In this year’s American presidential election, there’s one topic that’s come up more times than the public likely wants to count – Hillary Clinton’s emails. Clinton’s emails, which were, again, the subject when FBI director James Comey drafted a letter to Congress, have some scratching their heads since there was nothing new revealed, and yet, no one is reporting on more sensitive topics, like Donald Trump heading to trial for rape. The co-hosts of ‘The View’ were certainly some of those scratching their heads about the disparity in a recent episode of their talk show.
Former assistant U.S. attorney Sunny Hostin, now working for ABC, said during the course of the show, “You can’t release information about a pending investigation and certainly not information that could affect an election. It’s clear to me and to other former prosecutors that this is so unprecedented that it’s just simply not done.” She continued, “When you’re there, you have to sign all of the policies… I can’t imagine that the FBI director would do something like this.”
Hostin was particularly vocal about her surprise that anyone would support Comey’s detailing of an “investigation” during the election because any investigations are supposed to be kept confidential. She called the letter an “abuse of office.”
While Jedediah Bila believed that Comey was doing his duty to keep Congress informed at the state of the investigation, other hosts of the show disagreed, with Whoopi Goldberg adding that Comey was “implying guilt” and Hostin arguing that the FBI director didn’t actually have more information.
Of course, all of the talk of Comey and Clinton’s emails serves to distract the public from other investigations going on as well, as Joy Behar asked why the focus was placed on the emails from one candidate when the other, Donald Trump, has a rape case pending in federal court and has seen 11 other women come forward to publicly recount stories of sexual assault, whether they can take Trump to court for those cases or not.
The victim in the rape case was 13 and an aspiring model at the time of the alleged rape, but most news outlets are choosing to focus on emails instead, a fact that frustrated Behar as she asked the question: “Why am I not hearing from the authorities about these cases?”
That’s indeed the question many who are following the political circus this year have been asking. As the public calls for transparency in their presidential candidates, there are still plenty of facts that remain hidden.