John O’Connor argues for the Daily Caller that former FBI Director James Comey has inflicted serious damage on the U.S. justice system.
We should all agree with James Comey’s assertions in A Higher Loyalty that our system of justice needs to maintain a reservoir of public trust in the independence of the Department of Justice, especially its investigative branch, the FBI. Unfortunately, Comey’s book demonstrates that, both as deputy attorney general in the Bush administration and as FBI director during the Obama and Trump presidencies, he has played underhanded, partisan games which have drained that reservoir dry.
In a January 22, 2017 dinner with President Trump, when Trump asked Comey if he could count on him to be “reliable,” Comey replied, “I didn’t do sneaky things… and I don’t leak.” In fact, those are two of Comey’s favorite activities.
In the tumultuous, finger-pointing aftermath of the 2003 Iraq Invasion, no one did more to throw the country into partisan turmoil than Deputy Attorney General Comey, by his dishonestly causing the Special Counsel’s investigation and conviction of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s Chief of Staff.
While Comey was perjury-trapping Libby in a crimeless investigation, he cleverly threw monkey wrenches into various anti-terrorist programs supported by Cheney, as to whom, to gain appointment, he had previously disguised his partisan disgust.
During the Obama administration, as director of the FBI, Comey whitewashed the egregious harassment by the IRS, via Lois Lerner, of conservative groups (p. 186, A Higher Loyalty) seeking to support causes of which the White House disapproved. He soft-soaped Clinton Foundation corruption, apparently not examining thousands of Clinton emails, then sanctioned the destruction of 30,000 of them in the later, more public Hillary Clinton email investigation.
