331 Probable Cause or Political Cause? The Manufactured Foundations of Emailgate 2.0 Edition

UPDATE: Add this to the Unsub section?

UNSUB = Investigative Ambiguity

• By using an Unknown Subject designation, FBI leadership avoided naming Clinton as a target—because they lacked the predicate or probable cause to do so.

• It gave them bureaucratic flexibility while allowing them to act as if she were the target—especially in media briefings.

Probable Cause or Political Cause? The Manufactured Foundations of Emailgate

Emailgate began, it turns out much the way it ended—with James Comey substituting personal moral judgments for DOJ protocol. As the Inspector General would later put it: insubordination. That, and the weasel-worded framing of Dean Baquet’s New York Times, helped set the stage for one of the most overblown—yet, in retrospect, profoundly harmful—political pseudo-scandals in modern memory.

Let’s Start from the Beginning: Was There Ever Probable Cause?

In this vein we have to ask if there was even probable cause for the email probe in the first place? As we being to look at the etymology of Emailgate it becomes far less clear. From the outset, confusion reigned: was this a criminal investigation into Hillary Clinton herself, or just a procedural review of State Department email security and recordkeeping practices?

It appears the original report that Clinton was under investigation was a mistake-nevertheless it’s become THE received wisdom as so many misperceptions and downright canards have since 2015 and the dubious beginnings of Emailgate were the start of this. And despite Comey’s much-quoted “queasy” reaction to Loretta Lynch calling it a “matter” rather than an “investigation,” the inconvenient fact remain clear: Clinton was never formally the subject of the Midyear Exam investigation. This was, in essence, a criminal investigation without a subject.

Rewriting the Narrative: The White House Speaks Out

Yet, Comey and his team became apoplectic when Obama’s Press Secretary, Josh Earnest, offered an accurate response to whether Clinton would be indicted (January 2016):

“That will be a decision made by the Department of Justice and prosecutors over there… Based on what we know from the DOJ, it does not seem to be headed in that direction.”

This statement was factually accurate and appropriately cautious. Yet, in the twisted logic of Emailgate, even accurate statements by the Obama White House or the Clinton campaign were seen as interference—or worse, obstruction.

But the FBI’s reaction to even the mildest of White House commentary reveals something deeper—and darker.

Flashback to October 11, 2015: President Obama appears on 60 Minutes, calls Clinton’s email use a “mistake,” but adds it “did not pose a national security problem” and was being “ginned up” in the heat of a presidential campaign. This, too, was demonstrably true. Two days later, Press Secretary Josh Earnest reiterated that Obama’s comments were based on public information, not on any inside knowledge of the FBI investigation.

And yet—enter two senior FBI officials who had been central in the early rollout of the Emailgate investigation and had since left the Bureau by 2016: former Executive Assistant Director John Giacalone and former Assistant Director Randy Coleman. Each erupted in outrage. Giacalone told the DOJ Inspector General:

“We open up criminal investigations. And you have the President of the United States saying this is just a mistake…. That’s a problem, right?”

Coleman was even more explicit in his indignation:

“[The FBI had] a group of guys in here, professionals, that are conducting an investigation. And the…President of the United States just came out and said there’s no there there.”

What these comments make clear isn’t just their discomfort with Obama’s accuracy—it’s their entitlement to a narrative of criminality. The idea that someone—especially a sitting president—might downplay the scandal they were so committed to amplifying was viewed not as correction, but sabotage.

This wasn’t the reaction of dispassionate public servants. This was the mindset of officials emotionally—and perhaps politically—invested in a particular outcome. And while Giacalone and Coleman had officially left the Bureau in early 2016, their influence lingered: they helped shape the tone and assumptions of Midyear from the start.

Sally Yates and the Early Stages of Emailgate

Interestingly, these same two former agents—Giacalone and Coleman—had played an aggressive role in initiating the probe. On July 23, 2015, just thirteen days after the Midyear Exam began, they hand-delivered a handwritten note to Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates informing her of the investigation.

This was, remarkably, the third time in thirteen days that the FBI had briefed Yates on the matter. As Lanny Davis later speculated, the intensity and urgency behind the early outreach—especially through handwritten notes—suggests that James Comey himself was driving the agenda from the background.

By early 2016, both Giacalone and Coleman had left the Bureau. But that didn’t mean they were truly out of the picture. Many of the damaging leaks and conspiratorial buzz that would plague the Clinton campaign came from individuals described as “former FBI agents.” In reality, some of these “retirees” continued showing up at the Bureau—especially the New York field office, dubbed “Trumpland”—to complain about Clinton and shape the narrative.

The story doesn’t end there. In 2018, with Clinton long out of public life, the Republican-controlled Congress launched yet another inquiry into her emails—this time, essentially investigating a private citizen. One of their star witnesses? John Giacalone.

During his testimony, he was asked:

“When you retire from the FBI, it’s my understanding that you turn your equipment in, surrender your badge and gun, and they walk you to the door. You can’t get back into the building without an escort. Is that correct?”

The concern was clear: was Giacalone really a “former” agent—or part of a revolving door of influence that blurred the line between official duty and political agenda?

“Matter Not Investigation”: Truth as Heresy

Comey’s queasiness over calling it a “matter” rather than an “investigation” was endlessly quoted. But as the DOJ Inspector General later confirmed, that language—awkward though it may have been—was technically correct. Clinton wasn’t a target. She wasn’t even a subject.

📝 Footnote: See the DOJ OIG report released on June 14, 2018.

Among the explosive revelations from IG Michael Horowitz’s testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee was this:

“Nobody was listed as a subject of this investigation at any point in time.”

And in fact, even within the Bureau, it wasn’t just a matter—it was a Sensitive Investigative Matter (SIM). According to the FBI’s own Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide (DIOG), a SIM designation is reserved for inquiries involving “domestic public officials” or political candidates where heightened oversight is required. FBI officials explained to the OIG that SIMs are used in cases involving clergy, judges, journalists, and politicians—precisely because they require extreme caution and should not be treated like standard criminal cases (DOJ OIG Report, 2018, p. 40).

This also casts serious doubt on Comey’s oft-cited “queasiness” over the term “matter.” The designation of Midyear as a Sensitive Investigative Matter wasn’t some bureaucratic technicality—it underscored that this wasn’t a standard criminal probe. As FBI Director, Comey would have been fully aware of this classification and its implications. So his public posturing over terminology begins to look far less like ethical discomfort and far more like retroactive justification for his break with protocol.

In other words, this wasn’t just not a typical criminal probe—it was explicitly governed by heightened institutional restraint. That Comey and others later tried to portray it as something else speaks volumes about their motives.

So when Clinton said she wasn’t a subject? She was telling the truth. No matter how queasy it made Comey—or how many times Chris Cillizza mocked her for it.

Double Standards and Queasiness on Cue

Interestingly, while Comey felt “queasy” about downplaying Clinton’s investigation, he had no such qualms about assuring Donald Trump in 2017 that he was not under investigation. Apparently, that didn’t trigger any moral discomfort.

According to Andy McCabe in The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump (2019), FBI General Counsel James Baker believed this distinction—that the Trump campaign was under criminal investigation but Trump himself somehow wasn’t—was, if not ‘queasy,’ then rather too Jesuitical.

“…Baker thought it was jesuitical—basically, too cute by half—to say the president was not under investigation. But Comey chose to give the president the reassurance that, at that moment, he himself was not.”

📝 Footnote: Source: Andrew G. McCabe, The Threat, Kindle edition, Location 3596.

Let’s pause to consider the weight of this misrepresentation. For 15 months, Comey and others misled the public into believing Clinton was under criminal investigation—a falsehood dutifully amplified by the media, then seized upon by the Breitbart crowd and the GOP echo chamber. Meanwhile, Clinton’s own description of the inquiry—as a “matter”—turned out to be accurate all along.

And it matters—pun intended—that this wasn’t a criminal investigation. When Comey exonerated her of wrongdoing while politically wounding her on July 5, 2016, nearly 60% of the public believed she should have been indicted. This wasn’t based on facts, but on a false narrative perpetuated by both the FBI and the media.

As noted in our earlier media analysis, this false framing created the impression that Clinton faced imminent indictment—when in truth, that was never likely, as the IG report makes abundantly clear.

So where did this damaging, zombie-like myth originate? That everyone “knew” Clinton was under criminal investigation—because it had been repeated so many times?

Would you believe it came from Dean Baquet’s New York Times?

Lanny Davis and the Media’s Role in Shaping the Myth

In The Unmaking of the President 2016, Lanny Davis sharply critiques the media’s dereliction of responsibility during the coverage of Emailgate. He focuses especially on how major outlets like The New York Times uncritically echoed and exaggerated the narrative of criminality, despite knowing better.

Davis writes:

“This false narrative was created by the media almost immediately, and it never let up. The words ‘criminal investigation’ and ‘criminal probe’ became ubiquitous in coverage of Clinton’s emails, even though no evidence supported the idea that she was being investigated for criminal wrongdoing.”

He singles out The New York Times‘ July 24, 2015, article, which ran with the now-infamous headline: “Criminal Inquiry Sought in Clinton’s Use of Email.”

But even after correcting the story the next day—shifting from “criminal inquiry” to a more generic concern about potential mishandling of classified information—the damage had been done. The myth had taken root, and subsequent coverage rarely corrected it.

Davis notes:

“The Times correction was buried. The original narrative persisted because it was more sensational, more clickable, and more politically damaging.”

This pattern was repeated across networks and publications. Davis points out that even as Clinton insisted publicly that she was not the target of any criminal investigation, outlets like CNN, NBC, and others continued to frame the story in ways that implied she was.

This matters, Davis concludes, because it fundamentally distorted public understanding:

“Had the public been accurately informed—that this was a review, a sensitive matter, not a criminal investigation of Clinton herself—the political impact would have been dramatically different.”

In short, the media didn’t just report on the Clinton email story. It shaped and distorted it, and in doing so, it helped build the false narrative that would haunt her campaign to the bitter end.