Why Did They Have It In for Hillary?

Over the last few days I’ve noted that senior FBI officials said a key reason James Comey publicly criticized Hillary Clinton in harsh terms when he declined to recommend charges against her was to assuage the feelings of FBI agents who had expressed sentiments like “[Y]ou guys are finally going to get that bitch.” Top FBI executives held conference calls with retired agents who had complained about “why we let her off the hook, and why she should have been prosecuted.” They did so to reassure them and calm them down. All of Comey’s advisors agreed that fear of leaks about the laptop emails from the New York field office was a key driver of Comey’s decision to send his October 28th letter. And Comey himself told Loretta Lynch that “that there is a cadre of senior people in New York who have a deep and visceral hatred of Secretary Clinton.”

Over the last few days I’ve had a number of readers write in to say, “Okay, I get it: There were people in New York and elsewhere in the FBI who really had it in for Hillary. But why? Why were they so against her? What did she do?”