Ex-fed Comey speaks bluntly from a new limelight
President Donald Trump shakes hands with then-FBI Director James Comey at the White House in Washington in January 2017. Credit: AP / Alex Brandon
The highly questionable federal indictment of James Comey last week gave the 64-year-old former FBI director a prominent spotlight from which to issue a blunt and hearty reply. “My heart is broken for the Department of Justice, but I have great confidence in the federal judicial system,” he said in a video release. “And I’m innocent. So let’s have a trial.”
Comey is charged with lying to a Senate committee five years ago about whether he authorized a leak of classified information to the news media.
Experts say the meager indictment, with many details still to be filled in, could face severe obstacles finding its way to trial. One bizarre irregularity: Trump explicitly demanded that Attorney Gen. Pam Bondi pursue charges against those he deems political enemies, including Comey.
Nobody in a responsible position, certainly no president, has said before that this is how the criminal justice system is supposed to work.
Comey’s public profile is truly unique. He may be the only federal law enforcement leader in history to fully alienate the top ranks of both major national parties by ignoring their political agendas while doing the job. This has earned him admirers and detractors inside and outside the Beltway.
The backstory here is key.
Comey, who had been a longtime Republican, served in the Justice Department under President George W. Bush and as FBI director under President Barack Obama, from which perch he headed the probe into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s emails. Some people still blame her 2016 loss to Trump to Comey’s reopening the concluded probe less than two weeks before that election.
Trump rewarded Comey by keeping him on as FBI director. But soon, Trump asked him at the White House for “loyalty” and suggested in the Oval Office he let an investigation of former national security adviser Michael Flynn “go.” Comey later swore to this before a Senate committee — a sign of interference in the probe of Russia’s influence in the election.
No wonder some in politics have been suffering from Comey Derangement Syndrome.
Earlier this year, Comey published a crime thriller called “FDR Drive” with an interesting theme. In the book, the Justice Department is forced to confront a network of right-wing political extremists — and the free speech question of whether one agitator’s podcasts are directing violence at targeted individuals.
In real life, during Trump’s first term, Democrats accused the administration of giving too little credence to an FBI assessment under Director Christopher Wray that white supremacist extremism posed the most lethal threat of domestic terrorism in the United States.
For Comey, Trump’s lawfare has become not just political but personal. His daughter, Maurene Comey, was recently ousted from the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan, where four years ago she’d prosecuted Jeff Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell.
The elder Comey clearly tipped his hat to his daughter during the video.
“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,” he said. “Somebody that I love dearly recently said that fear is the tool of a tyrant. And she’s right. But I’m not afraid. 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 on it, which it does.”
Columnist Dan Janison's opinions are his own.
Dan Janison is a member of the Newsday editorial board.
