Five Thirty Eight underlined this fact months later:

Hillary Clinton would probably be president if FBI Director James Comey had not sent a letter to Congress on Oct. 28. The letter, which said the FBI had “learned of the existence of emails that appear to be pertinent to the investigation” into the private email server that Clinton used as secretary of state, upended the news cycle and soon halved Clinton’s lead in the polls, imperiling her position in the Electoral College.

Just four days after the election, Clinton was cleared, for a second time, when the supposed new evidence that caused Comey to blow up the election turned out to be an absolute nothing. Which nailed down Comey’s role in history.

FBI Director James Comey’s too late “nothing to see here,” doesn’t make up for the bomb he hurled into the election process ten days ago. All it does is confirm that Comey, far from being a scrupulous guardian of big-J Justice and an exemplar of non-partisan honesty, is an easily-influenced dishrag willing to cause irreparable damage to the nation without a scrap of valid evidence.

It was indeed a fake investigation of Hillary Clinton. And it did absolutely put Trump in the White House. It was nice of Trump to admit that.

And it also explains why, having already seen the power of fake investigations first hand, Trump was willing to extort Ukraine in an attempt to launch a fake investigation of Hunter Biden.