What I find vexing in the media coverage of the whole Collusion-Dossier-Dirty-Tricks story is the inability of journalists to ascribe proper rationale to the “Comey October Surprise”, namely his brief re-opening of the Clinton email server scandal in the run-up to the 2016 election. Republicans identify Comey, and his underling Andrew McCabe, as lynchpins of an FBI-DOJ conspiracy to derail the Trump campaign, and subsequently, to undermine his presidency. And there is plenty of circumstantial evidence to support that argument. Concurrently, the Democrats point to Comey as the man who torpedoed Hillary’s candidacy by resurfacing the email server investigation, er, matter, at a most inopportune time, dooming her election. That argument, too, can be easily supported, at least anecdotally. So how come there is no definitive understanding as to Comey’s motives to act in such a bi-polar fashion?

The FBI issued its findings exonerating Clinton in June 2016 with the Director’s assurances that every recoverable email relating to the matter had been thoroughly reviewed for its classification status and that Clinton’s actions in this regard did not rise to the level of criminality. That is a lie. The Director also offered assurances that all parties related to the matter had been interviewed and no criminal wrongdoing could be established. That, too, is a lie. Further, the Director assured all devices engaged in the trafficking of classified emails through the Clinton server had been confiscated, inspected, scrubbed and/or destroyed, and could no longer be susceptible to hacking by foreign actors or enemy agents. This was not a lie, per se, it was however a telling oversight.

It brings to mind Donald Rumsfeld’s clever term, “the unknown unknowns”. For unbeknownst to the Director and his crack pool of counter-terrorism investigators, there came to light a laptop in the possession of an ex-Congressman-turned-internet-celebrity (to be polite), Anthony Weiner, that contained heretofore unseen email correspondence sent and received by Ms. Clinton’s trusted advisor and confidante, Uma Aberdeen, the estranged wife of the laptop-possessor.

This revelation had to bring great consternation to Comey, who defied convention and spoke publicly, and at great length, that no evidence of criminality could be found in the matter. And yet, here is this laptop that may contain ironclad contradictions to his public assurances. Chances were good that the emails on this laptop were duplicative in nature to the ones already examined in his investigation, and therefore moot as far as undermining Comey’s exoneration of Hillary.

But what if? Suppose there were references to the FBI’s sources and methods in the matter that point directly to a singular conclusion: the fix was in. That agents had dispensed with standard protocol in their interviews and that Hillary and her cabal – Aberdeen, Cheryl Mills, even Bill Clinton – got preferential treatment, to include attorney privilege, formal immunity and limited disclosure of records. All courtesy of biased investigators and DOJ lawyers now known to be both anti-Trump and wary of future retribution from a President Clinton.

Could Comey chance that? Could he hope that the publicly disgraced Anthony Weiner was not privy to the laptops contents, and that Weiner wouldn’t try to parlay this discovery into leniency at sentencing? I don’t think so. I think Comey convinced himself that he had to know the unknown. And to find that out would take a warrant for the laptop.

And for a warrant, he had to re-open the investigation.

Not what he wanted to do, but too bad Hillary, self preservation rules.