The roller coaster ride for the US voters is far from over. Only last week it looked like Donald Trump's alleged sexual overtures were the last of the bolts to hit the November 08 election. That's not at all the case with a latent bomb looming, if not to explode, but to leave a large number of voters undecided in little over a week from the ballots.
There are quarters in this country that tend to view the latest turn of dramatics as part of a conspiracy game. Just when Hillary Clinton appeared to be so close to the White House, the FBI rattled her Presidential race by announcing that it is rebooting the emails that might be related to her private server. While this announcement has stoked a politically damaging controversy for her, more than anything, it has reinvigorated the Trump camp to go all out for denouncing her candidature, and also claiming she should have been indicted long ago for what they consider far more sinister than the Watergate scandal. Indeed, Donald Trump is all smiles, apparently convinced that he is past the rough times he had been into as more and more women were coming up with bizarre charges of sexual assault against him.
A large number of observers sense something thoroughly intriguing about the FBI Director James Comey's letter only ten days from the elections, that too with no clear substance, but swirls of smoke. However, his letter that refers to Hillary Clinton's emails, though not directly, can potentially imperil voters' mindset, especially that of the swing voters.
At the moment, with no further clarification from the FBI as of today, the rival camps are raucous, knowing full well it's time they made the most noise. The task seems a good deal difficult for the Democrats. This is clearly evident in a Fox News forecast that counted on the voters' reactions following Hillary's visit to Iowa City last Friday. Many voters who looked to be considering Hillary a lesser evil compared to Trump are now in a fix.
FBI Director's announcement of a fresh probe into the emails (an issue put under the carpet months back) does not contain anything that should be doing the rounds in as strong a manner. The surprise announcement came after his agency reportedly found some communications on a laptop jointly used by Hillary's close aide Huma Abedin and her estranged husband Anthony Weiner, a former New York Congressman, disgraced for exchanging sexually explicit texts with a 15-year-old girl in North Carolina.
Inexplicably, what the FBI Director mentioned in his letter to the Congress is that the new-found emails were not to or from Hillary Clinton, but as a measure of caution, he felt that these need to be scrutinised. Mr Comey wrote in his letter that he could not assess whether the new messages contained 'significant' material, adding, his agency would take appropriate investigative steps to review these emails to determine whether they contain classified information.
Clear enough, this echoes a note of warning to the Democrat camp, though with no concrete message to intimidate them. Such a statement from none other than the FBI boss at such a crucial time has raised many questions. Is he trying to strike a balance between what looked like favouring Hillary when he had earlier told the Congress that investigation on her server was over and its subsequent repercussion on the Trump camp? No doubt, the Democrats are jittery and the Republicans, who earlier accused him of 'covering up Hillary's misdeeds', are now lauding his 'courage'.
The all-important question now is: why did Mr Comey let the email issue run free when he knows (and has himself mentioned) that the investigation would take time and can't be finished before November 08? While the Democrats view this as clearly crafted to influence the election, neutral observers too find it unprecedented, especially in the context of timing.
The FBI traditionally maintains extreme caution near election time so as not influence the results. For many, deviation from the tradition is appalling.
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