James Comey on Monday absorbed punches from Democrats and Republicans alike. | Getty Comey seals his pariah status Republicans and Democrats alike are assailing the FBI director after his latest election-season shock.

James Comey can’t win in this election.

The FBI director on Monday absorbed punches from Democrats and Republicans alike as they try to assess the damage from Comey's announcement 11 days before the election that the agency was reviewing new evidence in the Hillary Clinton email probe and his follow-on announcement two days before the election that investigators found nothing notable.


Outgoing Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid told POLITICO in an interview Monday that Comey has “put a black mark on the FBI that will never go away.”

“Comey has done more damage to the FBI than anyone since J. Edgar Hoover,” Reid said, going on to concede that he “made a mistake” confirming him. “I didn’t know he was such a Republican.”

For what it’s worth, Republicans don’t want to claim the embattled law enforcement officer, either, especially after he dashed the hopes he had given them just nine days ago to reclaim the White House and maintain control of the Senate.

GOP nominee Donald Trump suggested Comey is part of the reason that America is seen as a laughingstock on the world stage.

“It’s disgraceful. What’s happening — what’s happening is a disgrace, and our country is a laughingstock all over the world,” he said Monday morning during a rally in Sarasota, Florida. “With what’s happening with our justice, our country is a laughingstock. All over the world, they’re laughing.”

But they’re not laughing in Washington, D.C. In fact, House Speaker Paul Ryan told conservative radio host Charlie Sykes that he had no words when he read Comey’s letter.

“I just kind of shook my head when I looked at it,” the Wisconsin Republican said.

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee recommended the FBI chief purchase a puppy — “because you got no friends in D.C. left,” he said during an interview with Fox News.

“You’ve made the Republicans mad, then the Democrats mad, now the Republicans again. But ultimately, you know what?” Huckabee said. “You've lost the confidence of your own people in the building. They don't trust you. They believe you're a political pawn. And as a result, I think his credibility has been turned into basically a pile of dirt.”

Trump and the Republican Party were gifted an October surprise late last month when Comey wrote lawmakers just 11 days before Election Day to inform them that the bureau had found additional emails that may be related to its investigation into Clinton’s private email server as secretary of state. The news had revitalized their hopes of taking back the White House and maintaining their House and Senate majorities — but not for long.

Earlier in July, Comey had acknowledged at a news conference that Clinton and her aides were “extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information” but maintained that their conduct fell short of criminal wrongdoing.

In another letter to Congress on Sunday, Comey said the bureau had not changed its earlier conclusions despite the new evidence, which he warned in the first letter may or may not be significant.

But Democrats are arguing that the damage has been done, as millions of voters have already cast mail-in, absentee or early voting ballots.

Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill slammed Comey for the “very big mistake” he made injecting himself into the election “because it did make a difference in this campaign.”

Most of the 43 million early voters cast ballots after Comey’s initial letter, she said, remarking that millions voted under the impression that a “smoking gun” could emerge.

“As it turns out, there was nothing there,” she said on MSNBC. “And it is unfortunate that he muddled this race at that time.”

Meantime, Trump is leveraging the latest revelation as a rallying cry to galvanize supporters to beat a so-called “rigged” system.

“Hillary Clinton is being protected by a totally rigged system,” Trump claimed. “And now it’s up to the American people to deliver justice at the ballot box tomorrow. That’s what’s gonna happen.”

Burgess Everett, Brent Griffiths and Yousef Saba contributed to this report.