Ever since Rep. Jason Chaffetz responded with incredulity after learning from the FBI’s Director Comey that absent a specific referral, the FBI would not look into Hillary Clinton’s sworn testimony before Congress, we have known that the FBI wore blinders during its investigation of Hillary Clinton’s emails.  The implications of that conclusion are starting to sink in.

Scott Johnson of Powerline posts an email he received from a longtime reader who has a background in federal law enforcement and has worked with the FBI.  First, the reader demolishes Comey’s agnosticism on criminal intent:

Among other questions that have not been publicly addressed by Director Comey: what WAS her intent in setting up these computer networks in the first place? It obviously wasn’t “convenience,” as Clinton ludicrously claimed when this issue first arose. If your aim is “convenience,” the most convenient thing to do would be to simply use the classified and unclassified email accounts the Government provides at no cost to you to do your official business, then just use a Hotmail or Gmail account or whatever for your personal business. Instead, she chose, at considerable effort and expense, to create her own computer network, complete with its own servers (multiple), even hiring an administrator onto the federal payroll to run it for her. Why?

I think it is fairly obvious to anyone with an IQ above room temperature that her intent in doing this was to evade the requirements of the Federal Records Act and Freedom of Information Act, thereby keeping her communications free from the prying eyes of the Inspector General, congressional oversight committees, the press and the public. Well, if her purpose was to avoid complying with federal statutes, doesn’t that, by definition, mean that she had the INTENT to break the law? And why does the FBI not care about this?

But the heart of the argument, and the question Comey must face is:

Having worked extensively with the FBI, I can’t imagine that these questions and others didn’t occur to the rank and file agents working the case, probably at a very early stage. The fact that they were not followed up on (at least not as has been publicly revealed) indicates that the FBI was deliberately instructed to maintain as narrow a focus as possible, either explicitly or implicitly. Who gave those orders? Comey? Lynch? The White House? Again, wouldn’t you like to know?

I would wager that the signal was implicit, and that Comey didn’t really need to be told.