Yesterday, FBI director James Comey announced that no criminal charges will be filed against Hillary Clinton or any member of her staff in relation to her use of any unauthorized private server while she was serving as Secretary of State. So that’s over.

Ha.

Because Comey didn’t just say that Secretary Clinton wouldn’t be charged with anything. His statement was actually kind of remarkable. He went into great detail regarding the investigative process the FBI went through, and why the investigation reached the conclusions it did. He was thorough, and he was persuasive. I found his statement fascinating, and recommend it to anyone interested in these issues.

I don’t know why Hillary Clinton used a private email server and not the .gov server available to her. Still, I want to put this case into some perspective; view it in human terms. See if that brings some clarity.

The first thing that jumps out at me, reading Comey’s report, is the number 30,000. That’s the number of Hillary Clinton emails the FBI initially examined, but their investigation turned up several thousand more. She switched servers a few times, and switched devices. Here’s Comey:

Secretary Clinton used several different servers and administrators of those servers during her four years at the State Department, and used numerous mobile devices to view and send e-mail on that personal domain. As new servers and equipment were employed, older servers were taken out of service, stored, and decommissioned in various ways. Piecing all of that back together—to gain as full an understanding as possible of the ways in which personal e-mail was used for government work—has been a painstaking undertaking, requiring thousands of hours of effort.

That’s a huge number of emails. 30,000, 35,000; whatever the number may have been, it’s a lot. I’m a pretty avid emailer, but I don’t send 50 a month.

Previous Secretaries of State had private email accounts, but used the official government email systems for public business. But they also didn’t send out anywhere near that many. Secretary Clinton really likes to communicate via email. Official procedure should have gone as follows; if she wanted to send a personal email, she needed to put away her official government device, step out of the room, and access her personal email device located in another room. That’s a colossal pain in the neck. It would work well if your life was really neatly compartmentalized; you deal with work when you’re at work, and you go home and open your email on your home PC. Her life isn’t like that; never has been.

Because she’s a woman? Because the balancing act–home/work–is different for women than it is for men? Because men can do this; step into another room, another space, to deal with the annoyance of a family situation? And women can’t?

Because, while she was Secretary of State, two big personal events also took place. Her mother died, and Hillary had to plan her funeral. (And isn’t it true that planning a funeral is different for women than it is for men?) And Chelsea Clinton got married. Hillary and Chelsea are very close, and you can imagine all the emails it took to plan Chelsea’s very nice, expensive, highly political wedding. And, again, isn’t planning a wedding a different experience for a Mom than it is for a Dad?

So, she’s in a meeting. They’re discussing some international situation. She’s got her Blackberry, she’s emailing various underSecretaries. She gets an email from Chelsea–‘what do you think of these flowers?’ She’s supposed to excuse herself, leave her meeting, get her personal device, respond to Chelsea’s email, then put the device away and go back into her meeting.

It strikes me as . . . unreasonable.

And so, she resisted. And in order to keep her personal account, in order to store all those emails, government regulations required that she print off every email, no matter what the content, and store them in big binders full of email hard copies. They tried it for a couple of months, and Secretary Clinton realized what a colossal pain the whole thing was going to be for her staff, printing off hundreds of emails every day, filing them, storing them someplace. So they quit doing it.

Why didn’t anyone stop her? Why didn’t someone say ‘you can’t do this?’ Because she was the Secretary of State. Her boss was POTUS. It was too trivial a matter for the President of the United States to worry about.

There are a couple of other factors to consider as well. Comey says that the FBI was unable to determine if anyone had hacked her private account; whether her carelessness with internet security protocols ever led to foreign actors getting hold of American state secrets. But whether or not anyone hacked her account, we know that US government computers, the official, secure computers that Hillary was supposed to use get hacked all the time. Google ‘US government computers hacked.’ Look at the links that pop up: ‘hacking of government computers expose 21 million people.’ Over and over again. (Is it possible that foreign hackers were so busy actually compromising US cyber security that they missed Hillary’s private server entirely?)

Comey’s statement has been parsed by everyone, on every side of the political spectrum. First, here’s Comey’s explanation of why he didn’t file charges:

Although there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information, our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case. Prosecutors necessarily weigh a number of factors before bringing charges. There are obvious considerations, like the strength of the evidence, especially regarding intent. Responsible decisions also consider the context of a person’s actions, and how similar situations have been handled in the past.

In looking back at our investigations into mishandling or removal of classified information, we cannot find a case that would support bringing criminal charges on these facts. All the cases prosecuted involved some combination of: clearly intentional and willful mishandling of classified information; or vast quantities of materials exposed in such a way as to support an inference of intentional misconduct; or indications of disloyalty to the United States; or efforts to obstruct justice. We do not see those things here.

People who would, for political reasons of their own, very much like to see Hillary Clinton indicted, read this statement, and conclude that the fix was in. She’s a crook, and she got away with it. Elites protecting elites. But Comey’s actually referring to the principle of prosecutorial discretion. This is normal practice for law enforcement officials: to decide that a technical violation doesn’t rise to the level of criminality. Comey gives us a subtle, nuanced description of a complex process.

It also recognizes the reality that Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State, and that she is now running for President. Comey adds this clarification, which some people have found confusing.

To be clear, this is not to suggest that in similar circumstances, a person who engaged in this activity would face no consequences. To the contrary, those individuals are often subject to security or administrative sanctions. But that is not what we are deciding now.

What does he mean by ‘security or administrative sanctions?’ Clearly, Comey’s not talking about any kind of criminal charges. He dealt with the issue of criminality in his previous paragraph. But it’s possible that the FBI could recommend some other kind of lesser penalty. In other words, someone else doing what Hillary did could be fired.

I’ve heard some people suggest that Hillary should be fined for her actions. That would be the kind of ‘lesser sanction’ that Comey suggests. But you can’t. The only way to fine Clinton would be as the result of a criminal procedure. You can’t just say ‘Mrs. Clinton, we’re not going to charge you. But could you please pay a fine?’ Can’t happen. A judge can fine someone in lieu of jail time. But that was never going to happen.

Didn’t Hillary Clinton know how bad this whole thing might look? Didn’t Bill Clinton realize how his innocent airport visit to Loretta Lynch’s plane would appear to people? This story, from Vox.com, explains it beautifully. Bill and Hillary Clinton are caught in a horrible, toxic cycle of suspicion and mistrust with the press.

I think it goes back to what was likely one of the most traumatic events of the Clintons’ lives: the suicide of Vince Foster. Foster was a close personal friend of them both, and a trusted aid. When he saw how badly the press overreacted to the travel office story, he fell into a deep depression, resulting in his tragic suicide. And then the Clintons found themselves accused of having murdered him.

I don’t think they’ve ever recovered from it. I think it’s even possible that Hillary Clinton suffers from untreated PTSD stemming from Vince Foster’s suicide. And she concluded, probably both Clintons concluded, as a result, that they are never going to be treated fairly by the national media. Scandals simply erupt, based on nothing, and there’s nothing they can do to prevent it. So who cares about appearances? So a private email server looks bad? It could become a big problem? Well, so what? If it’s the emails, it’ll be something else.

Hillary Clinton knows she will never be treated fairly, that her reputation will be maligned no matter what she does. And her reaction is to keep on keepin’ on. Her instinct is to hunker down, fight harder, study more, and try to do some good in this world. The email thing is over. Let’s elect her President.