This week the FBI completed its investigation of secretary and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and her handling of emails during her tenure as Secretary of State. It was all theater. The play was a three-act comedy with FBI Director James Comey playing the lead role in Act Three.

Act One: “Cats,” the musical.

Like “Cats,” the Broadway show that ran seemingly forever on stage, “Cats,” the Republican play, was about the Republican tribe creating their own “Jellicle choice” to bring back to life the Hillary fake scandals, as Clinton was seen as a future Democratic candidate for president. From murdering Vince Foster, to Whitewater, to brain damage from a fall, Republicans created one laughable moment after another while growling and snarling at Hillary Clinton. It was fun, it was silly and it filled time when Republicans might have otherwise had to do the boring work of governing.

What it was not, was effective in identifying even a single case of misconduct by the most watched woman in America over the 20 years of the play. Sadly, Republicans were left to lick their paws and doze off with no successes. Still, as cats will do, they purred and slept and filled their dreams with catnip and visions of some future Clinton defeat at their paws.

Act Two: Searching for love or petting in all the wrong places.

No one enjoys appreciation more than a cat being petted, and the Republican cats thrived when they thought they had, finally, the really, really, really good Clinton scandal in Benghazi. In Benghazi, four Americans were killed by terrorists. Immediately, Republicans began purring loudly when they decided that, somehow, Clinton, in Washington, was responsible for the deaths in Libya. Yes, it sounds just a little silly, but cats are cats, and catnip is defined as any case to stop Clinton. Benghazi became the ultimate Jellicle choice and the tribe clung to it like grabbing a ball on a string.

Sadly, Benghazi ended as only embarrassment for the Republican cat tribe, when nine investigations determined that Clinton actually did not kill the four Americans, but the terrorists did kill them.

But, the cats almost missed the mouse in the house of Benghazi, the Clinton email scandal. Would it be the gift that would keep on giving and destroy Clinton?

Act Three: Kabuki Theater in the Comey comedy performance.

James Comey, Republican, FBI Director, and currently the ultimate planner of all carefully choreographed dances of trivia in the case of the e-mail scandal for the 2016 elections, did his best performance at his surprise press conference on the Clinton investigation of email practices while Secretary of State.

Much like the detailed “Cats” choreography on Broadway, Comey went for the dramatic, prefacing the simple fact that Clinton did nothing remotely illegal or unethical with a dance of veils suggesting the execution not of John the Baptist, but of Hillary the Clinton.

Director Comey noted that there was absolutely no evidence that the Clinton email server had ever been hacked. Yet, in noting that its security was unassailed, Comey implied exactly the opposite, that it should have been hacked.

Then the director, in his judgment, deemed the Clinton team to be “extremely careless” in their handling of emails that were neither hacked, nor viewed by anyone lacking the appropriate security credentials. Imagine how careless it must have been then when National Security Director John Brenner actually did have his email hacked, or when the State Department has their email actually hacked.

Comey noted, in his opinion, that Clinton “should have known” that among the 30,000 emails reviewed, eight were of the highest classification. Yes, Director, of course the Secretary should have caught one one-hundredth of a percent of the emails on the server were inappropriate even though Comey acknowledged “only a very small number…bore markings indicating their presence of classified information.”

Of course, once the dance of veils concluded, Comey remembered that his actual role was not to offer his opinions in not charging Clinton, but to exonerate Clinton. And so he very briefly mentioned that Clinton would not be prosecuted by anyone, except of course the Republican cats.

 

Jim Crawford is a retired educator and political enthusiast living here in the Tri-State.