Back in January, this news item appeared:

The FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of private email as secretary of state has expanded to look at whether the possible “intersection” of Clinton Foundation work and State Department business may have violated public corruption laws, three intelligence sources not authorized to speak on the record told Fox News.

This new investigative track is in addition to the focus on classified material found on Clinton’s personal server.

“The agents are investigating the possible intersection of Clinton Foundation donations, the dispensation of State Department contracts and whether regular processes were followed,” one source said.

This was intriguing from a couple of standpoints. First, it seemed as though the corpse-like stench emanating from the Clinton Foundation had finally become so noxious that even the Obama administration couldn’t stomach it. Second, it seemed likely to wipe out an entire tier of the Clinton machine through the simple expedient of enforcing the law. The fact that the Clinton Foundation and the Clinton family are a living, breathing RICO violation is not unknown in the FBI:

“The Clintons, that’s a crime family. It’s like organized crime. The Clinton Foundation is a cesspool … It’s just outrageous how Hillary Clinton sold her office for money. She’s a pathological liar,” [former head tof the FBI’s New York City field office James] Kallstrom railed to John Catsimatidis on his “Cats Roundtable” radio program, before directing his ire at his former employer.

Now, with James Comey’s letter to Congress last Friday, battle lines are being drawn within Justice and the real story of how Obama’s Justice Department functioned as an arm of the Hillary Clinton campaign is becoming obvious.

Via the Wall Street Journal:

Early this year, four FBI field offices—New York, Los Angeles, Washington and Little Rock, Ark.—were collecting information about the Clinton Foundation to see if there was evidence of financial crimes or influence-peddling, according to people familiar with the matter.

Los Angeles agents had picked up information about the Clinton Foundation from an unrelated public-corruption case and had issued some subpoenas for bank records related to the foundation, these people said.

…

In February, FBI officials made a presentation to the Justice Department, according to these people. By all accounts, the meeting didn’t go well.

Some said that is because the FBI didn’t present compelling evidence to justify more aggressive pursuit of the Clinton Foundation, and that the career anticorruption prosecutors in the room simply believed it wasn’t a very strong case. Others said that from the start, the Justice Department officials were stern, icy and dismissive of the case.

“That was one of the weirdest meetings I’ve ever been to,” one participant told others afterward, according to people familiar with the matter.

Anticorruption prosecutors at the Justice Department told the FBI at the meeting they wouldn’t authorize more aggressive investigative techniques, such as subpoenas, formal witness interviews, or grand-jury activity. But the FBI officials believed they were well within their authority to pursue the leads and methods already under way, these people said.

About a week after Mr. Comey’s July announcement that he was recommending against any prosecution in the Clinton email case, the FBI sought to refocus the Clinton Foundation probe, with Mr. McCabe deciding the FBI’s New York office would take the lead, with assistance from Little Rock.
…
According to a person familiar with the probes, on Aug. 12, a senior Justice Department official called Mr. McCabe to voice his displeasure at finding that New York FBI agents were still openly pursuing the Clinton Foundation probe during the election season. Mr. McCabe said agents still had the authority to pursue the issue as long as they didn’t use overt methods requiring Justice Department approvals.

The Justice Department official was “very pissed off,” according to one person close to Mr. McCabe, and pressed him to explain why the FBI was still chasing a matter the department considered dormant. Others said the Justice Department was simply trying to make sure FBI agents were following longstanding policy not to make overt investigative moves that could be seen as trying to influence an election. Those rules discourage investigators from making any such moves before a primary or general election, and, at a minimum, checking with anticorruption prosecutors before doing so.

“Are you telling me that I need to shut down a validly predicated investigation?” Mr. McCabe asked, according to people familiar with the conversation. After a pause, the official replied, “Of course not,” these people said.

You need to read the whole story. There are three key takeaways from this story that explain Comey’s decision to send a letter to congress last Friday. First, there is nearly a state of war between the FBI and Justice. To think that the hard feelings and anger over how Justice has acted as a handmaiden to the Clinton is to misunderstand human nature. The relationships that were burned in protecting Clinton will be generational in repairing. Second, Comey and other have obviously had their fill of Justice’s meddling to protect the Clintons. One can’t read the timeline of the discovery-to-revelation of Abedin’s emails on Weiner’s computer without thinking that it was handled in the most damaging way possible by the FBI team involved. Third, the defense of Clinton has become so odious within the FBI that even rock solid Democrats are outraged about the damage it is doing to their own credibility. Read the Wall Street Journal article. It is obvious that the main source is the FBI’s deputy director, Andrew McCabe. McCabe undoubtedly has personal reasons for wanting to paint himself as the good guy (keep in mind the words of the late Robert Novak, ‘there are no friends, only sources and targets’) but regardless of his reasons, it doesn’t detract from the power of the story.

Trump and the Clintons are identical in virtually all respects even though they represent the opposite sides of the same coin. One of the side effects of associating with them is the destruction of your integrity and self respect. We are seeing that play out on an epic scale in this election year.