As scrutiny continues to mount over the FBI’s questionable handling of its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server, former FBI Director James Comey has once again become the magnet of criticism. Last week it was learned that Comey began drafting a Clinton exoneration months before the investigation concluded. Obviously, this throws the legitimacy of the whole investigation into even more question. And yet in some ways focusing ire on Comey is actually a bit misplaced.

Recall that when allegations first came to light of Clinton’s use of a non-government sanctioned email account, it was none other than Barack Obama who came to her defense. Obama laid the groundwork for Hillary’s exoneration by stating in April 2016 essentially the same conclusion that Comey would insist upon months later in July — that while Clinton had shown “carelessness,” she was not guilty of “malicious intent in [the] handling of emails.” Truth is that the fix was in from the very beginning, ordered directly from Obama, and his Justice Department made sure it was so.

Andrew McCarthy of National Review sums it up well:

> Bottom line: In April, President Obama and his Justice Department adopted a Hillary Clinton defense strategy of concocting a crime no one was claiming Clinton had committed: to wit, transmitting classified information with an intent to harm the United States. With media-Democrat complex help, they peddled the narrative that she could not be convicted absent this “malicious intent,” in a desperate effort to make the publicly known evidence seem weak. Meanwhile, they quietly hamstrung FBI case investigators in order to frustrate the evidence-gathering process. When damning proof nevertheless mounted, the Obama administration dismissed the whole debacle by rewriting the statute (to impose an imaginary intent standard) and by offering absurd rationalizations for not applying the statute as written.

Comey deserves to be blasted for his lack of a backbone — a backbone he suddenly found when Donald Trump won the election. But still, the buck stops at the top with Obama. In this case, Comey is probably better viewed as Obama’s fall guy.