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in your view, was the Comey letter more or less harmful than indicting Clinton on multiple felonies would have been?
The Comey letter was an example of an FBI effort to protect Clinton breaking down, due to absurd malfeasance on the part of Clinton herself and other Clinton-related individuals. The FBI did their best, but there were literally too many crimes to cover up. That is to say, subsequent crimes broke the coverup on previous crimes.
In pure polling terms, the Comey letter made Clinton go from +5ish over Trump, to ~+1ish. It'd revert a bit when he posted the "lol jk" retraction 3 days from the election, but most of the damage had already been done. By contrast, Trump being convicted of felonies did almost nothing since he's judged on an extremely generous curve. So in terms of polling, the Comey letter was far worse.
If the left was anywhere close to being as conspiratorially minded as the right is, it could have easily claimed that Comey made a conscious effort to throw the election to Trump with his October Surprise, and that the 2016 election was therefore functionally "stolen". But of course, they didn't do that.
Or many people believe the charges for Trump are trumped up kangaroo charges—not that he is graded on a generous curve.
Republicans will think any charges against Trump for any reason are politically motivated. Most don't think he's a saint or something, it's just pure culture warring -- circle the wagons and defend the leader from the outgroup no matter what.
Can you point to a case where the FBI offered Trump or his underlings blanket immunity in exchange for testimony that implicated only themselves, thereby forestalling any possability of prosecution?
Can you point to a case where the Logan act has been used to prosecute the underlings of politicians other than Trump?
If there is a clear disparity in how the law interacts with Trump versus other politicians, why should Trump's supporters not take this disparity into account, and object to selective application of the rules against their candidate?
Can you point to a case where the FBI leader wrote a dubious memo to measurably change the dynamics of a tight race by 3%+ on the eve of an election?
It's not that I'm unpersuadable that the FBI has an anti-right bent to it, but Trump is moderately-to-significantly more corrupt and disorganized than the median presidential nominee, so it's obvious why he'd encounter more troubles with the FBI. You describing the Comey letter upthread as "an FBI effort to protect Clinton breaking down" and "The FBI did their best, but there were literally too many crimes to cover up" is just goofy. It gives me the vibes that the arguments I'm hearing are being filtered through an aggressively partisan lens, where the ingroup candidate never commits any crimes yet is infinitely persecuted, while the outgroup candidate commits infinity crimes that get "covered up".
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Sure. But the NY charges were bullshit. The Florida charges may have been politically motivated but they aren’t bullshit.
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