Comey and the Russian investigation

FBI Director James Comey revealed that the bureau is investigating possible Russian interference in the 2016 elections, but he offered no details or evidence of wrongdoing.

That left room for each party to try to bend news of the FBI probe to its own purposes — which Democrats and Republicans both did.

It is good to know that Russia’s apparent effort to help Donald Trump’s presidential campaign is being investigated. And it is good to know that leaks about the potential scandal from the U.S. intelligence community are being investigated.

But will Americans end up knowing what did or didn’t happen? Or will the probes and the interpretation of the conclusions be politicized like everything else?

Comey’s disclosure, made during a House Intelligence Committee hearing Monday, was the first time he publicly acknowledged the existence of such an investigation, which has apparently been under way since July.

Comey previously drew strong criticism from Democrats for publicly announcing an investigation of Hillary Clinton’s emails during the waning days of the campaign.

Some Democrats have seized on the investigation to suggest Russian interference tipped the scales of the election and handed Trump the presidency, but both Comey and National Security Administration Director Adm. Michael Rogers said there is no evidence that the Russians compromised vote tallies in battleground states.

The more serious allegation from Democrats is that the Trump campaign may have conspired with an enemy nation.

Republicans have chosen to use the hearings as a forum to complain about leaks from intelligence agencies. “We aim to determine who has leaked or facilitated leaks of classified information so that these individuals can be brought to justice,” said Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Tulare.

It is certainly possible that this is all much ado about nothing, and is merely being used as a power play in a struggle for political influence.

Both sides have a point. There is enough circumstantial evidence to conduct an investigation, as exemplified by the leak that revealed that former White House national security adviser Mike Flynn lied when he said publicly, and to Vice President Mike Pence, that he did not discuss the Obama administration’s sanctions on Russia when he spoke with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak shortly before Trump took office. (This led to Flynn’s resignation.)

The Russia investigation, already eight months old, should be conducted as expeditiously as practicable to clear the names of innocent parties and minimize politicization.

And there are understandable concerns about the leaking of sensitive information, particularly in an era when the government, and especially the intelligence community, has unprecedented power to obtain private information about people. But we should not be too quick to prosecute whistleblowers except in the most extreme cases, where national security is truly jeopardized.

The Obama administration infamously used the Espionage Act of 1917 to prosecute more whistleblowers and leakers than all other administrations combined. Continuing such a precedent would be chilling to the ability of insiders, with the aid of the press, to reveal wrongdoing by the government.