America’s greatest novelists could not have concocted a tale that so perfectly confirms dark suspicions about how the liberal elites running America really operate. Taken in total, the picture Podesta’s emails present is of a man whose tentacles are adroitly moving all the levers of power. In retrospect, Podesta’s casual attitude toward Clinton’s email problems doesn’t look oblivious—it looks prescient. Why should he worry about disgrace for Hillary Clinton when he and his friends in politics, business, and the media dictate what becomes a scandal?

In this respect, Podesta’s emails help explain why the FBI ignored basic procedure, destroyed the computers of Clinton aides in “side agreements” to their immunity deals, and then refused to charge Clinton for egregious violations of laws governing classified information. On March 4 of last year—again, right after the Clinton email scandal broke—Podesta sent the following email to Clinton aide Cheryl Mills (who also received an immunity deal from the FBI): “Think we should hold emails to and from potus? That’s the heart of his exec privilege. We could get them to ask for that. They may not care, but [it] seems like they will.”

President Obama first claimed, as with all allegedly unexpected calamities that have befallen his White House, that he didn’t learn about Clinton’s email scandal until he read about it in the papers. However, an item from Podesta’s inbox makes that denial seem less plausible. After the New York Times reported on March 7, 2015, “Obama Says He Didn’t Know Hillary Clinton Was Using Private Email Address,” Clinton aide Philippe Reines wrote to Podesta, “One of us should connect with the WH just so they know that the email will show his statement to not make sense.” That’s because, as was subsequently revealed, the president had been emailing Clinton at her private email server address.