It is never a good thing when the FBI starts gouging around in your crap. As Harvey Silvergate wrote in his book Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent, the expansive nature of federal lawmaking and the ability of regulatory agencies to impose regulations that carry prison sentences ensures anyone being examined by law enforcement will, more likely than not, end up in deep trouble. Hence the slight tingle up the leg, reminiscent of that created by a properly creased pair of trousers, when we read that after three years the FBI has decided to take time out of its schedule to inquire into Hillary Clinton’s email server:

The FBI has begun looking into the security of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s private e-mail setup, contacting in the past week a Denver-based technology firm that helped manage the unusual system, according to two government officials.

Also last week, the FBI contacted Clinton’s lawyer, David Ken­dall, with questions about the security of a thumb drive in his possession that contains copies of work e-mails Clinton sent during her time as secretary of state.

The FBI’s interest in Clinton’s e-mail system comes after the intelligence community’s inspector general referred the issue to the Justice Department in July. Intelligence officials expressed concern that some sensitive information was not in the government’s possession and could be “compromised.” The referral did not accuse Clinton of any wrongdoing, and the two officials said Tuesday that the FBI is not targeting her.

Then again, one has to realize that the FBI is part of the most corrupt department in the most corrupt administration in history and that we are talking about Hillary Clinton.

If a uniform standard of liability is used for punishing the compromise of classified documents, then Hillary is in grave jeopardy. David Petraeus did much, much less and received a federal conviction for his efforts. The smokescreen thrown up by Hillary’s supporters — sure there was classified info in there but Hillary got it from independent State Department reporting — is specious bull****. The agency IGs that recommended an FBI investigation know that or they would not have taken the extraordinary step of making a criminal referral to Justice when Hillary was running for president.

There are two bits of encouraging news in this story. First, they are looking at the famous “thumb drive” (assuming this isn’t Hillary’s pet name for Bill’s penis) now in possession of long time Clinton consigliere David Kendall. Kendall may have it stored so that it meets security requirements for top-secret/code-word material but it is doubtful. His client is Hillary and odds are the assumption was that the allegations would just go away. The second bit of good news is that they are looking at the security of the servers Hillary used in Chappaqua and later with a hosting company. The odds that either of those systems met federal standards for safeguarding classified information approach nil.

Eventually Hillary will be asked to submit to an FBI interview. Then the FBI will have to decide whether they accept the lies she will tell as plausible or if they will use the Scooter Libby standard.