EDITORIAL: Trail of lies

Democrats are up in arms that congressional Republicans want the FBI to open a perjury investigation regarding comments Hillary Clinton made to Congress involving her email habits. No one could deny that politics are involved. But all that would be irrelevant if Mrs. Clinton would simply stop lying.

But she won’t — or can’t. And now her husband is running around repeating her lies. At least he’s found something he’s good at.

Bill Clinton’s feelings are hurt because FBI Director James Comey didn’t completely whitewash his wife’s prevarications. When Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., asked Mr. Comey in July if Mrs. Clinton was telling the truth when she said there was nothing marked classified on her emails either sent or received, the FBI chief said her comments were “not true.” Mr. Comey also disputed Mrs. Clinton’s assertions that she didn’t email any classified material, that she used only one personal server, that she returned all work-related emails to the State Department, and that her lawyers reviewed the content of every one of her emails.

Mr. Comey also testified that, while it was tough to determine the truthfulness of her claim that neither she nor anyone else deleted emails from her personal account, there was “no doubt” work-related emails were missing.

During an Asian American Journalists Association meeting in Las Vegas last week, Mr. Clinton called Mr. Comey’s testimony “the biggest load of bull I’ve ever heard.” He went on to make excuses for his wife’s behavior, trotting out the “everybody did it” defense while insisting that no classified material was involved and implying that the FBI director had recanted the comments he made during the congressional hearing.

All this was too much for The Washington Post’s Fact Checker feature, which characterized Mr. Clinton’s comments as “pathetic” and “misleading” and accused him and other Democrats of cherry-picking the FBI director’s statements in their rush to defend Hillary. The column awarded Mr. Clinton three Pinocchios, which is described as “into the realm of mostly false.”

Clearly, Hillary learned at the knee of the master. Or was it the other way around?