Opinion

Comey protected his ego at the expense of the FBI and the nation

It seems that by his own conception, James Comey is St. James, heavenly protector of patriotism and principle. Which is only to say, few men in American history have possessed as thoroughly a misguided self-awareness as our former FBI director.

As we now know, the erstwhile hero of the Trump Resistance had both mismanaged and misappropriated his power in ways that may have irreparably undermined the reputation of the most powerful enforcement agency in the United States.

When the Justice Department’s internal watchdog dropped a report on the Hillary Clinton e-mail investigation last week, we learned Comey wasn’t merely incompetent, nor was he a victim of some impossibly prickly situation thrust upon him by history.

Comey acted in an “extraordinary and insubordinate” manner, regularly ignoring the department’s norms and procedures to pursue his own arbitrary and capricious directives when conducting investigations that would have wide-ranging implications on our entire political system.





Now, it’s unlikely Comey was a man motivated by partisan bias. Because if there’s one underlying truth to the Comey saga, it’s that the protagonist of the story is a party of one.

And if there’s an underlying truth about the Hillary Clinton e-mail saga, it’s that nearly everyone in Washington believed the former secretary of state would beat Donald Trump and become our next president. So did Comey — and he acted accordingly.

Most Americans were first introduced to Comey during a July 2016 press conference, during which the FBI director unleashed a torrent of contradictions meant to simultaneously reprimand and shield Clinton.

Comey, after praising the FBI’s exhaustive investigation, told the nation that Clinton and her staff had indeed sent unsecured classified documents on an extra-governmental e-mail system created to avoid transparency. Everything about the practice was illegal, Comey explained, except the intent. By chalking up the entire situation to carelessness, the FBI had preemptively pardoned Hillary and her campaign of any criminal wrongdoing.





Thanks to the IG report, however, we know now Comey’s FBI made investigatory conclusions about Clinton’s actions before the end of the witness interviews — and that those interviews were conducted with excessive deference to Hillary’s staffers, who were showered with immunity deals for still-unknown reasons.

We already knew Comey had underplayed the seriousness of the private e-mail server by maintaining that there was no evidence foreign actors had infiltrated Clinton’s messages. Comey had edited the FBI initial draft that stated it was, in fact, “reasonably likely” that foreigners had gained access to the server.

Now we know that agents were actually nearly “certain” that foreign actors had hacked Clinton e-mails — including, at least one classified document.

Rather than grandstanding, Comey could’ve engaged in some of that “ethical leadership” by giving the Hillary case a meticulous investigation and then handing it to the Justice Department without any recommendations on indictments. He could’ve preserved the neutrality of the FBI. Instead, he seriously misplayed his hand.





By the time New York police had confiscated the laptop of the lecherous Anthony Weiner (then-husband of Huma Abedin, Hillary’s top aide), Comey, having already promised congressional investigators — under oath — that he would let them know if new evidence emerged, had been left with no choice. News of the classified e-mails was sure to leak.

So while the Comey letter reminded voters of the recklessness of Democratic Party candidate, it was neither an act of bravery nor partisan sabotage to send it. It was another act of self-preservation.

It’s unlikely Comey would’ve survived had Hillary triumphed, but the Trump victory portended a different kind of problem. Not knowing what would happen with his new mercurial boss, Comey played both sides. He’d tell Trump what he wanted to hear in private, while misleading him — failing, for example, to tell him that impetus for the collusion investigation was a document paid for by Democratic operatives. So whatever Trump’s real reasons were, by any, and every, standard, Comey deserved to be fired.





Comey would exact some revenge by mocking the president’s appearance, comparing him to a Mafia kingpin and making a bundle on a tell-all. But no matter what you think of the Trump presidency, no one should celebrate law-enforcement officials who act on their own moral whims.

Though Comey casts himself as a noble public servant who stands above the fray, few public officials have done more to undermine American trust in institutions in recent history. Good riddance.

David Harsanyi is a syndicated columnist and senior editor at The Federalist.





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