During an interview on Thursday’s edition of Fox & Friends, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) suggested that former FBI director Jim Comey’s harsh treatment of Hillary Clinton in the weeks leading up to the 2016 election is evidence that he was actually in the bag for her.
“It’s hard to keep track, but a lot of people are thinking, aren’t they already looking into Hillary Clinton stuff, somebody?” host Steve Doocy asked Gohmert.
“Yes, and my understanding is that Jeff Sessions and some of the DOJ are looking into some of the Hillary Clinton stuff, perhaps on uranium one, but there is so much involving the emails,” Gohmert replied. “And, you know, okay, did Comey only come forward before the election about ‘we’re reopening Hillary’s case’ because some of the FBI agents said ‘either you come forward or we’re going to quit, and we’re going to blow the whistle on how pro-Hillary you’ve been?’ All of that needs to be investigated, and it involved DOJ and FBI — that needs a second counsel to do that.”
There is no evidence that Comey took the unusual step of publicizing the Clinton email investigation just days before the election in response to FBI pressure — a move prominent pollsters have concluded probably threw the election for Trump.
The worst conspiracy of all time
Congressional Republicans have spent months trying to discredit special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the Trump campaign by asserting that the whole enterprise is rooted in the FBI’s alleged anti-Trump bias. But their conspiracy theory doesn’t square with the facts of what happened in 2016.
While the bureau’s investigation into Trump began in July 2016, the existence of it wasn’t publicly disclosed until after Trump’s inauguration. On the other hand, on two separate occasions, Comey went out of his way to publicize the Clinton email investigation. Just days after he sent a letter to Congress announcing that the FBI was looking into new information it received about Clinton’s emails, the New York Times published a report sourced to “law enforcement officials” that claimed there was “no clear link” between Trump and Russia — a report that looks very suspect in light of the many Trump-Russia contacts that we’ve learned about since then.
When Trump supporters been pushed about the major holes in their theory of the case, they haven’t had answers. As outlandish as it is, Gohmert’s new conspiracy theory — that Comey’s harsh treatment of Clinton was in fact meant to cover up the FBI’s pro-Hillary bias — represents an attempt to plug one of them.