In sum, the FBI’s job is to conduct the investigation and hand it off to DOJ for a prosecutorial determination, not to relieve DOJ of hot potatoes that inevitably fall in its lap. Is this all just ancient history? No. The former director’s intervention in the charging decision ended up triggering his equally flawed decision to announce publicly, just ten days before the election, that he was reopening the probe due to the trove of Clinton emails found by the FBI on the computer of Anthony Weiner (who was under investigation in a “sexting” scandal and was the then-husband of Mrs. Clinton’s chief of staff, Huma Abedin). The FBI director undoubtedly believed polls that indicated Clinton’s election victory was a sure thing and that his announcement would make no difference — it might even help the seemingly inevitable President Clinton have a clean slate once the FBI, yet again, publicly closed the investigation (which it did a few days later). But, of course, the race turned out to be much tighter than expected. Comey’s eleventh-hour bombshell was loudly exploited by Trump and stalled whatever momentum Clinton may have had. Given how razor-thin Trump’s victory was, Clinton is not wrong to insist that Comey’s interventions — publicly marshaling the evidence against Clinton even though she was not charged, and then suggesting on the eve of the election that she might, on second thought, be guilty — cost her the presidency.