The White House has sent a couple of messages to Hillary telling her that she is on her own as far as this email scandal is concerned.

On Wednesday, Obama hatchet-woman and all-around consigliere, Valerie Jarret, was interviewed by Andrea Mitchell at the Washington Ideas Forum. During the course of the interview, Jarrett was asked about Hillary’s bathroom-based email server. During the course of answering that question she said:

“Obviously we want to make sure that we preserve all government records, and so there was guidance given that government business should be done on government emails and that if you did use a private email that it should be turned over.”

This runs counter to much of Hillary’s narrative, and though Jarrett expresses support what Clinton is doing now she makes it clear that Clinton should have done that much earlier.

More ominous is what we hear coming out of the office of FBI Director James Covey.

The F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, said Thursday that he was certain the bureau would be able to complete the investigation intoHillary Rodham Clinton’s personal email account in a timely manner and that he would make sure politics did not interfere with it.

“I am following this very closely, and I get briefed on it regularly,” Mr. Comey said at a quarterly meeting with reporters at F.B.I. headquarters.

He added, “I am confident we have the resources and the personnel assigned to the matter, as we do all our work, so that we are able to do it in a professional, prompt and independent way.”

…

Mr. Comey declined to discuss the specifics of the inquiry, but said that one of the reasons he has a 10-year term as director was “to make sure this organization stays outside of politics.”

“If you know my folks, you know they don’t give a rip about politics,” Mr. Comey said. “And my job as director of the F.B.I. is to ensure that we remain those things I said we are: competent, honest and independent — and that we do our work well. Part of doing our work well is we don’t talk about it while we do it.”

And FoxNews has this nugget:

FBI Director James Comey has started briefing select lawmakers on the status of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private server, and confirmed investigators are actively looking for evidence the server was compromised by a foreign entity or hacker, a congressional source told Fox News.

Read together, these two say that Comey is pursuing a serious investigation and they have found some stuff that doesn’t look all that good for Hillary. It is a short leap from knowing some members of congress have been briefed to this:

Gov. John Hickenlooper on Thursday became the latest Hillary Clinton supporter to express doubt about her candidacy for president, telling a Denver audience that the 2016 election is “kind of grim, to be blunt.”

Unlike most Republican candidates, Hickenlooper said he believes Clinton has the necessary background needed to run the country.

“But,” he added quickly, “I don’t know where this whole thing is going to go in terms of her … (e-mail) server and whether there is something in there that is really going to turn out to have broken the law — which I think would be the death knell.”

His remark reinforced the anxiety Clinton supporters in Colorado are feeling given the constant controversy regarding how she handled classified emails as secretary of state. And he represents the second top Democrat in Colorado in recent days to voice such concerns.

In a recent interview published Sunday, former Democratic Gov. Dick Lamm said he believes “there’s a one in three chance that something worse does happen” that will cost her the nomination.

The New York Times piece is notable for another factor. If you recall, the New York Time originally reported that the FBI had opened a criminal investigation. After the Clinton campaign whined like a little girl, their friends in the media jumped to her defense and that story was modified. Well, the original story is back:

The F.B.I. opened an investigation this summer into how classified materials were handled in connection with Mrs. Clinton’s account when she was secretary of state in response to a referral from the inspector general of the intelligence community. The inspector general, I. Charles McCullough III, had said that sensitive national security information had been found in the account. It is illegal to have classified information on an unsecure network.

One never counts a Clinton out. But every day things look more and more grim for Hillary. Even if she avoids indictment, it is becoming hard to see how several of her closest associates, such as Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills, would be able to do so. If any of them are indicted, her run for the White House is over.