National Review's Andrew McCarthy wrote an excellent piece for "The Corner" that suggests the FBI rewrote the federal law that should've been the death knell for Hillary Clinton.

"There is no way of getting around this," McCarthy's piece begins before explaining that Clinton "checked every box required for a felony violation of Section 793(f) of the federal penal code (Title 18)."

By the FBI director's own admission, Clinton was "extremely careless" in handling top secret information on her personal server as secretary of state and left the communications vulnerable to interception by "foreign actors." But James Comey still recommended no charges be filed.

Why? Because he didn't find any "intent to harm the United States" on behalf of the former secretary. McCarthy writes:

In essence, in order to give Mrs. Clinton a pass, the FBI rewrote the statute, inserting an intent element that Congress did not require. The added intent element, moreover, makes no sense: The point of having a statute that criminalizes gross negligence is to underscore that government officials have a special obligation to safeguard national defense secrets; when they fail to carry out that obligation due to gross negligence, they are guilty of serious wrongdoing. The lack of intent to harm our country is irrelevant. People never intend the bad things that happen due to gross negligence.

McCarthy believes the FBI set up a straw-man to trick the public into agreeing with their assessment by stating Clinton's negligence wasn't due to an intent to harm national security despite there being no condition of such in the law as written. Wringing his hands, McCarthy adds:

It has told the public that because Mrs. Clinton did not have intent to harm the United States we should not prosecute her on a felony that does not require proof of intent to harm the United States. Meanwhile, although there may have been profound harm to national security caused by her grossly negligent mishandling of classified information, we’ve decided she shouldn’t be prosecuted for grossly negligent mishandling of classified information.

Then there's the matter of Comey's claim that no "reasonable" prosecutor would bring charges based on the investigation's findings. McCarthy doesn't agree in the slightest. In fact, he believes just the opposite:

To my mind, a reasonable prosecutor would ask: Why did Congress criminalize the mishandling of classified information through gross negligence? The answer, obviously, is to prevent harm to national security. So then the reasonable prosecutor asks: Was the statute clearly violated, and if yes, is it likely that Mrs. Clinton’s conduct caused harm to national security? If those two questions are answered in the affirmative, I believe many, if not most, reasonable prosecutors would feel obliged to bring the case.

Read his entire article here.