Republicans Are Going to Keep the Clinton Email Scandal Alive Until November, Aren’t They?

Just when you thought the Hillary Clinton email fiasco was sorta over-ish, here comes the Republican vanguard with an emphatic message: NOTHING IS OVER UNTIL WE BEAT THE DEAD HORSE INTO THE GROUND!

FBI Director James Comey, who threw some shade at Clinton’s “extremely careless” behavior Tuesday even as he was essentially exonerating her with a recommendation of “no indictment” to the Department of Justice, will remain in the spotlight for at least another day. Thursday morning, he’ll appear before the House Oversight Committee. The idea is simple—he’ll be grilled for a couple hours in a Republican effort to focus as much attention as possible on perceived corruption involving Hillary Clinton.

They’ll probably have as much success as they had with the Benghazi hearings—which is to say, not much. But it may be that a victory isn’t what they’re after. Instead, it could just be another implication of foul play to throw at Clinton, in the hopes that even if they can’t make a single accusation stick, the net effect of emailgate and Benghazi and everything else will have the effect of eroding national confidence in her integrity ahead of the election.

And Comey is just the beginning. Attorney General Loretta Lynch will be the next to take the floor, next Tuesday, to answer questions both about Hillary’s emails and her own private meeting with Bill Clinton at a Phoenix airport—the optics of which, to use D.C. lingo, were not great.

If the Republicans have their way, the lack of charges from Lynch will only serve as more fodder for Clinton’s fall from grace in the court of public opinion. As Chris Cillizza pointed out in The Washington Post, much of the information Comey released on Tuesday contradicted Clinton’s previous statements, including the one where she claimed that none of the emails she sent had been classified at the time. As it turns out, 110 of them were. Oops! And there was also the way her lawyer’s deleted more emails than they released (many of them not personal, contrary to their contention), or how she used multiple servers and sent emails from countries known for their antipathy to the U.S. and their skill at hacking.

In other words, there’s a lot left to throw at Clinton, and while the lack of a forthcoming indictment saved her campaign from certain ruin, the Republicans are in a strong position to keep the spotlight shining on her from now until November. Tomorrow should be very, very interesting.