The investigation took an unusually long time. It was an FBI independent investigation and neither the White House nor the DOJ were briefed. They were in the dark for as long as the public was.

Meanwhile, 12 to 20 full time agents worked on the investigation for 8 solid months, after they finally received all of the email data. That's a lot of work hours, considering there's almost nothing to show for it.

So were Comey's own passions driving the investigation, even after nothing substantial or meaningful was emerging? Some inside the FBI were baffled by the lack of conclusions, as well. It is unthinkable that Comey was not aware that certain levels of government are never prosecuted, post 9/11, if for no other reason than to establish an always impenetrable wall between themselves and justice. It mattered not at all what the email investigation uncovered… because terrorism.

So what took so long?

A month or so ago, I quoted blogger Nina Illingworth, who wrote about this:

"I don’t know James Comey personally, but I’ve read enough about him to know that he’s not a slack-jawed, incompetent fucking moron like Gowdy.

"Once it was clear to Comey that Hillary was almost certainly guilty of some form of criminal misconduct, he undoubtedly set his mind to proving it beyond the tiniest fraction of a doubt – at least in part because Comey had worked on the largely unsuccessful Whitewater investigation back in the day and he’d seen first hand exactly how slippery Clinton could be if you didn’t have everything lined up just perfectly.

"Although it’s popular among left-leaning thinkers to dismiss the entire Whitewater scandal as a bunch of Republican nonsense, the fact that multiple people (including Arkansas Governor Jim Guy Tucker) went to jail over it, makes it clear that isn’t entirely the case. Regardless of whether he was right or not, Comey deeply believed that the Clintons had repeatedly and willfully obstructed investigation into their affairs – he even went so far as to call it “a highly improper pattern of deliberate misconduct.” In other words, while Comey seems highly scrupulous for a Republican, he’s intimately aware of the stunning, even criminal lengths the former Secretary of State will go to keep her (potentially criminal) offenses secret.

"While again, I’m only speculating here, it wouldn’t entirely surprise me if Comey saw the Clinton email server investigation as an unexpected and highly fortuitous “second crack” at defeating one of the most dishonest, elusive and corrupt politicians in US history."

C-Span

Will be on tv, but it doesn't look like they are streaming it. Bummer because I don't have C-Span3.

FBI Director James Comey testifies before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on the FBI’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of private email servers, as well as the decision to not recommend criminal charges against her.

Airing LIVE Thursday, Jul 07 10:00am EDT on C-SPAN3

We know that Hillary was told that she couldn't use her Blackberry inside her offices at the State Department because it was not secure, could be hacked and used as a listening device. They made her put it in a secure box inside her offices.

Yet she nonetheless used it out in the hallway to access at least 100 emails classified top secret. And that is even setting aside the server in her basement, serviced by an aide without security clearance, hosted by companies without security clearance. Think of all the eyes she knew of that had access to this material without authorization, not even considering the possibility of hacking.

What am I missing here? That looks to me like gross negligence. Willfull indifference to security.

If she took a briefcase full of top secret papers and left it unlocked on a public street, how would that be any different?

The bombshell Comey dropped in his short statement was that marked, classified materials were on her server, materials that were not retroactively classified. That's the first time the public has had this information because Clinton all along claimed it was not the case. In other words, she's lied again.

But the rules/laws don't apply to the Clintons! Silly us!

I think his reaction is "aaahhhhaaaahhhh"

Life is good when you're a Clinton.