James Comey Is No Hero
Tags: Hillary Clinton, James Comey, FBI

Former Director of the FBI James Comey’s disdain for partisan politics, and commitment to the rule of law and justice is well known. He is a respected, former prosecutor who has held high-profile jobs in the DOJ under Democratic and Republican administrations. Comey views himself as an apolitical public servant, and in his own words doesn’t “give a hoot” about politics. For many anti-Trumpers, he is a hero who refused to follow President Trump’s illegal orders and improper requests when he was asked for personal loyalty and to end the FBI’s investigation into former national security advisor Michael Flynn. Comey has gone to great lengths to sell himself to the public as this apolitical and dedicated public servant, even going so far to publish a book on his career. Comey really was apolitical and has a great deal of integrity, but these traits became part of his persona and reputation. In the 2016 election he began to care more about his reputation as an apolitical public servant then actually being apolitical. The result of caring more about his reputation than anything else was that he mishandled the Clinton email investigation and helped Trump win in the 2016 election.

Comey as the F.B.I. director was overseeing the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails. After a long and thorough investigation, Comey and his team concluded that Hillary Clinton had done nothing that warranted criminal charges. Under normal circumstances this would be the end, but Comey broke protocol and decided they had to have a public press conference on why they weren’t charging Hillary Clinton. This was highly improper, abnormal and violated strongly held DOJ norms and rules prohibiting speaking to the public about investigations. Even more so when you are not charging that person with any crimes and publicly speaking about the investigation could interfere with an election. Worse Comey presented the press conference in the tone and matter he would have done if they had found misdeeds that warranted criminal charges. The result was that Comey made it appear that Hillary Clinton was guilty of serious crimes as her critics claimed, that the FBI was letting her off the hook for political reasons, and he unintentionally interfered with the election.

Why did Comey do this? Because he knew that if he didn’t do something like this, Republicans would attack him as a partisan hack who was trying to curry favor with the likely future president. His precious reputation would be smeared in the public. Comey refused to back down and even doubled down, releasing a completely unnecessarily update on the investigation eleven days before the election, despite other officials in the DOJ urging him not to do so. This update probably cost Hillary Clinton the election, but hey at least Comey’s reputation was protected?

Comey has developed a series of rationales as to why he had to do all of this, but they are all unconvincing to say the least. When the right thing to do was to remain quiet and take the heat, he chose to protect his reputation at the cost of the country and the integrity of FBI. I will never forgive him for these mistakes and for putting his reputation first over more important things. For these mistakes he even deserved to be fired. That is not say that Trump’s firing of him was legitimate. Trump didn’t fire him because of his mishandling of the email investigation. Trump is, and was, perfectly fine with the mishandling of the email investigation because it helped him in the 2016 election. He fired him because Comey refused to drop the “Russia thing.” A good analogy is this. A boss fires a woman who mishandled her job but admits in an email to a friend that he really fired her because she was a woman.