If he was legally obligated to update the various Committee chairpeople (who - fyi, CarnalK - are “the public”), then those legal obligations should be noted down somewhere, right?
That said, I’m pretty doubtful that there are actually any laws stating that the FBI director is obligated to issue a public statement before even assessing whether their new information is “significant”.
Not necessarily. It could easily involve the other major aspect of the criminal case: intent. Or a cover-up.
But it’s silly to speculate either way. It could be something significant or it could be a big nothingburger. All we can intelligently say now is that the fact of the story itself will have some political impact, but the legal impact is a complete unknown.
Well, you’re the one who said, "There’s some talk that Comey was legally obligated to update the Committee like this if anything relevant to the investigation arises. "
This seems like a veiled accusation that I’m inventing the fact that this is being discussed. If not, I’m not sure what your point here is. I’m just reporting that former DOJ people have said this was some sort of FBI obligation. Instead of doing the legal research myself, I think I’ll just wait for the inevitable reporting that is imminent.
But even that is iffy, again the letter reports ‘maybe’ and ‘who knows’ (yeah, again, WTF) and I have to agree with Matthew Miller that what Comey did here was not appropiate.
It was eight committee chairmen, fyi. Comey’s letter wasn’t a private communication.
There’s only one reason why Comey announced that he might have some info which might or might not be relevant. Comey was hoping that this announcement would hurt Clinton’s predominence and allow his fellow Republicans to hold onto their Senate majority.
Comey’s announcing that he has some information which might be insignificant has been in turned into “Clinton is guilty and now we have the proof!” in the minds of Trump and all his supporters. Pretending like he’s just an innocent, disinterested, bystander here doesn’t fit the observed facts.
If Comey comes back in three weeks and says, “Yeah, sorry - turns out it was nbd.” do we get to do an electoral do-over?