For many, it is difficult to decide which was more surprising: that FBI director James Comey decided just over a week ago to reopen the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server to transmit and receive classified information…or his announcement on Sunday that the review of “new” information yielded nothing that would prompt the agency to proceed any further with the matter.

The investigation, such that it was, is really closed now.

So, what happened here in the 11^th hour?

Those of us who make up the Great Unwashed will likely never be privy to the inside information. All we “know,” which means, what we have been told, is this: When the latest revelation of 650,000 emails on an Anthony Weiner device broke, the first response from the FBI was that there would be no additional information forthcoming until after the election.

That seemed reasonable; after all, it took the agency about a year to evaluate roughly 60,000 emails the first time around.

In just a matter of several days, however, that all changed, when Comey basically announced Sunday, “Nothing to see here; move on, please.”

Reportedly, software was put in place that allowed the 650,000 emails to be scanned for select words and phrases that would be of interest to the Bureau in its investigation. The emails were put through this process for the last eight days, and by Sunday it was determined that no information was revealed that would in any way strengthen a case against Clinton, or otherwise prompt the Bureau to reach a conclusion different from the one at which it arrived back in July.

As Comey put it to lawmakers in his letter to them once he arrived at the end of this latest look-see: “Based on our review, we have not changed our conclusions that we expressed in July with respect to Secretary Clinton.”

Ultimately, this played out the way many expected it would. In the end, Hillary emerges essentially unscathed. To many of us, it never seemed likely that she would ever be charged with anything.

And she wasn’t.

By Robert G. Yetman, Jr. Editor At Large