Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, no fan of the media, Tweeted over the weekend that he thought social media sites were suppressing the story about the new e-mails FBI Director James Comey had told Congress were being looked at in relation to Hillary Clinton's e-mail server.
The Story was getting plenty of play on cable news Friday, but Sunday Trump Tweeted: "Wow, Twitter, Google and Facebook are burying the FBI criminal investigation of Clinton. Very dishonest media!"
The Tweet appeared to be in response to stories about how much attention the latest twist in the Clinton e-mail story was getting, or wasn't, on social media sites.
Clinton has questioned the timing of Comey's letter to Congress about the e-mails coming less than two weeks before the election.
Clinton campaign press secretary Brian Fallon said Friday that Comey had "unleashed a wildfire," and given that he was not "allergic to press conferences," should go public with the relevance of the e-mails.
But it is not just the campaign hammering Comey.
Sen. Minority leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), in a letter to Comey Sunday, said his actions demonstrated a "disturbing double standard" for treatment of sensitive information, which given what he said was a "clear intent to aid one political party over another, may violate the Hatch Act." That is the prohibition an activity "directed towards the success or failure of a political party, candidate or partisan political group."
Comey reportedly had suggested that he could be accused of affecting the election if he did not inform Congress that there were new e-mails that might be relevant.
The double standard, says Reid, is that from his own communications with Comey, he is convinced the FBI director has "explosive information" about "close ties and coordination" between Trump, top advisors and the Russian Government” and has not released that to the public, while "as soon as he came into possession of the slightest innuendo related to Secretary Clinton," he "rushed to publicize it in the most negative light possible."
Reid made his criticism personal. "I led the fight to get you confirmed because I believed you to be a principled public servant," he wrote. "With the deepest regret, I now see that I was wrong."
