Former FBI Director James Comey made a cascade of claims against both President Trump and former Attorney General Loretta Lynch.
My apologies to J. Edgar Hoover.
Trying to illustrate the arrogance and treachery of James Comey, I dubbed him
J. Edgar Comey and accused him of learning the art of dirty tricks from the
FBI’s legendary director.
I was wrong. Hoover, for all his
huge flaws, took most of the dirt he collected to the grave. Comey is emptying
his closet just to make a buck.
Even worse, we now know that Comey
led an FBI that was corrupted to the core by politics and self-dealing.
Comey’s memoir is a going-out-of-
business sale where all the remaining merchandise is tawdry. Most striking
is that he offers no proof for his cascade of claims against both President
Trump and former Attorney General Loretta Lynch.
Instead, he relies on subjective
assertions and opinions rather than facts or evidence. His feelings about the
base motives of other people, contrasted with his own high-mindedness, are the
driving force of his book, as detailed by reviews and news reports.
As The New York Times puts it, “A Higher Loyalty” features “near-cinematic
accounts of what Comey was thinking”
during meetings with the president.
Chris Wallace of Fox News says he is
surprised at how “bitchy” the book is.
Why surprised? Comey’s career has
been one long ode to himself that Trump interrupted.
The book’s virtues emerge despite
the author’s intent. Inadvertently, Comey proves two very important things.
First, that Trump was right to
fire him. Had the president not acted, the FBI still would be headed
by a snake who took notes to be used only in the event he was fired. First he leaked them to the
media, and now turns them into an embellished
book. No honor there.
Second, Comey validates the
allegations that he and the FBI abused their
powers to play politics during the 2016 campaign.
For example, Comey writes that he felt confident
reopening the Hillary Clinton e-mail probe 11 days before the election because he assumed Clinton would win.
“It is entirely possible that,
because I was making decisions in an environment where Hillary Clinton was sure
to be the next president, my concern about making her an illegitimate president
by concealing the restarted investigation bore greater weight than it would
have if the election appeared closer or if Donald Trump were ahead in all
polls,” Comey writes.
In other words, he might have taken
a different action if the polls showed Trump in front. That’s a damning
admission — and not just about himself.
It is now beyond dispute that Comey
created a snake pit of self-aggrandizing officials at the top of the FBI whose legacy is one of misconduct and perhaps criminality.
His book appears simultaneously with
a scathing report
from the Justice Department’s inspector general on Comey’s former deputy, Andrew
McCabe, who was fired for leaking
to the media and then lying about it
repeatedly to investigators.
If there is any justice left in the Justice Department, McCabe will face
prosecution.
Indeed, why hasn’t he been charged
already? Where in the world is Attorney General Jeff Sessions?
The report, which includes Comey and
McCabe contradicting each other and McCabe’s lawyer mocking Comey’s “white
knight” stature on the subject of leaks, further scandalizes Comey’s
leadership.
And the McCabe report reveals just
part of the rampant wrongdoing among Comey’s team while it was investigating
both Trump and Clinton.
Recall that top officials Peter
Strzok and Lisa Page talked of an “insurance policy” in the event Trump won the
election and hinted in texts
that the probe of Clinton was rigged.
Yet even at this late date, Congress
and lawsuits from Judicial Watch have been able to pry loose only a fraction of
the evidence, as both the FBI and the Justice Department sit on a mountain
of information that would reveal the full scope of officials’ misbehavior.
Against that backdrop, Comey’s
reemergence is a reminder that the resistance to Trump was not limited to noisy
street marches. Like so many of the Trump-hating tribe, he reflects the
sense of moral superiority, as when he compares the president to New York mob
bosses.
His demonization echoes Clinton’s
“deplorables” comment
that reflected her disdain for the 63 million American citizens who voted for Trump.
We hear the same sneering in the
catcalls from former CIA director John Brennan, a bleacher bum whose
unprecedented attacks on Trump show how espionage was politicized under
Barack Obama.
Unfortunately, there is mounting
concern that special counsel Robert Mueller also has succumbed to Trump
Derangement Syndrome.
Apparently unable to find any
Trump collusion with Russia, his initial assignment, Mueller and his handler,
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, authorized a
highly unusual raid on Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen.
Leaks say agents were looking for records of
hush-money payments to women who said they had affairs with Trump and another man, along with possible evidence of bank fraud
and records of Cohen’s taxi-medallion business.
Hush money for sex is
headline-grabbing, but unless there is a Russia thread, we must consider
whether Mueller is determined to get the president, no matter how far afield he
must go.
Normally, civil-liberties groups
concerned about prosecutorial overreach would sound alarms.
But with Trump
as target, it’s silence or applause.
That’s the end product of the
twisted logic of those who believe with religious-like fervor that Trump
is unfit, and therefore any and all means to bring about his removal are
fair.
For sure, Trump challenges the nation’s
norms. His personality, history and habits are unlike any ever seen in the Oval
Office.
But unlike those who demand his
head, Trump has one advantage: He was elected.
And in trying to remove him with
a double standard of justice, his enemies are playing a dirty and dangerous
game.
______________________
COMMENTARY
Complied by the RNC
James Comey didn’t just break FBI
protocol by leaking information to the press, he lied about it to Congress.
On May 3, 2017, Comey testified that he “never” acted as an
“anonymous source in news reports relating to the Trump investigation or the
Clinton investigation.”
But on June 8, 2017, Comey admitted that he had a friend “share the
content of the memo with a reporter” because he thought it “might prompt the
appointment of the special counsel.”
According to Constitutional Law
Professor Jonathan Turley, Comey’s admission was “deeply troubling from a professional
and ethical standpoint” and a violation of FBI rules.
CNN
Law Enforcement Analyst and 25-Year FBI Veteran
Chief
White House Correspondent, The New York Times
Comey’s decision to leak information
and then lie about it is just more evidence of his true higher loyalty – to himself.
