| Happy Monday, guys! Did you tune out of political news over the weekend? Lucky! We'll catch you up on the latest developments in email-ville. But before we get started, we want to clear up one persistent rumor: At no point during this election cycle was Anthony Weiner sexting Hillary Clinton. As far as we know. |
| Where we're at |
| On Friday, FBI Director James Comey notified Congress that, while investigating another case, the bureau found a trove of emails, and some portion of them may be relevant to the Hillary Clinton email investigation that wrapped up this summer. |
| How many emails? Six hundred fifty thousand, or roughly the number of unread emails you have received from Klout. |
| What's in them? The FBI isn't saying. Are any of them relevant? Are there new emails, or are these just repeats of what we already had? (And how is it humanly possible to have 650,000 emails on one laptop? That's an email every 3 1/2 minutes, 24 hours a day, for four solid years. |
| What was the other case? Funny story -- it's the Anthony-Weiner-sexting-a-15-year-old-girl investigation. You see, possible GOP sleeper cell Anthony Weiner is the estranged husband of Clinton aide Huma Abedin, and they shared the device that the FBI seized. They now have a warrant to search the computer for emails relevant to the Clinton campaign, whereas before they only had a warrant for the Weiner stuff. |
| Are there any juicy emails to or from Clinton? Probably not. Per the LA Times: "A cursory review indicated no emails were sent to or from Clinton, but some were forwarded messages from Abedin to herself and others were emails between her and other Clinton aides, a law enforcement official said." The investigation is focused on whether classified information made it to the laptop at any point. |
| What's the timeline? The investigation won't be over until well after Election Day, so whatever you think is in the emails, good or bad, is all the information you'll have when you cast your ballot. In a rare show of hilariously unintentional bipartisanship, both Team Clinton and Team Trump agree that the FBI needs to release information on the relevant emails immediately. |
| It's not what you said, but when you said it |
| With a few notable exceptions, reaction to the new investigation fell along party lines: Democrats decried the timing of the announcement just 11 days before Election Day, while most Republicans praised Comey for reopening the issue. |
| • | At a rally in Phoenix, Donald Trump said, ""This is the biggest political scandal since Watergate and it's everybody's deepest hope that justice, at last, will be beautifully delivered." | | • | On NBC's "Meet the Press," Mike Pence told Chuck Todd, "I think millions of Americans are encouraged by the willingness of the F.B.I. simply to say, 'We have new evidence. We're going to inform Congress. We're going to proceed forward.'" | | • | Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) said Comey "demonstrated a disturbing double standard" for revealing information on the Clinton probe while not releasing any news on Trump's ties to the Russian government, and said Comey may be in violation of the Hatch Act, "which bars FBI officials from using their official authority to influence an election." | | • | A former Justice official who served in four Democratic administration said in a USA TODAY op-ed, "(Comey's) statement violated written traditions and rules of the Justice Department under both Republican and Democratic administrations." | |
| On the other hand, a few Clinton critics weren't happy with the timing of the announcement either. Conservative radio host Joe Walsh, who last week said he was going to "grab my musket" if Trump wasn't elected, tweeted, ""Politics aside, James Comey has screwed this thing up from the get go. He wrongly let her off in July & he wrongly stuck it to her Friday." And Fox News' Jeanine Pirro said the investigation "disgraces and politicizes" the bureau. |
| Hedging bets |
| We have little in the way of polls conducted entirely after Friday afternoon's announcement. Starting on Friday, the Washington Post-ABC News tracking poll began asking respondents if the latest scandal changed their likelihood of voting for Clinton. Thirty-four percent said it made them less likely to vote for her, but the poll results for Friday were the same as the day before -- 49% for Clinton, 46% for Trump -- so the "less likely" respondents may just be Trump supporters moving from "definitely not voting for Hillary" to "totally way definitely not voting for Hillary." The CBS/YouGov BattleGround Tracker survey showed much the same result in battleground states -- if voters already had an opinion on Hillary, the new FBI investigation didn't change things. |
| As far as other numbers: |
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| Stock markets seem to be favoring a Clinton win -- or at least some certainty as to the election's outcome. As news broke Friday, a plus-90 day for the Dow Jones Industrial Average turned into a minus-8 day; Asian markets were mixed on Monday. "There seems little doubt that a Trump victory would trigger selling in stock markets from current levels," said Ric Spooner of CMC Markets in Sydney. |
| More from the campaign trail |
| • | Trump supporter votes twice in Iowa because she thought her first vote was changed to Clinton. Wait, why wouldn't they change her second vote too? (The Des Moines Register) | | • | Evan McMullin an option in 11 states. Egg McMuffins an option on the all-day breakfast menu (The Spectrum) | | • | Grisly ghouls from every tomb are closing in to vote in Indiana (Indianapolis Star) | | • | Will this election permanently divide our country? Probably, yeah (The News Journal) | | • | Cincinnati crowd chants, 'Emails won't make me change my mind, I already know it's Hillary's time' (Cincinnati Enquirer) | |
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| Cthulhu still an option |
| Forty-three states allow write-ins, in case you're starting to lean toward electing a fictional undersea deity. |
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