Communications security

Jim Comey's Statement on the Clinton Emails: A Quick and Dirty Analysis

The first notable thing in FBI Director Jim Comey's statement on the Clinton email flap is that he issued it at all. Normally, the FBI does not issue reports on its investigative findings separate from Justice Department decisions regarding what to do with those findings. Much less does it make public its recommendations, particularly in a fashion that effectly preempts the Justice Departments prosecutorial decisions with respect to those recommendations. 

The second notable feature of his statement is this line: "I have not coordinated or reviewed this statement in any way with the Department of Justice or any other part of the government. They do not know what I am about to say." This is clearly a reference to Bill Clinton's perhaps unintentional—but nonetheless very damaging—decision to compromise Attorney General Loretta Lynch by jumping on her airplane and having a private meeting with her. The import of Comey's move here is that conservatives and skeptics of the attorney general—who is a political appointee, after all—no longer have to rely on her integrity to put this matter behind him. This sentence says that they can rely on Comey's and the FBI's alone.