Bill Clinton might have cost Hillary the election

Bill Clinton did not add that Comey had felt obliged to make the reopening public because he had previously felt obliged to make the initial closing of the investigation public.

And the reason Comey had made the initial closing public was that the rules do in fact apply to everybody.

One rule holds that the husband of the target of a criminal investigation should not seek to meet privately with the law enforcement official ultimately in charge of that same investigation, no matter how innocent the talk.

That did not stop Bill Clinton from striding across the tarmac to have a friendly chat with Attorney General Loretta Lynch when their planes happened to be parked near each other at the executive terminal at Sky Harbor airport in Phoenix on June 27.