National Review Online
Wednesday, May 10, 2017
President Trump has fired FBI director James Comey, who
had made himself eminently fireable.
Last July, Comey took it upon himself to become not only
the nation’s top policeman, but its top prosecutor, explaining in a long press
conference that Hillary Clinton had clearly broken the law by hosting
classified information on her private e-mail server, but that there was not
“clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate
laws.” As we observed at the time, the relevant statute does not require
“intent,” only “gross negligence” — which adequately described the behavior
Comey termed “reckless” and “extremely careless” — and, in any event, deciding
whether to prosecute was not up to him, but to then-Attorney General Loretta
Lynch. The entire event was, as longtime Justice Department hands noted,
unprecedented.
Democrats, who in the wake of Tuesday evening’s news are
breathless with Watergate comparisons, seem suddenly to have recalled their
past enthusiasm for Comey’s “independence” and “integrity.”
Most Democrats have spent the last several months incensed
at Comey, after he announced just days before November’s presidential election
that the FBI was reopening its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s e-mails,
based on evidence found on the computer of Anthony Weiner, husband of Clinton’s
right-hand woman Huma Abedin. (Yesterday, the Justice Department confirmed that
Abedin did in fact send classified information to Weiner’s unsecured e-mail
account.) Democrats, among them then-Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid,
suggested that Comey’s letter may have violated the Hatch Act, which restricts
political activity by certain government officials. That anger intensified
when, a few days later, Comey said, in effect, “Never mind,” and re-closed the
reopened investigation, reaffirming the FBI’s previous conclusion: She broke
the law, but so what?
On Tuesday evening, accounting for Comey’s termination,
this sequence of events was laid out in a long memo by Deputy Attorney General
Rod J. Rosenstein, whose tenure at the Department of Justice began just two
weeks ago. Rosenstein’s presentation of the facts is fair and scrupulous. In
addition to explaining how Comey repeatedly defied longstanding Justice
Department precedent throughout the Clinton e-mail investigation, he cites
critical comments from attorneys and deputy attorneys general from the last
several administrations, both Republican and Democratic. Rosenstein rightly
observes: “Almost everyone agrees that the Director made serious mistakes; it
is one of the few issues that unites people of diverse perspectives.” Indeed,
the only person who did not agree is James Comey, who has seemed incapable of
admitting obvious errors, and has in effect asserted that his investigative
“independence” makes him accountable to no one.
Democrats, having spent the last several months accusing
Comey of intervening to throw the presidential election to Donald Trump, are
now suggesting that he is an indispensable man. Senator Brian Schatz declared
on Twitter: “We are in a full-fledged constitutional crisis.”
Deep breaths, Senator.
It is well documented that the Russian government
attempted to interfere in November’s election, but there remains no concrete
evidence that anyone in the Trump campaign was in on it — let alone that Trump
himself “colluded” his way into the Oval Office. Furthermore, speculations to
the contrary are in no small part based on a misunderstanding of what Comey
said in his March testimony before the House Intelligence Committee: There is
an ongoing counterintelligence investigation into Russia’s election
interference; there is no ongoing criminal investigation by the FBI of
President Trump or his campaign.
Of course, Donald Trump has often been less than
forthright in his public statements, and the reasons that President Trump
should have fired Comey — for example, those outlined by Rosenstein — appear
not to be the reasons he did. Press reports suggests that Trump was angry about
the Russian probe, Comey’s ubiquity in the media, and the FBI director’s
refusal to make a statement exonerating him. If true, none of this speaks well
of Trump. Politically, the firing obviously isn’t going to tamp down the
Russian controversy, but intensify it. As will the White House’s typically
shambolic handling of the dismissal.
Several Republican senators, including Senate
Intelligence Committee chairman Richard Burr of North Carolina, have expressed
concern about the sudden termination. The public deserves a forthright answer
about the how’s and why’s of the decision, and if the White House does not
provide it, Congress must seek it.
We will know more about the White House’s mindset based
on its choice for Comey’s successor. Ideally, the administration will find a
replacement well-respected on both sides of the aisle who promises to be appropriately
independent of the position’s inevitable political pressures. That ought to be
the case if, as President Trump says in his letter to Comey, the purpose of
finding new leadership is to “restore public trust and confidence” in the FBI.
Anything less will be understood as partisan gamesmanship or a cover-up — even
if there is, in fact, nothing to cover up.
Needless to say, over the past year James Comey found
himself in a difficult situation, squeezed between two major-party candidates
widely suspected of grave criminal wrongdoing. But his response was, time and
again, to make himself policeman, prosecutor, and judge, breaking with
decades-old protocols instituted for precisely those sorts of high-pressure
situations, and making the nation’s chief law-enforcement office look like a
political player. The Bureau’s reputation is at a low ebb because of Comey’s
decisions. One way or the other, he needed to go.
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