If special counsel John Durham didn’t get the verdict he wanted in the Michael Sussmann case, it’s because he did a better job of convicting the victim than he did the culprit—the victim being the FBI, the agency to which the Democratic lawyer allegedly lied when claiming he wasn’t acting for the Clinton campaign while peddling slime about Donald Trump in the run-up to the 2016 election.

In the indictment filed eight months ago, Mr. Durham went out of his way to show why the FBI would not have been fooled by Mr. Sussmann, who was acquitted by a jury Tuesday. The trial itself piled on the evidence that the FBI leadership was both embarrassed to be seen carrying water for the Clinton campaign and willing to carry it. By the end, Mr. Sussmann’s alleged lie seemed more aimed at obliging the agency than deceiving it.

The Durham evidence comes on top of the 2016 misfeasance cataloged in multiple reports of the Justice Department’s inspector general. Both candidates in 2016 have legitimate beefs with the agency, but only Mrs. Clinton can say its misbehavior caused her loss or that the FBI violated its own rules eight ways from Sunday to publicize what should have been its confidential actions in her case.