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Trump's Response To The FBI Clearing Clinton Is Super Immature — Even For Him

by Alexandra Svokos
REUTERS

Donald Trump has long come after Hillary Clinton for her "crooked" ways.

The crux of his argument has been that Clinton will end up in jail for her use of private email servers. Clinton was under FBI investigation for her server use.

But FBI Director James Comey gave a press briefing on Tuesday, which basically takes this possibility away.

Comey said that the FBI did a thorough investigation of Clinton's emails and did not find evidence that she intentionally mishandled confidential information or tried to hide anything.

Because of this, Comey said that the FBI is recommending that the Department of Justice not try and charge Clinton with anything criminal.

The FBI director added that Clinton's email use wasn't exactly responsible, but didn't add up to criminal. Comey said,

Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.

This would have been a great point to attack Clinton with. Instead, Trump was Trump. After Comey's statement on Tuesday morning, Trump tweeted,

Rather than take Comey's legitimate criticism of Clinton's accountability, Trump went after Comey and the "system." You know, the very same system Trump wants to run.

During his statement, Comey seemingly pre-empted these types of attacks from people who wanted to see Clinton imprisoned. He said,

I know there were many opinions expressed by people who were not part of the investigation—including people in government—but none of that mattered to us. Opinions are irrelevant, and they were all uninformed by insight into our investigation, because we did the investigation the right way. Only facts matter, and the FBI found them here in an entirely apolitical and professional way.

So following Comey's lead, let's take a look at a few facts.

Comey was nominated to be director of the FBI by Barack Obama in 2013. This position is a 10-year term, so should Trump become president, he would be working with Comey.

Comey is also a Republican. So any argument that he cleared Clinton to clear the way for a Democratic presidency is kind of iffy.

And then there's the whole thing about General David Petraeus. Petraeus, if you don't remember this dazzling gem from recent political history, was the director of the CIA. He resigned in 2012 after it was uncovered that he had an affair with his biographer, with whom he had shared confidential information.

So it's not exactly the same case as this Clinton one.

Petraeus plead guilty to unauthorized removal and retention of classified information and in 2015 was sentenced to two years' probation and a $100,000 fine.

Meanwhile, the case against Clinton was long acknowledged as weak. Back in April, Politico wrote that there was little evidence for a case against her based on previous cases that faced federal investigation.

Honestly, this is one of those situations where I'm just flustered by Trump. Comey gave Trump legitimate points to make against Clinton, and instead, Trump said some nonsensical stuff about the very "system" he wants to run but has no idea how to run.

Trump went against someone supported by and supportive of his party. He made a comparison that holds up poorly with some quick fact-checking.

Then again, Trump didn't have the worst tweet about this news. That award goes to Mike Huckabee.

Good one, Huck. You really did it.

Citations: FBI