Trump ~Sort Of~ Predicted This Anthony Weiner Mess

FBI Director James Comey announced Friday that the FBI would be reviewing additional emails related to the investigation of Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server while secretary of state. In his letter to congressional chairmen, Comey identified the emails as having been uncovered in connection with an "unrelated case." A few hours later, the New York Times reported that the emails were reportedly discovered during an investigation into sexts sent by Anthony Weiner, the estranged husband of Clinton aide Huma Abedin. Believe it or not, Donald Trump actually predicted this situation — well, sort of.

CNN has reported that the emails in question were not sent by Clinton herself, and the emails appear to have been on Weiner's personal devices rather than Clinton's server. Amid reports that there could be as few as three relevant emails, according to Kurt Eichenwald of Vanity Fair, it is difficult to assess the potential damage to the Clinton campaign without additional information from Comey.

However, the recently beleaguered Trump campaign has been quick to label the announcement as definitively damaging. Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway tweeted, "a great day in our campaign just got even better." Conway also retweeted CNN reporter Andrew Kaczynski, who credited Trump for "predicting" the news because of 2015 tweets in which Trump labelled Weiner as a "perv sleazebag" and "security risk."

At this point, though, it may only be accurate to say that Trump "predicted this" in the very narrow sense that Trump correctly implied that the famously volatile Anthony Weiner would continue to be a liability to the Clinton campaign. I do not actually think Trump predicted anything. All Trump did was acknowledge that Weiner, a man with a history of public, embarrassing mistakes, would continue to make public, embarrassing mistakes in the future.

All we know at this point, according to the Times report, is that the FBI will be reviewing emails involving Clinton that were discovered during the Weiner investigation. Trump's prediction of a "major security risk" is completely irrelevant to the information we have at this time, which neither confirms nor suggests the existence of such risk.