His prepared testimony shows why he deserved
to be fired.
The Senate Intelligence Committee released James Comey’s
prepared testimony a day early on Wednesday, and it looks like a test of
whether Washington can apprehend reality except as another Watergate. Perhaps
the defrocked FBI director has a bombshell still to drop. But far from
documenting an abuse of power by President Trump, his prepared statement
reveals Mr. Comey’s misunderstanding of law enforcement in a democracy.
Mr. Comey’s seven-page narrative recounts his nine
encounters with the President-elect and then President, including an appearance
at Trump Tower, a one-on-one White House dinner and phone calls. He describes
how he briefed Mr. Trump on the Russia counterintelligence investigation and
what he calls multiple attempts to “create some sort of patronage
relationship.”
But at worst Mr. Comey’s account of Mr. Trump reveals a
willful and naive narcissist who believes he can charm or subtly intimidate the
FBI director but has no idea how Washington works. This is not new information.
When you’re dining alone in the Green Room
with an operator like Mr. Comey—calculating, self-protective, one of the more
skilled political knife-fighters of modern times—there are better approaches
than asserting “I need loyalty, I expect loyalty.” Of course the righteous
director was going to “memorialize” (his word) these conversations as political
insurance.
Mr. Trump’s ham-handed demand for loyalty doesn’t seem to
extend beyond the events of 2016, however. In Mr. Comey’s telling, the
President is preoccupied with getting credit for the election results and
resentful that the political class is delegitimizing his victory with “the
cloud” of Russian interference when he believes he did nothing wrong.
Mr. Comey also confirms that on at least
three occasions he told Mr. Trump that he was not a personal target of the
Russia probe. But Mr. Comey wouldn’t make a public
statement to the same effect, “most importantly because it would create a duty
to correct” if Mr. Trump were implicated. This is odd because the real
obligation is to keep quiet until an investigation is complete.
More interesting is that Mr. Trump’s frustration at Mr.
Comey’s refusal raises the possibility that the source of Mr. Trump’s
self-destructive behavior isn’t a coverup or a bid to obstruct the
investigation. The source could simply be Mr. Trump’s wounded pride.
The most troubling part of Mr. Comey’s statement is his
belief in what he calls “the FBI’s traditionally independent status in the
executive branch,” which he invokes more than once. Independent? This is a
false and dangerous view of law enforcement in the American system.
Mr. Comey is describing an FBI director who
essentially answers to no one. But the police powers of
the government are awesome and often abused, and the only way to prevent or
correct abuses is to report to elected officials who are accountable to voters.
A director must resist intervention to obstruct an investigation, but he and
the agency must be politically accountable or risk becoming the FBI of J. Edgar
Hoover.
Mr. Comey says Mr. Trump strongly suggested in February
that he close the Michael Flynn file, but after conferring with his “FBI senior
leadership” he decided not to relay the conversation to Attorney General Jeff
Sessions or any other Justice Department superior. If he thought he was
being unduly pressured he had a legal obligation to report, and in our view to
resign, but he says he didn’t because “we expected” that Mr. Sessions would
recuse himself from Russia involvement.
Well, how did he know? Mr. Sessions didn’t
recuse himself until two weeks later. Mr. Comey also didn’t tell the acting Deputy
AG, who at the time was a U.S. attorney whom Mr. Comey dismisses as someone
“who would also not be long in the role.”
This remarkable presumptuousness is the Comey
mindset that was on display last year. He broke Justice
Department protocol to absolve Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of classified
material, without the involvement of Justice prosecutors or even telling then
Attorney General Loretta Lynch. Mr. Comey’s disregard for the chain of
legal command is why Mr. Trump was right to fire him, whatever his reasons.
Also on Wednesday two leaders of the intelligence
community told the Senate Wednesday that they had not been pressured to cover
up anything. “I have never been pressured—I have never felt pressured—to
intervene or interfere in any way with shaping intelligence in a political way
or in relation to an ongoing investigation,” said Director of National
Intelligence Dan Coats. National Security Agency Director Mike Rogers added
that he never been asked “to do anything I believe to be illegal, immoral,
unethical or inappropriate.”
Meanwhile, Mr. Trump announced that he is nominating
respected Justice Department veteran Christopher Wray as the next FBI director.
Let’s hope Mr. Wray has a better understanding of the FBI’s role under the
Constitution than Mr. Comey does.
