 30 November at RIBA, London. Tickets include a drinks reception. In association with Seven Investment Management. Book now.
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