Matt Yglesias has written for Vox the best summary yet of how we arrived at the current Hillary Clinton e-mail frenzy. In summary:

Clinton’s critics know she’s guilty, they’re just trying to decide what she’s guilty of

Switch he for she and you have the Clinton obsession for 25 years or more.

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In short: Presume guilt first and worry about the facts later. Whitewater, Benghazi, Clinton Foundation, e-mails, whatever. That none of these has yet produced the silver bullet, worry not. Keep digging

Kevin Drum in Mother Jones illustrates how the presumption of guilt is also driving FBI agents and, thus, the director, James Comey.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, it’s hard to find anyone, Democrat or Republican, who approves of how Comey has handled this situation. Inside the FBI itself, Devlin Barrett of the Wall Street Journal tells us that the Bureau is pretty much at war with itself. Long story short, there’s a whole swarm of agents in the field who are hellbent on digging up dirt on Hillary Clinton. Senior DOJ officials—civil servants, not political appointees—rolled their eyes when they got briefed on the state of their investigation, but the agents keep beavering away regardless, continually coming up empty. The Washington Post adds this nugget: “One person familiar with the matter said their presentation drew at least in part from media accounts over various foundation-related controversies.” Uh huh.

Another good illustration of this today comes from Sarah Huckabee, employee of Donald Trump and daughter of you-know-who, who said on Twitter:

This isn’t hard. Letting classified info fall into the hands of Anthony Weiner is the DEFINITION of mishandling classified info (a felony)

And she knows a felony was committed how?

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Again: Start with presumption of guilt. From there, it’s easy.

UPDATE: What a coincidence. FBI today revived a Twitter account dormant for more than a year to release files on a 15-year-old controversy over Bill Clinton’s pardon of Marc Rich. Oh but they didn’t release that part that concluded no crime was committed.

 

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