Rogue FBI agents may have forced Comey into bombshell email announcement 11 days before election: report

Former FBI director James Comey's much-anticipated interview aired on ABC tonight, which means a whole new round of debates about whether Comey tilted the election to Trump with his bombshell announcement that he was "re-opening" the investigation into Hillary Clinton's missing emails 11 days before the election.

But what if there was no way for Comey to stop that particular bomb from going off?

Nate Silver, who has previously written that the Comey letter "probably cost Hillary the election," discussed this idea on Twitter tonight.

In analyzing the Comey's interview with George Stephanopoulos, the polling analytics expert seized on section about the details of the investigation into disgraced Rep. Anthony Weiner, estranged husband of Hillary's closet aide, who was being investigated for sexting with a teenager.

Comey said that he feared "a pretty reasonable likelihood" that Clinton emails being discovered on Weiner's computer would get to the press through the New York office.

"The team that had done the investigation was in the counterintelligence division at headquarters, of the emails," Comey said. "And there were no leaks at all, very tight. But the criminal folks in New York were now involved in a major way—and I don't want to single anybody out 'cause I don't know where it was coming from, but there'd been enough up there that I thought there was a pretty reasonable likelihood that it would leak."

It all comes down to an understanding of the nature of the office, Comey said: "Counterintelligence is different. They're so used to operating in a classified environment. They're much tighter. But once you start involving people whose tradition is criminal, and in New York which has a different culture, there is a reasonable likelihood it was going to get out anyway."

Silver was not fully convinced, pointing out that Comey likely could have bought his team a weekend to look over the emails on Weiner's computer before dropping such a bombshell just before the election.

"Comey claims he faced an impossible choice between 'concealing' and 'speaking' about the HRC emails found on Weiner's laptop. But there was a 3rd choice: wait & investigate further. He only learned about the emails on Oct. 27—one day before he spoke about them on Oct. 28," Silver tweeted. "I'm not saying he should have waited until after the election. But 10/28 was a Friday. So have everyone cancel their weekend plans and dive into the emails. Then make a go/no-go decision on Sunday night based on whether there's anything new and proprietary there."

His tweets are below and here is the full interview transcript.