550

Comey’s book is interesting on many levels as were his interviews. Actually, as noted in a previous chapter-find # later-what was most interesting is that he actually agreed with me and Bill Clinton on Tarmacgate-it was a nothingburger and clearly not an attempt by Clinton to get Loretta to give his wife a pass-as we saw in Chapter A.

But at the end of the day, it’s clear he still doesn’t get it. He continues to defend his actions in Emailgate Midyear even though they are totally indefensible.

“Rather than apologize, Comey instead invites us to empathize with him – for the low price of $29.99. “What I would hope is that they would, by reading the book, come with me to October 28th,” he told Stephanopoulos. “Come with me, and sit there with me.” Despite warning us anew of the urgent threat that this president poses to the republic, Comey seems not to have fully understood, going into these interviews, that the public would insist upon as much accountability from himself as from Trump. He cannot assume that he is suddenly the “good guy” in our simplified political paradigm just because the majority of the country likes what he’s saying now and trusts him more than the man whom he declared “morally unfit” for office.”

Actually I’ve spoken to a lot of my fellow Democrats on Twitter who have been willing to go along with this idea that he’s suddenly the good guy. But the truth is if not for his actions this ‘morally unfit’ man would not be ‘President’-and Comey knew before the election that Trump’s campaign was being investigated for Russian collusion-and still took the action that handed him the election.

Many criticize Strozk and Page for their clear anxiety that Trump could win the 2016 election. But in their defense they knew he was currently under federal investigation for possibly colluding with the Russian government. If you knew this about a candidate wouldn’t you be alarmed at the prospect of them winning? Comey knew this too and yet was fine taking actions that put Trump over the finish line.

Comey has done everything he can think of to become the good guy in the picture except giving Americans a full and complete accounting of what really happened and admitting that what he did isn’t defensible. Until he does that he can’t claim to be the good guy. I don’t think he’s a truly bad guy either-he’s shades of grey-the truly bad guys are the rogue agents who intended to rig an election. But his extreme carelessness and negligence helped the truly bad guys be successful.

And he has done everything else-his memos on Trump’s attempt to push him into obstructing the Russia investigation on his behalf is a very important and valued public service. Give him that. He’s talked about being ‘slightly nauseated’ at the idea that his actions flipped the election-good though maybe he ought be even more than slightly so. He later testified to being disgusted by Trump’s hug-and kiss?-when he met him in January, 2017. 

Indeed, apparently, Comey’s disgust and nausea at Trump’s hug and the knowledge he won the election for him seems to be the proximate immediate cause for Trump firing him in May, 2017.  Since then Comey even joined the #Resistance to placate us and atone for election Trump. He now has called for a Democratic Congress. Great-and welcome aboard.

But he still hasn’t been honest about his role in the Emailgate fiasco. And until he does we as a country can’t move on-and he can’t achieve true public redemption. Presumably he’ll be happy to publicly testify and answer all the many tough questions we have for him in the Dem’s Select Committee on Comeygate next year.

UPDATE: I wrote this on September 25, 2018-it’s now February 21, 2019 and the Democrats have yet to demand the IG release its report on the leaks by rogue anti Clinton pro Trump agents-and there has been nothing about the possibility of a Select Committee-the late John McCain had rightly broached the subject of a SC into Russia but was, of course, rebuffed by McConnell and friends. But now we have a Democratic House and we have still heard nothing.

This remains true today on November 5, 2019 though the  Dems did finally open an impeachment inquiry in September. No doubt the response to this call now will be the Dems’ plate is already overloaded. Actually that’s a feature not a bug if they do the right thing-don’t seek to end impeachment investigation quickly but rather not until they’ve covered all the bases of Trump’s impeachable conduct.

For now I will answer Comey’s question. He loves to ask what we would do if we were in his shoes in October, 2016-come back with me and tell me what you would do. 

Ok here’s what I would do: I’d respect FBI protocols, procedures, and precedent. Ok, I’m not in the FBI but Bob Mueller is to say the least and it’s clear that he would not have gone down Comey’s ‘conceal or reveal’ rabbit hole. As the IG report itself argued-find IG quotes later-this was always a false choice: it was between following procedure and being a self righteous and insubordinate-to use the IG’s word-cowboy.

Everything we know about Mueller suggests he’d have simply followed procedure. Comey’s problem is that his moral vanity was too much to simply not act-as protocol dictated-he wanted a more heroic decision which is what led him to engage in his ad hockery. What’s more he worried far too much about appearing to be nonpolitical rather than actually being nonpolitical. But this was his mistake-once you start down that path you just get deeper. There’s no way as FBI Director conducting an investigation you can ever totally manage public opinion. Comey was right in a way that no matter what they might do there would be criticism. Yet all his actions seemed calculated to stave off criticism-which is impossible. This is why the right thing is what Mueller has done with the Russia probe-which I presume he’d have done with Emailgate: simply go by procedure and accept that there will be some unfair criticism.

If worst case scenario, Hillairy did win and the emails that mysteriously got onto Weiner’s laptop showed up after the election he’d at least have had the moral high ground. When Trey Gowdy and friends yanked him before Congress he’d have calmly explained that this is what procedure calls for. Of course, realistically it was always very unlikely anything new would show up in Huma’s emails. You wonder if Schoenberg is correct that Comey-through his partisan anti Clinton GOP lens-really thought there was a high likelihood that there were ‘golden emails’ on the laptop-that Clinton was obviously a criminal who just hadn’t gotten caught.  It’s important to keep in mind how much hostility there was to Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election-the IG report-find quotes-documents how many of the rank and file both current and retired thought she was guilty of something and had unfairly beat the rap.

Had Mueller been the Director we wouldn’t be in the  full blown Constitutional crisis we are facing today.

This conjecture of me-and Beth Gold-is only false if Mueller would have run the email probe 180 degrees differently from how he’s run the Russia investigation. If that were so that would mean he is biased. I don’t believe Mueller is biased-very much the opposite, ergo, he would have run  Emailgate totally differently, ergo he wouldn’t have done either the presser or the letter and so the election would not have been rigged for the candidate who just happened to have his campaign being investigated for collusion with Russian interference.

In his book tour, Comey discussed the untethering of norms.

CF: https://evilsax.pressbooks.com/wp/wp-admin/post.php?post=1588&action=edit

Use the above chapter in this part? Not that we need any more chapters…

He’s certainly right-but what he fails to see is how much his own vanity and insubordination have contributed to this untethering.

Correct but what Comey misses is that his totally unprecedented and inappropriate interventions in the 2016 election have done far more damage to the agency than him being reamed by Trey Gowdy for not violating procedure to talk about Weiner’s laptop 11 days before the election. Indeed, Comey’s very real insubordination here gave Trump the pretext to illegitimately fire him in May, 2016.

Speaking of Coney’s insubordination, the other side of the coin was Loretta Lynch’s failure to reign him in-she suggested strongly she didn’t think the letter was a good idea-and she also didn’t think the presser was, though part of Comey’s insubordination is that he informed her of his plan so late in the game it was rather awkward for her to overrule him then. But the IG report rightly also calls her out for her failure to just say no. By Comey’s design it was awkward and uncomfortable but she should have overruled him anyway-this was an abdication on her part.

As to why she didn’t, I actually think the profile Andy McCabe has of her in his newly published book goes a long way to explain Lynch’s failure to put Comey in his place-she is very adverse to conflict-honestly too much so for the role she was in as America’s top prosecutor.

“Loretta Lynch is gracious and considerate. She comports herself in a way that is controlled at all times. She speaks in the measured tones of an NPR broadcast: positive but not peppy, concerned but not angry. I never went into a meeting with her afraid of what I was going to hear. Edges, though, are useful for a leader. It’s okay for a leader to have limits that others do not want to test. That can be motivating. Lynch seemed to loathe conflict. Oftentimes she and her people would have little to say in the President’s Daily Brief. We had a run of very intense counterterrorism events in 2016 and 2017 when Lynch was attorney general, and I don’t remember her asking many specific questions. Sometimes I wondered if she spent so much time reading and so little talking in those briefings because she wanted to avoid the possibility of any friction or dispute.

Location 1914.

That sounds all too familiar to how IG described her response to Comey’s press conference and letter. She certainly should have asked more specific questions in those cases.

So perhaps if Eric Holder had still been AG Hillary Clinton would also be President today. Or perhaps if Margaret Sullivan rather than Dean Banquet still ran the NYT she’d be President today. Hard to think Margaret Sullivan would have run this:

UPDATE: I still suspect this though I’ve come to be much more critical about the way Mueller bent over backwards in so many ways to accommodate Trump-Chapter A for more. Would he have been so accomodating with Hillary? That I’m not so sure about-surely rogue agents would have been crying bloody murder.

Ironically a cowboy like Comey might have been preferable for Trump who engaged in so much invective and obstruction of the investigation except Comey didn’t act like a cowboy in his handling of the Russian Collusion investigation quite distinct from how he conducted Emailgate.

The big picture, the 30,000 foot view is that the FBI acts very differently when it investigates a Democrat-Hillary in Emailgate or her husband in Whitewater-lots of leaks, very aggressive maneuvers-remember when Louis Freeh showed up at a black tie event to demand Clinton’s blood sample? And Clinton appointed Freeh.

Then when it’s a GOPer on the hot seat the FBI suddenly remembers the virtue of protocol and keeping its mouth shut.

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