389 Final Edition: Epilogue: Catastrophic: Is The Comey Letter Still Only Just Very Bad?

Section One: Very Bad vs. Cataclysmic—Come Back With Me to That Day

On May 3, 2017, James Comey sat before Congress and defended the indefensible. He told the nation that announcing the reopening of the Clinton email probe eleven days before the election was a choice between “really bad” and “catastrophic.” He admitted he felt “mildly nauseous” at the thought he might have tipped the outcome, but insisted he would do it all again.

This is the logic of scapegoating masquerading as moral grandeur. It’s the same logic that sports fans used to bury Daniel Jones for six years, only to demand retroactive brilliance once he finally had an offensive line. It’s the same logic Russia apologists used when their “Russia will never invade” predictions collapsed in February 2022—wrongness transmuted into vindication. Comey’s defense of the Comey Letter is cut from that cloth: being wrong only makes you righter.

As Schoenblog wrote in 2018: “Comey’s Letter was the biggest mistake in the history of mistakes. The other reason I focus on it is that he has yet to admit he made a mistake.” Redemption without repentance. Karma without catharsis. Comey wants forgiveness without confession, as if moral grandeur could be improvised by intuition rather than grounded in policy.

The “speak or conceal” dichotomy he invented was a false choice. Due process demanded silence until the warrant was executed. Instead, he sullied Clinton’s reputation before knowing what was in the emails. He insists that secrecy might have been “even worse”—but worse than what? Worse than electing Trump? Worse than the decade of cascading crises that followed?

Because what came after was not “very bad.” It was catastrophic.

• Trump’s extortion of Zelensky the day after Mueller testified.
• Hundreds of thousands dead from COVID mismanagement.
• The coup attempt of 2020 and the January 6 insurrection.
• Dobbs, stripping rights from women and girls.
• The Roberts Court granting Trump absolute immunity.
• Musk dismantling USAID, leaving tens of thousands to die abroad.

All of it traces back to the Original Sin of Emailgate. Comey’s refusal to repent turned “very bad” into “catastrophic.” His karmic bill keeps growing: his daughter fired from SDNY for her last name, his own indictment in 2025 framed as a “2016 redux.” Even his Instagram defiance underscores the cycle—Trump weaponizing the same narrative that began with Comey’s letter.

Comey admitted he was “slightly nauseated” at the thought of electing Trump. America has lived through the nausea ever since.

Section Two: Comey Justice vs. Trumpian Justice—Two Kinds of Trials

On November 26, 2025, James Comey responded to his indictment with defiance. Prosecutors charged him with making a false statement to Congress and obstructing a congressional investigation. Comey posted a video on Instagram, framing the case as political retribution:

“My family and I have known for years that there are costs to standing up to Donald Trump, but we couldn’t imagine ourselves living any other way. We will not live on our knees, and you shouldn’t either… Fear is the tool of a tyrant.”

He urged Americans not to give in to intimidation:

“I’m not afraid, and I hope you’re not either. I hope instead you are engaged, you are paying attention, and you will vote like your beloved country depends upon it, which it does.”

In some ways, his response was refreshing. Most who Trump has bullied have kept their heads down, hoping silence would spare them. But bullies thrive on capitulation. The more media outlets and law firms bent to Trump’s demands, the more unreasonable those demands became. Comey’s refusal to bow—his “let’s have a trial”—was a rare counterpunch.

And yet, the irony remains: his family suffers consequences they never chose. His wife had urged him not to send the Comey Letter. His daughter Maureen, fired from SDNY in a blatantly political purge, now fights a years‑long lawsuit. Their courage is real, but the burden was imposed by his unilateral, disastrous decision in 2016.

Section: Two Kinds of Criminal Cases

Comey insists he trusts the federal justice system. Emptywheel argues the case against him is weak, and he’ll likely win. Even Trump’s choice of prosecutor—Lindsey Halligan, an insurance lawyer with no criminal background—underscores the farce.

But the larger truth is this: in America, there are two kinds of criminal cases.

• Cases where truth matters → The accused has resources, counsel, and standing.
• Cases where truth doesn’t matter → The accused is poor, powerless, and railroaded into prison because they cannot fight back.

Comey is obviously in the first camp. He has wealth, stature, and access to elite counsel. Most Americans—60% living paycheck to paycheck—do not. And yet even those with means can be ground down when prosecutions are political. Hunter Biden nearly faced hard time for charges that prosecutors admitted would never have advanced if his last name weren’t Biden. Trump’s second term has shown how easily cases can be weaponized in the right jurisdiction, before the right judge.

And looming above it all is John Roberts, architect of “Absolute Immunity.” The Supreme Court has tilted the scales so far that Trump’s supremacy often outweighs accountability.

Section: James Comey is Being Comeyed—or Martha Stewarted

Perhaps Comey will prevail. Emptywheel thinks so. But karmically, the irony is sharp: he is now at risk of being railroaded by the same system he once weaponized.

Hillary Clinton was not guilty, yet Comey dragged her through a year‑long spectacle, violated her due process, and sullied her reputation with the Letter. By the time he “acquitted” her, a supermajority of Americans wrongly believed she should have been indicted. He claimed his actions were meant to inform the public, but they left the public less informed, not more.

And then there is Martha Stewart. She too was innocent of the charges that sent her to prison. Comey prosecuted her anyway. If he is innocent now, he is no more innocent than she was then.

Epilogue: Catastrophic

Section Three: Whitewater, Witch Hunts, and Republican Justice

Then there was that time James Comey begged to work for Ken Starr. In 1996, he served on the Senate Whitewater Committee, eager to join the crusade. If you want to see what a political witch hunt looks like, look no further than Starr’s Whitewater obsession in the 1990s.

Trump cries “witch hunt” today, but Starr perfected the art decades earlier. He coerced testimony, entrapped witnesses, and weaponized perjury traps. Susan McDougal went to prison not for lying, but for refusing to lie. Starr offered her a deal: say Clinton is a criminal or we’ll lock you up. Her husband agreed to lie; she did not, and she paid the price.

Monica Lewinsky faced the same tactics—locked in a hotel room, threatened with 27 years in prison, denied access to her lawyer. Starr’s crusade was projection incarnate: everything Republicans accuse others of, they practice themselves. Even Starr’s appointment was coerced. Robert Fiske, the original special counsel, found no wrongdoing. Republicans replaced him with Starr, still bitter that Clinton had beaten Bush Sr. and denied him a Supreme Court seat.

Clinton compounded the disaster by reauthorizing the Independent Counsel Act against Hillary’s advice, empowering a conservative three‑judge panel to unleash Starr. It was an own goal of historic proportions.

Section: The FBI’s Republican DNA

The FBI has never had a Democratic director. Democrats keep appointing Republicans, hoping for goodwill, and get punished anyway. Clinton chose Louis Freeh, who spent the 1990s investigating him, even demanding a urine test at a black‑tie dinner. FDR chose Hoover, who built a fiefdom of surveillance and intimidation.

Comey, Mueller, McCabe—all lifelong Republicans. Wray, technically independent, was Chris Christie’s Bridgegate lawyer and refused to provide Democrats intel on Russia. After 117 years, Democrats still haven’t gotten the memo: appointing Republicans doesn’t buy protection.

Comey’s But Her Emails crusade was just the latest iteration of Republican justice. At the end of the day, what is the difference between Comey’s justice and Trump’s? Not much. Starr, Freeh, and Comey were practicing Trumpian justice long before anyone imagined the words “President Trump.”

Section: Michael “Nostradamus” Cohen

And now, Michael Cohen enters the stage. Unlike Marcy Wheeler, Pam Bondi, Alan Dershowitz, or Andy McCarthy—who all argue the case against Comey is weak—Cohen declares with emotional certainty that Comey will be found guilty.

On Raw and Unfiltered with Brian Karem, Cohen thundered: “Comey is today’s ham sandwich.” His rhetorical certainty begs the question: how does he know? What makes him so sure? When Cohen speaks with that kind of conviction, the correct response is not to dismiss him, but to ask what information, what intuition, what insider knowledge fuels his certainty.

Section: Nostradamus Cohen and the Ham Sandwich Paradox

Michael Cohen insists James Comey will be found guilty. Unlike Marcy Wheeler, Pam Bondi, Alan Dershowitz, or Andy McCarthy—who all argue the case is weak—Cohen thunders with emotional certainty: “Comey is today’s ham sandwich.”

This certainty echoes his Tara Palmieri moment, when she pressed past his denials and he admitted sending a private investigator to intimidate Katie Johnson’s lawyer. When Cohen is that sure, the question isn’t what he knows—it’s how he knows.

Cohen claims he conducted his own “investigation,” leaning on longtime correspondent Brian Karem, who spoke to DOJ and FBI sources. But the narrative quickly blurs. Cohen insists Comey was deeply involved in the Russia probe, even though Comey had been fired in May 2017—long before Cohen’s indictment in November 2018. He conflates Mueller, SDNY, Steele, and McCain into a confused timeline that mirrors Trump’s own “Deep State set me up” storyline.

Karem’s sources, meanwhile, remain anonymous and vague. They told him the DOJ tried to leverage Cohen to get Trump, but offered no specifics. Cohen paraphrases this into proof that Comey wanted him prosecuted—an impossibility given the chronology. The irony is sharp: Cohen, once Trump’s fixer, now parrots Trump’s narrative even as he insists he’s broken free.

The paradox is clear: Cohen begins with nihilism—“nobody knows anything”—and ends with certainty—“Comey will be convicted.” His rhetoric slides from agnostic to absolute, laundering normative hope into positive prediction. He doesn’t know the crime, but he knows there must be one. It’s projection masquerading as prophecy.

Section: Emotional Certainty and Trumpland’s FBI

The key to Michael Cohen is always when he gets emotionally certain. His insistence that Trump never colluded with Russia clashes with his own testimony—he overheard Trump on the phone with Roger Stone about WikiLeaks in July 2016, and he himself was involved in the Trump Tower Moscow project. Tara Palmieri broke through his denials once before, exposing his intimidation of Katie Johnson’s lawyer. SDNY gave him nearly four years because he hadn’t told the whole truth. That remains the case today.

Meanwhile, Kash Patel’s FBI has achieved self‑actualization as a Republican fiefdom. Loyalty tests are now explicit: applicants asked who they voted for, when they started supporting Trump, whether they agreed Mar‑a‑Lago agents should be punished. Brian Driscoll, briefly acting director, refused to answer and was fired anyway. A lawsuit alleges Patel prioritized politicization over national security, purging seasoned counterterrorism leaders. Whether the case succeeds depends less on merit than on whether it lands before a Trump judge.

When not demanding loyalty oaths, Patel’s FBI was erasing Trump’s name from Epstein files. Under Pam Bondi’s direction, 1,000 agents worked 24‑hour shifts for two weeks, combing through 100,000 documents to flag every mention of Trump. Senator Dick Durbin asked the obvious: what happened to those records once flagged? The silence speaks volumes.

Then came Speaker Mike “Moscow” Johnson’s bombshell: Trump was an FBI informant in the Epstein case. He claimed Trump had sympathy for victims and worked to “take this stuff down.” The White House scrambled, Johnson walked it back, but the damage was done. Forensic courage is required here—don’t dismiss the possibility too quickly, but don’t canonize Trump either.

Nuance matters. Destiny, the streamer, captured it after Charlie Kirk’s assassination: the murder was wrong, but the canonization of Kirk as a free speech martyr is appalling. Reactionary pluralism masquerades as liberty, just as Patel’s FBI masquerades as law enforcement.