Three days before the election, the race has been upended again by FBI Director James Comey.

Nine days after drastically changing the dynamics of the 2016 Presidential race and being accused of inserting the FBI into a political campaign by alerting Congress that new emails were found that were related to Hillary Cliton’s controversial use of a private server as Secretary of State, Comey has sent a letter to Congress exonerating Clinton.

Democrats and some Republicans who had blasted Comey for violating a rule about releasing info close to an election that might influence the outcome welcomed the new letter, but many remained highly critical of Comey. Trump supporters that had praised Comey now inist this is proof that the system is rigged (it’s only not rigged when polls, investigations, primaries and elections come out as they want). Some GOPers claimed Democrats in general now are reversing their criticism of Comey, but that is not the case. The reason: with early voting, some damage is likely already to have been down, and Comey’s Oct. 28 letter cost Clinton and the Democrats much support — and could have negatively impacted voting in downballot races.

The bottom line: many members of both parties remain highly critical of Comey, even though it’s not always for the same reason.

Perhaps it’s time to “switch” an old joke:

Why is James Comey like an evangelist? He can make millions of people stand up and yell “Jesus!!”

The Washington Post reports:

FBI Director James B. Comey said Sunday that after reviewing newly discovered Hillary Clinton emails, his agency had again determined that the Democratic presidential candidate should face no criminal charges for her email practices, clearing a distraction that had dogged the final days of Clinton’s campaign and providing perhaps the last twist of the wild 2016 election year.

Comey notified key members of Congress of the finding in a letter sent Sunday afternoon, writing that that investigators had worked “around the clock” to review all the emails found on a device used by former congressman Anthony Weiner that had been sent to or from Clinton and determined that the emails did not change “our conclusions expressed in July.”

With the letter, Comey removed the pending FBI investigation from the last 48 hours of the campaign. But the central role the FBI has played in the political process for months could cause lingering trouble for the nation’s top law enforcement agency, including personally for Comey, who must work with whoever is elected president on Tuesday.

Investigators reviewing the material found that the emails were either duplicates of correspondence they had reviewed earlier or personal e-mails that did not pertain to State Department business, a government official said. The official said Comey’s letter was not an “interim report” but rather represented a conclusion of the investigation.

Politico:

The disclosure, just two days before Election Day, could undercut a boost Donald Trump appeared to enjoy in some polls taken after Comey’s disclosure late last month about the newly-discovered set of email messages.
But millions of voters have already cast mail-in, absentee or early voting ballots and it’s unclear how many of the remaining voters will absorb news of Comey’s latest announcement, which came less than 48 hours before polls open for traditional, in-person voting.

Writes Americablog’s John Aravosis:

Republicans and Democrats alike roundly blasted Comey for violating FBI rules that forbid doing anything that could interfere with an election in the 60 days preceding election day. I walk through the charges against Comey in an earlier video I made a few days ago.

My colleague Alan Klein and I launched a Web site, TimeToResign.com, where we joined over 3,000 people in calling on Director Comey to resign.

Comey’s new letter to Congress is quite the bombshell. Unfortunately, the polls are already tighter as a result of Comey’s negligent (at best) actions. At the very least, Democrats get a positive jolt two days before the election, which will likely help turnout.

But, as CNN also noted, the damage is done. Many of the House and Senate races have already been affected, with early voting. So there’s no way to know what damage Comey did to Democrats.

CNN:

It’s impossible to know before results are tallied what impact Comey’s actions — first raising a vaguely worded red flag 11 days out, and then lowering it two days from the election — will have on the contest. But the news could help Clinton put to rest a controversy that has dogged her in the 2016 race’s closing days, helping Trump narrow a polling gap nationally and in key battleground states.
Dianne Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, blasted Comey’s handling of the review.
“Today’s letter makes Director Comey’s actions nine days ago even more troubling,” Feinstein said in a statement. “There’s no doubt that it created a false impression about the nature of the agency’s inquiry.”
She added: “The Justice Department needs to take a look at its procedures to prevent similar actions that could influence future elections.”

Outside the Beltway’s Doug Mataconis:

At the time, I personally felt that Comey’s decision to send the letter was understandable given the fact that he had previously testified under oath to Congress that the Bureau had reviewed all of the relevant email before reaching the conclusion that he announced back in July and that he was under a legal and ethical obligation to inform Congress if facts and circumstances changed in a manner that made previous testimony potentially untrue. In this case, the Weiner investigation had revealed that there were new emails that could be relevant to the Clinton investigation. If it became known that this was the case and Comey had not informed Congress and supplemented his testimony then he could have faced potential perjury or contempt charges for keeping Congress in the dark. Similarly, he sent the letter today for the same reason, to supplement his testimony. The fact that it came so close to a Presidential election is admittedly problematic, but these rules exist for a reason. At the same time, though, Comey is likely to face significant criticism for the way in which he has handled this matter that will likely lead to Congressional hearings and, potentially, a new F.B.I. Director to go along with a new President.
The big question, of course, is what impact this new will have on the election. With less than forty-eight hours left before people start going to the polls, it’s unclear how quickly a story like this will sink in with voters and what impact it may have on any voters who were likely to change their mind about Clinton based on the news regarding new email having been discovered, which admittedly may have been a very small group of voters to begin with. Beyond a doubt, though, this is good news for Clinton because it takes away a major talking point from Trump and his surrogates, who have been talking about this issue virtually non-stop on the campaign trail for the past week. To be honest, voters already inclined to vote for Trump are unlikely to be impacted very much by this news in any case, they will believe what they are already inclined to believe. The voters for whom this might make a difference are voters on the margin in states like North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida, and Michigan. Given how close those states are, that could make a difference when it comes to turnout even if it doesn’t directly change anyone’s mind. At the very least, we can say that this is good news for the Clinton campaign heading into the final hours of the campaign.

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JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief

Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.

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