GETTING CLOSER? – AT 12:52 P.M. ET:   There seems to be a great deal of activity in the FBI probe into Hillary's e-mail style.  How much it means, I have no idea.  From Fox: 

EXCLUSIVE: The Romanian hacker who says he easily breached Hillary Clinton’s personal email server also claimed, in a series of interviews with Fox News, that he spoke with the FBI at length on the plane when extradited from Romania to Virginia last month.

"They came after me, a guy from the FBI, from the State Department," 44-year-old Marcel Lehel Lazar, who goes by the moniker "Guccifer," told Fox News during a jailhouse phone interview. He said the conversation was "80 minutes ... recorded," and he took his own notes.

A government source confirmed that the hacker had a lot to say on the plane but provided no other details. Lazar was flown to the U.S. to face separate cyber-crime charges.

In addition to the apparent conversation with the FBI on the plane, Fox News has learned a meeting was expected as early as this week at the Alexandria, Va., detention center where he’s being held involving Guccifer, the FBI, the U.S. attorney and the defendant’s court-appointed lawyer.

These officials have not commented on his clams or detention.

COMMENT:  Absolutely no way to assess this story.  My own sense is that some manner will be found to finesse Clinton's e-mail behavior.  An indictment would be devastating, and probably end her presidential hopes.  But the case might be negotiated to something much less.  Clinton might have to pay a huge fine and admit some kind of vague wrongdoing, while accepting charges of favoritism.  But morality in America is pretty flexible right now, and she might come away with relatively little damage.

May 7, 2016