Amid all the hullabaloo wrought by FBI Director James Comey’s bombshell that he was reopening the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server when she was secretary of state, the New York Times reported that Huma Abedin wasn’t traveling with Hillary:

On Saturday, Ms. Abedin was working from the campaign’s Brooklyn headquarters rather than traveling with Mrs. Clinton on a campaign swing in Florida.

It is interesting that the Times buried that yuge news some 23 paragraphs into the story.  How often does Abedin not travel with Hillary?

When I first heard FBI Director James Comey’s bombshell on Friday I thought that Comey was reopening the investigation because he couldn’t take all the criticism he was getting for not recommending Hillary be criminally charged. My theory was Comey reopened the investigation so they could pin something on an appropriate sacrificial lamb. And Huma Mahmood Abedin, a.k.a. Mrs. Anthony Weiner, is the perfect scapegoat.

Abedin, 40, has acted as Mrs Hillary’s “gatekeeper” for years, since starting work for the then-First Lady as a 19-year-old intern. According to Wikipedia, Abedin was Hillary’s aide and personal advisor during Hillary’s 2000 U.S. Senate campaign. Huma later worked as Hillary’s traveling chief of staff and “body woman” during Clinton’s failed 2008 presidential campaign. In 2009, Abedin became deputy chief of staff to Clinton in the State Department. Under a “special government employee” arrangement she allowed to work Doug “Clinton Inc.,” Band’s Teneo’s consulting firm and the Clinton Foundation, while continuing her role as body woman to Clinton. Now Abedin is vice-chair of Hillary’s 2016 presidential campaign. As Vanity Fair put it:

But whatever the title, the job she performs for Hillary has always been essentially the same: confessor, confidante, and constant companion. It’s safe to say that over the years Abedin and Hillary have spent more time together than either has with her husband.

Not only is Abedin the perfect scapegoat from Hillary’s perspective, it would mollify those in Hillary’s vast right wing conspiracy or the alt-right who believe the “conspiracy theory” that Abedin is a radical Muslim because she “has three family members – her late father, her mother and her brother – connected to Muslim Brotherhood operatives and/or organizations

Team Clinton, as noted by the Times, put out the obligatory we support Huma yesterday:

“We of course stand by her,” her campaign chairman, John D. Podesta, said on Saturday when asked whether Ms. Abedin would step down from the campaign.

But the Times also reported that several Clinton allies have suggested the Democratic nominee distance herself from Abedin and “others suggested to the Times that the latest twist in the email investigation would make it impossible for Clinton to make Abedin part of her White House team if she is elected president next month. ”

Hillary began to lay the groundwork to blame her never-ending email troubles on a staff scapegoat back in July. It won’t be long before the Clintons will be shaking their heads in disbelief that Huma Mahmood Abedin could have been so extremely careless with Hillary’s emails as they boot her out of Hillaryland and under the bus.