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Comment by Matt3o12_ | Hacker News Reader

Well I would be certainly interested in the circumstances especially considering that I always believed he was pro trump. Some even said he played an important role Trump won the election because he opened an investigation into Clinton's emails right before the election.

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The one professional prognosticator who came closest to predicting a Trump win at 33% agrees with the letter playing an outsize role - https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-comey-letter-probab...

There's also a follow up by I believe the NYT that downplays the letter. Per the trajectory of the polls leading into the date it was released, she wa on the way down both nationally and in the key swing states.

The release of the letter coincided with polls that showed that slide yet predated its release (in collection).

It's not that it didn't have an impact. Just that it probably wasn't the deciding factor.

The results in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania were so close-- under 1%-- that even if the letter only induced a 1% shift, it was THE deciding factor. If you read the 538 story, this is his "Little Comey" version.

That doesn't mean Hillary didn't make a huge strategic mistake in going after Trump's competence and character rather than focusing on the issues. She did. She totally did.

Nate Silver came closest to predicting a Trump win? That's laughable. The USC poll had Trump as winning, and I'd be surprised if there weren't more pollers who had an accurate reading (I only know of the few most popular ones).

They were off by several points. That poll just measured the PV.

that's not what he did. there already was an investigation. What comey announced right before the elections was that they had found more of clinton's emails in another, unrelated case. That invesigation was into Anthony Weiner, who was married to Clinton's advisor Huma Abedin. Weiner was sexting a 15-year-old, Abedin was forwarding some emails to weiner's computer to be printed out. In investigating weiner's computer they found clinton's emails (forwarded by abedin). That's what Comey announced. I have no idea why he decided to announce that specific information, at that time.

Yep. If you believe that Comey's final investigation swung the election, you also gotta realize that the election was swung because Anthony Weiner is a sleezeball.

The odds that sleezeball would be married to Clinton's top advisor...Bill actually officiated their wedding.

There were a number of unwise actions from the Clintons and their retinue (in this case as well as others). I honestly don't know what level of impact Comey's statements had on the election.

You critique your political opponents without using tabloid language.

He's not my political opponent. Sleezeball is a euphemism for what he did, is it not? He was sexting a 15-year old girl and his infant son was included in some of his pictures.

What is he?

Just be an adult, dude. This isn't the NY Post website.

I'm a left-leaning liberal registered Democrat so I'm not sure in what way someone would consider Weiner to be my "political opponent", but the guy is absolutely a sleazeball.

Being a sleazeball transcends politics and party lines and there are many Democrat and Republican sleazeballs.

Just in order to keep the record straight, I find it necessary to point out that Comey's specific testimony (last week) on the forwarding of emails was false, and that false testimony may be directly related to his being dismissed today.

https://www.propublica.org/article/comeys-testimony-on-huma-...

just as likely, if not more likely, that he was fired for correcting the record today. (doubtful but who knows)

The Comey announcement was certainly one of the decisive factors in the election but it's generally seen as ineptness rather than an attempt to swing the election to Trump.

Nobody really knew why he did it... until he explained, in detail. Now we know.

He thought Hillary was going to win, and after the Loretta Lynch meeting with Bill Clinton, didn't want to seem like he favored Hillary to avoid backlash from the GOP and Trump's base. He needed to maintain his impartiality. And in that misjudgement, he did hand Trump the presidency.

He was pressured by Trump partisans in the FBI and elsewhere (in accordance with his obligations) to release that and Obama blocked him from writing an Op-ed about Trump before the election.

I think he genuinely tried to stay neutral but the GOP partisans threatened to leak stuff so he tried to do damage control ineffectually.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/04/report-obama-re...

> Report: Obama Rejected Comey Op-Ed on Russia’s Election Meddling

http://www.newsweek.com/fbi-reviewing-more-clinton-emails-51...

> The truth is Comey didn’t have a choice. Because the new information followed his sworn testimony about the case, Comey was obligated by Department of Justice rules to keep the relevant committees apprised.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-10-28/leaked-memo-james-c...

> Now, it is the democrats turn to rage at Comey and the FBI, although Comey likely did not have much choice: had he kept the information secret, it certainly would have leaked as we predicted; as such his best recourse was to come clean, although many have speculated about the cryptic nature of the disclosure.

http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/02/james-comey-fbi-direc...

> The story broke in the Daily Mail on September 21, and the F.B.I. seized the laptop on October 3. Within a couple of days, the New York F.B.I. agents, who had a warrant to look only at Weiner-related information, knew there were Clinton e-mails on the laptop, and the prosecutors in D.C. were informed.

> Often, a retired agent says, those in the field are suspicious of Washington. “Dreamland,” they called it in his day, because they believed those who weren’t on the ground investigating cases were clueless. “[Agents] out in the field never want to give a case to D.C., because they believe headquarters is a hindrance to their investigations,” says the agent, who also notes there is a paranoia that politics might interfere at headquarters. New York has an especially dim view of Washington and a reputation for fierce independence. “There is a renegade quality to the New York F.B.I.,” says a former prosecutor, which, he claims, can take the form of agents leaking to the press to advance their own interests or to influence an investigation. “New York leaks like a sieve,” concurs another former prosecutor

> Comey chose Washington because he wanted to be close enough to get daily updates, according to CNN, but he may also have been worried about leaks from New York. A former D.O.J. official says that, as early as 2015, a rumor was floating around that the F.B.I. agents in New York were cracking jokes about seeing Hillary Clinton in handcuffs. “It was widely understood that there was a faction in that office that couldn’t stand her and was out to get her,” this person says.

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