Monday morning on MSNBC's Morning Joe, a mortified Mika Brzezinski went after Democrats who are now treating FBI Director James Comey as the devil personified, and came perilously close to delivering a mea culpa for her harsh criticisms of Republicans who support Republican nominee Donald Trump.
Meanwhile, co-host Joe Scarborough ridiculed the media's attempt to create a meme that no one really has any idea as to whether there is anything damning in the 650,000 emails found on a computer used by Hillary aide Huma Abedin and her husband Anthony Weiner, essentially saying that anyone who really believes that is in the tinfoil hat brigade.
Here's the related video segment (HT Washington Free Beacon):
Transcript (bolds are mine throughout this post):
JOE SCARBOROUGH: So, Mika, what’s your take on all this?
MIKA BRZEZINSKI: Just watching this all weekend, I will say, first of all, everyone talks about what Comey did as being outrageous. This was a great credible man with great integrity a week ago. So I don’t really get that. What if there is something big? We’re not going say it was so outrageous.
The bottom line is, this all goes back to the server — something she shouldn’t have done, something that was way more than a mistake, way more. And this is a self-inflicted, massive wound and I — I just kept thinking how I’ve been on my horse going after Republicans and the Republican Party, "You nominated this guy. You nominated Donald Trump. How could you do that?" When I’m thinking Democrats nominated someone who is under an FBI investigation for having a private server among other things. So here we are. Here we are.
MIKE BARNICLE: Here’s the deal on the — here is the deal on the warrant. They finally get the warrant to look at the e-mails, but here’s the way these investigations work in real time. There’s a group of FBI agents who have seen enough of those e-mails but just couldn’t go forward.
BRZEZINSKI: That’s right. Let’s not pretend they haven’t seen it.
SCARBOROUGH: By the way, can we stop — can I stop you there, I know we’re way over. But I hear people this weekend — first of all, saying so much bad information trying to spin wildly for Hillary Clinton. There’s a Yahoo report, "well, the FBI officials haven’t seen any of the e-mails, they have no idea what’s even in there." "Well, Wolf, you know, they don’t even know what’s inside of there." "Well, Tom, they have no idea" — let me tell you something, if you really believe that, then please, come to 30 Rock, and get on my multicolored unicorn at noon and we will fly to Atlantis together.
Listen, the FBI knows enough, Mike, you and I both know, we, I mean—
BRZEZINSKI: Is it perhaps that Comey has integrity, like the Democrats have said?
SCARBOROUGH: They know enough. ...
(Sarcastic crosstalk about getting warrants and needing to look at "one more, one more")
... BRZEZINSKI: They're all yoga.
SCARBOROUGH: I have been stunned by the reporting this weekend, the spinning and reporting this weekend. Three emails, people are going "Oh, it's only three emails involved." And that spun everybody up all afternoon. 650,000 they've got to sort through now.
The Yahoo report to which Scarborough referred is by Michael Isikoff, best known as the guy who had the Monica Lewinsky story in 1998 but who got scooped by Matt Drudge when his bosses at Newsweek "held" the story, i.e., kept it away from print while figuring out if they could kill it.
Isikoff notes the following, which appears to indicate that the original investigation leading to Comey declining to recommend criminal charges against Mrs. Clinton in July was not as thorough as it should have been, leading Comey to a decision he might otherwise not have made:
A Yahoo News review of Abedin’s interview with FBI agents last April — when the Clinton email probe was in full swing — shows that the longtime Clinton aide hinted that there might be relevant material on her husband’s personal devices. But agents do not appear to have followed up on the clues.
Abedin, who served as Clinton’s deputy chief of staff and held a top-secret security clearance, disclosed she had access to four email accounts while working at the State Department.
These accounts, Abedin said, included an official State Department email account, but also an account on Clinton’s private email server that Abedin used to communicate with Clinton and her top aides, as well as a personal Yahoo account. She used both the Clinton email account and the Yahoo account to “routinely” forward State Department emails and documents so she could more easily print them, she said. In addition, she told the agents, she had a separate email account that she had previously used “to support her husband’s political activities.”
Abedin's "so she could print them" justification seems mighty hollow. In this day and age, who would go to the trouble of printing so many emails with typically short messages which can be read and digested in seconds? Better question: Did she really print them, or is that a lame excuse for forwarding so much sensitive material? If she really did print them, an even better question might be: Why? It's hard to imagine that the answer would relate directly to the effective conduct of State Department business.
As to the Morning Joe video, Mika "Here We Are" Brzezinski is saying what millions of people have been saying all along — and what many Democrats now wish had been said during the presidential primaries before they created the mess they're now in.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
