Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey revealed Friday that the FBI has reopened its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server and her handling of classified material, merely 11 days before Election Day. Mr. Comey cited new evidence, but the disclosure raises troubling new questions about the Democratic candidate and FBI.

In a letter to Congress, Mr. Comey wrote that in connection “with an unrelated case, the FBI has learned of the existence of emails that appear to be pertinent to the investigation.” The FBI “cannot yet assess whether or not this material may be significant,” but presumably the new emails are significant enough for Mr. Comey to conclude he had no choice but to take the extraordinary step of returning to the Clinton file so close to Nov. 8.

Liberals decided in real time Friday that Mr. Comey is now a partisan attempting to influence the election, but the same liberals had a ball after his July media appearance when he created a new legal standard of “extremely careless” instead of “grossly negligent” to exonerate Mrs. Clinton. Then the FBI chief was the reincarnation of Eliot Ness. At the third debate, Mrs. Clinton cited Mr. Comey’s probity: “The FBI conducted a yearlong investigation into my emails. They concluded there was no case.” Liberals can’t have it both ways.

The reality is that Mr. Comey’s Clinton probe has been a kid-glove exercise all along. Only days before he prematurely ended the investigation and proclaimed that “no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case”—a decision for the Justice Department, not the FBI— Bill Clinton met with Attorney General Loretta Lynch on an Phoenix airport tarmac.

When the FBI later released its investigation summary and interview notes on the Friday before Labor Day weekend, they showed Mrs. Clinton telling agents that she “could not recall” or “did not remember specifically” key details and events 27 times. The interview wasn’t taped, and Mrs. Clinton wasn’t put under oath, though it is a crime to lie to the FBI.

Recent revelations include the immunity deals extended to Clinton aides Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson to get them to surrender their laptops. The FBI could have sought a subpoena or search warrant to do as much, but Justice didn’t empanel a grand jury. Ms. Mills and Ms. Samuelson were allowed to serve as lawyers for Mrs. Clinton at her FBI interview, despite being material witnesses. Their deals specified that the laptops would be destroyed, meaning they can’t now be re-searched and cross-checked against Mr. Comey’s new information.

This week we learned that Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe steered more than $675,000 to the political campaign of the wife of FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe, who oversaw the Clinton investigation in the FBI’s Washington D.C. field office. Mr. McAuliffe is a longtime Clinton friend who is under FBI investigation himself over campaign finances.

News reports suggested late Friday that the “unrelated case” is an inquiry into disgraced former Congressman Anthony Weiner, whose wife is Hillary aide Huma Abedin. Perhaps the FBI discovered emails indicating contradictions with what the G-men were previously told. But whatever Mr. Comey has uncovered, he has an obligation to make it public before the election.

Mr. Comey has now created an October surprise without anyone—outside of the J. Edgar Hoover building or Clinton campaign—knowing what the surprise is, and the new information is potentially relevant to how Mrs. Clinton would govern as President. The courtesies Mr. Comey has extended Mrs. Clinton would never have been afforded to a private citizen, and this has undermined public trust in his judgment and independence.

Mrs. Clinton could be entering the White House amid an ongoing ethics investigation, which may be a historical first. If Republicans hold Congress, investigations of the FBI investigation are a near-certainty, with agents sworn to tell the truth. Did Mr. Comey reopen the case because of internal dissent within the FBI about the probe and his apparent political favoritism? Or did he worry that a congressional probe might uncover new evidence if he didn’t give the FBI a do-over?

Mrs. Clinton has herself to blame for this fiasco. Nobody forced her to use a private server, ignore warnings about classified material, and then stonewall when her conduct was exposed to voters. Even her advisers were privately shocked, or claimed to be. In a hacked John Podesta email from July 2015, Neera Tanden of the Center for American Progress vents: “Do we actually know who told Hillary she could use a private email? And has that person been drawn and quartered? Like [the] whole thing is [expletive] insane.”

It may be insane, but it’s also vintage Hillary Clinton—her preoccupation with secrecy, her recklessness, her lifelong conviction that she’ll never be held accountable. The poor American electorate, already beleaguered enough by the election choice, must now factor James Comey’s reprise into its decision.

Source: wsj.com