The FBI and the election

It's big news. The release of information by FBI Director Jim Comey that the agency is looking at hundreds of thousands of emails on devices belonging to disgraced former Congressman Anthony Weiner is burning up the internet, newspapers, TV, cable, Twitter, cafe and bar conversation.

The assumption is that where there is this smoke about potential Hillary Clinton emails there must be fire. Or as one Trump adviser said in an interview, 'if someone takes the Fifth (Amendment) you know they are guilty.”

It appears that FBI agents discovered emails on Weiner's devices over a month ago as they conducted the investigation of his 'sexting” an underage girl. It seems that Comey was not informed until a few days ago which led to his writing a short letter to the congressional committee investigating Clinton emails.

It's not surprising that Donald Trump and the Republicans have run with the news, which is now like that proverbial 'run in the stocking” or the unraveling of a sweater as a knotted thread becomes hooked on something. It looks bad for Weiner, his wife and Clinton confidant Huma Abedin, and the secretive Clinton herself.

This incident could change the outcome of the 2016 elections and go down in history as the most dramatic 'October Surprise” ever. If nothing else, the conspiracy mill is on fire.

Powerful federal agencies injecting themselves in elections so close to Election Day is a very dangerous development. My focus group advised me that they felt if the shoe was on the other foot the discussion would be totally different.

Imagine, they speculated, if the IRS were to leak information that in the ongoing audit of Donald Trump's taxes there appeared to potentially be evidence of criminal violations of the U.S. tax code. And imagine if the media ran with that, speculating about what that evidence might be.

The FBI, IRS, NSA, and all other federal agencies are not appropriate players in electoral campaigns. Remember that Republicans accused the IRS of deliberately targeting Republican Tea Party organizations.

If I were a candidate, I suppose I'd be thrilled if their activities benefitted me. But if their actions benefit my opponent then I would be outraged, as Trump was when Director Comey declared in an earlier news conference declaring there was nothing indictable in Clinton's use of a private email server as Secretary of State.

The politicization of government agencies, especially the FBI, is extremely dangerous in a democracy. Remember J. Edgar Hoover, the legendary FBI Director who kept a private dossier on presidents under whom he served so that he could insulate himself and the FBI from executive actions that could hurt the director or the agency.

I grew up in a country where the national police and intelligence services were suspected of rigging elections and being highly partisan. That lack of trust undermined those agencies and their ability to have public support in fighting crime and terrorism. We should all be keeping the IRS, FBI and other departments at arms length from politics. Let's hope that after the election is over we can enact some serious party and election reforms which should include more transparent rules to keep the bureaucracy out of politics, for the sake of both parties and for the sake of our democracy.

' Steffen Schmidt is a professor of political science at Iowa State University. Comments: steffenschmidt2005@gmail.com