FBI Director James Comey must answer for his decision to let Hillary Clinton skate on the email scandal.

His department must further answer for the immunity granted to members of her IT team, as well as the limited immunity to her former chief of staff, Cheryl Mills.

On Wednesday, Comey was before the House Judiciary Committee to answer those questions.

During a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee, Comey argued his agents needed to move quickly in June to obtain a laptop computer from Cheryl Mills, Clinton’s former chief of staff, that contained classified material.

“The investigative team really wanted to get access to the laptops that were used to sort these emails,” Comey said. Heather Samuelson, another former Clinton aide, was also given an “act of production” immunity deal in exchange for the laptop she used to cull emails.

It’s always a beautiful thing with Rep. Trey Gowdy, a former prosecutor out of South Carolina’s 4^th District, lights into these career scoundrels, and Comey certainly has it coming.

While Republicans investigating Clinton’s mishandling of classified emails and private server knew of an immunity deal given to one IT aid, Bryan Pagliano, there were at least four more whose deals only surfaced after the investigation was wrapped up in July.

The entire situation stinks of collusion between the Clinton camp and the FBI.

Comey said his agents had not interviewed everyone who sent classified information to Clinton’s private server during her tenure. He noted “it wasn’t a smart use of resources to track down” everyone who sent sensitive information to the former secretary of state.

One such individual was a private citizen in Japan whose message to Clinton was ultimately deemed classified. Others were lower-level State Department staffers, Comey said.

Comey went on to acknowledge that had Clinton been employed with the FBI and done anything on this level, she would be in serious trouble and disciplined, probably fired, though likely not criminally prosecuted.

I’ll say it: This doesn’t pass the smell test.

And the absolute most damnable part of it is, everyone on that committee knows it. Comey knows it. But there is very little that can be done about it with the current atmosphere of “Us vs. Them” that has been cultivated in the higher halls of U.S. government.

I do still appreciate men like Rep. Gowdy and Rep. Jason Chaffetz, who refuse to let these issues just quietly fade away.