CBS This Morning journalists can always count on John Heilemann for the liberal conventional wisdom. The Bloomberg Politics editor on Tuesday cheered what one of the co-hosts referred to as Hillary Clinton “attacking the integrity” of the FBI director. Heilemann touted, “It's a Clinton classic. You're on offense, you're on defense. When you're thrown back on to defense, the best way to try to stanch the bleeding is to just go back on attack.”
Heilemann continued, praising the Democrat for complaining about the FBI again looking into the e-mail scandal: “This is something that the Clintons have been masters of going back now for 25 years.”
The Bloomberg editor condemned Director Comey’s actions in the e-mail case:
JOHN HEILEMANN: : You don't tell anybody about it. If you decide to indict, you indict. If you decide not to indict, you don't indict. Director Comey blew that precedent of the water in July when gave the press availability when he decided not to indict her. Again, that's unusual and he came in for some criticism for that back then and now a new kind of criticism this time.
Last week, Heilemann dismissed WikiLeaks as too “inside baseball” to hurt Clinton.
A transcript is below:
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CBS This Morning
7:11
11/1/16CHARLIE ROSE: John Heilemann is managing editor of Bloomberg Politics and co-host of The Circus on Showtime, a division of CBS. Good morning.
JOHN HEILEMANN: Hi.
CHARLIE ROSE: Is it at all likely that these e-mails will be released before the election?
HEILEMANN: Well, they are on an expedited schedule and they are trying — I don't think the e-mails will be released necessarily unless they go to — unless the FBI determines that they are relevant.
ROSE: But they're on an expedited schedule to do what?
HEILEMANN: To try to get through them all and determine they — what Comey said, “We found some e-mails that may be relevant to the investigation or may be pertinent. May not.” So, they're trying to plow through them as rapidly a possible. And then figure out whether or not they can actually do anything with them. If so, what steps they might want to take?
ROSE: Has it slowed Clinton’s momentum?
HEILEMANN: On the basis of every piece of evidence that we currently have, the answer is no. But we are still waiting for data on this, right? But there’s been some polling over the courses of the weekend that suggests the race has locked. And that nothing that happened post-Comey has moved the numbers even a little bit. But, again, there’s only limited data on that, so far, especially in the battleground states where we don’t know very much.
ROSE: But I hear from the Republicans that the race is tightening in a number of these battleground states?
HEILEMANN: The Republicans are certainly saying that over and over again. The Trump campaign is saying it. There’s no doubt that there was a little bit of tightening as we head into the weekend. The real question is whether the race continues to tighten or tighten even more on the basis of the fallout of the Comey revelations or the Comey letter. There's some internal polling on the Republican side that seems to suggest that. The Clinton campaign claims not.
NORAH O’DONNELL: What about the political tactic that the Clinton campaign is taking in the wake of this? I mean, Hillary Clinton yesterday, “There is no case here.”
HEILEMANN: Right.
O’DONNELL: I mean, attacking the integrity of the FBI director.
KING: Accusing him of a double standard.
HEILEMANN: It's a Clinton classic. You're on offense, you're on defense. When you're thrown back on to defense, the best way to try to stench the bleeding is to just go back on attack. This is something that the Clintons have been masters of going back now for 25 years. To be honest, just from playing a very bad hand, because obviously the Comey letter was damaging for them in a variety of ways, having the degree of bipartisan way on Comey, being able to get all those surrogates together over the weekend. They did a pretty good, again, purely on tactical terms, of trying to get back on offense. And again, right now, it doesn't look like it affected the race very much but one has to be cautious about this because there's so little data right now. And we'll know over the course of the next 48 hours.
KING: But does she have a point? Do they have a point in saying there's no double standard that no one is really investigating the Russian claims against the Trump campaign?
HEILEMANN: Well, again, according to the reporting this morning, the FBI has already been investigating the Russian claim. You know, The question is, the double standards to me goes more to why Director Comey decided that it was important to write this letter to Congress on the Clinton matter, but was not apparently informing Congress about other investigations. You know, I think from the general view, the standard practice here, is that if you're conducting an investigation, you conduct an investigation, in private.
O’DONNELL: In private.
HEILEMANN: You don't tell anybody about it. If you decide to indict, you indict. If you decide not to indict, you don't indict. Director Comey blew that precedent of the water in July when gave the press availability when he decided not to indict her. Again, that’s unusual and he came in for some criticism for that back then and now a new kind of criticism this time.
ROSE: So, you're suggesting he should not have done that in the beginning? He should not had a press conference to say what the conclusions of the investigation were.HEILEMANN: I'm suggesting it's highly atypical and a break from precedent, again, then. Back then, Democrats liked it back then because of the fact he decided not to indict her. Now Democrats hate it and the whole thing has been flipped around. As you recall, for months the Trump campaign criticized Comey. Now they are singing his praises. It's all about purely political self interest. Right? You criticize him if he says things you don’t like and you praise him if he says things you like.
