| When you vote for president next November, there's a chance you won't just choose between President Biden or Donald Trump (if he's the Republican nominee). If you're not inspired by either of them, you could have an opportunity to vote for a third-party candidate instead. But this person won't win. Instead, he or she could cost Biden the election. "This would be the easiest way possible for Trump to win," Republican strategist Doug Heye told me. Here's what's going on. There's a group called No Labels, and it's led by former independent senator Joe Lieberman, from Connecticut. Their aim is to move politics and policy to a more centrist, moderate place. To that end, they're considering propping up a candidate for a presidential run in 2024, like Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W. Va.) or former Maryland governor Larry Hogan (R). Manchin is speaking at a No Labels event in New Hampshire next week, The Washington Post's John Wagner reports, raising the possibility he's running for president.  Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) is raising speculate he'll run for president, where he could be a spoiler to Biden. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post) | At first glance, more choices sound like a no brainer for voters. But political strategists say it could have a direct effect on whether Biden holds on to the White House. Here's how that could help Trump win: Biden beat Trump by winning over voters who were sick of the former president's divisive politics. They weren't necessarily casting a ballot because they loved Biden. So if those voters had a third choice, a number of them could go for that person rather than Biden. All Trump needs is a shift of a few percentage points or less in several swing states to be back in the White House: Biden won Georgia by 0.2 percent, Arizona by 0.3 percent and Wisconsin by 0.6 percent, for example. It is already shaping up to be a tight race between him and whichever Republican wins the nomination. Then you throw a third-party candidate in the mix — especially a Democrat like Manchin — and "you start doing the math in some of those states, and it gets very tricky very quickly for Biden," Heye told me. A third-party candidate is "a dangerous illusion," that ends with Trump in the White House, the centrist-left think tank Third Way warned. Why Republicans' FBI attacks are misguided  A frustrated FBI Director Christopher A. Wray testifies to Congress on Wednesday. (Shuran Huang for The Washington Post/For The Washington Post) | Today, the director of the FBI appeared before a Republican-led committee in Congress, where he faced nonstop attacks about whether his agency is playing favorites between Biden and Trump. Director Christopher Wray insisted he's not. "The idea that I'm biased against conservatives seems somewhat insane to me, given my own personal background," he said. He was appointed by Trump, he pointed out that all Republican senators voted to confirm him, and he did nothing to dissuade beliefs he's a registered Republican. Why is the FBI so politicized these days? Since 2016, it's been investigating presidential candidates or presidents pretty much nonstop: Hillary Clinton and her emails; the Trump campaign's potential ties to Russia; last year, it raided Mar-a-Lago to search for classified documents that Trump took with him after he left the White House. The FBI has also been investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. And Hunter Biden. And President Biden's handling of classified documents. While Wray acknowledges that the FBI has made mistakes in the past, he maintains none of this is political. Here's a fact that puts this all in context: It's the Justice Department, not the FBI, that makes the decision about whether to prosecute Trump or Hunter Biden. The FBI points out that it just investigates and gathers facts. Still, raging against the FBI is politically useful for Trump and his allies, who have maneuvered the Republican Party from one that pitches itself as the party of law and order to a party that is openly skeptical of, and even hostile to, institutions. | 
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