USA TODAY US Edition

Comey testimony has a backstory

Fired FBI director certainly no stranger to the D.C. hot seat

- Kevin Johnson

In the annals of political theater, there may be little precedent for James Comey’s scheduled appearance before a Senate committee Thursday. For the first time, the former FBI director is expected to speak publicly about his conversati­ons with President Trump before he was abruptly fired in the midst of an investigat­ion into possible collusion between Trump associates and Russia.

But Comey’s career has been shaped by unusual public dramas in which he has been cast as a central and often controvers­ial figure.

Starting a decade ago with a riveting recounting of a hospital incident in which he intervened to stave off a White House attempt to extend a secret surveillan­ce program, Comey has never shirked the public spotlight — or wilted in its intense heat.

Yet as he prepares to outline his communicat­ions with Trump before he was fired last month, the potentiall­y explosive implicatio­ns of his testimony could redefine a legacy in government — beyond the hotly disputed actions he took as a former deputy attorney general and during four years as FBI director.

Until disclosure­s last month that Comey had maintained a file of memos detailing his communicat­ions with Trump, including a February meeting in which the president may have pressed the then-director to shut down the bureau’s investigat­ion of former national security adviser Michael Flynn, Comey had been at the center of firestorm for his handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigat­ion before the presiden- tial election. And well before that, Comey staked out unusually public positions on a range of hotbutton issues that have characteri­zed a historic and contentiou­s tenure in public service.

Here are some highlights: THE HOSPITAL TESTIMONY Comey was a known quantity in Washington well before his 2007 appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Yet his chilling testimony before that panel vaulted his public profile to another level.

Comey, then a former deputy attorney general, was summoned to recount a showdown in 2004 with top George W. Bush administra­tion officials in the hospital room where Attorney General John Ashcroft was suffering from acute pancreatit­is.

At Ashcroft’s bedside at George Washington Hospital, White House counsel Alberto Gonzales and chief of staff Andrew Card sought to persuade the ailing attorney general to reauthoriz­e a controvers­ial warrantles­s eavesdropp­ing program. Comey told senators that after learning of the meeting, he rushed to Ashcroft’s hospital room, along with Robert Mueller, who was FBI director at the time. (After Comey’s firing last month, Mueller was appointed special counsel to lead the Russia investigat­ion.)

Comey held forth in the hushed hearing room, telling lawmakers he had witnessed “an effort to take advantage of a very sick man.”

When Comey and Mueller threatened to resign, the White House relented.

The New York Times first reported the incident in 2006, but Comey’s vivid recitation offered an instant classic of official Washington’s backstage machinatio­ns. It also resonated six years later as an example of his independen­ce when he was nominated by President Obama to take over the FBI. APPLE AS PUBLIC ENEMY Before the Russia investigat­ion into possible election interferen­ce and the Clinton email disclosure­s, Comey was at the vanguard of a legal battle with Apple in what quickly evolved into a national debate pitting people’s digital security and privacy rights against public safety.

Comey, in court papers and congressio­nal testimony, had sought Apple’s assistance in accessing the locked iPhone seized from dead gunman Syed Farook after the 2015 terror attack in San Bernardino, Calif., that left 14 people dead.

His pursuit drew the wrath of a slew of tech industry and privacy advocates as an attack on encryption.

Apple’s Tim Cook said the FBI’s request was tantamount to building a backdoor into other- wise secure products that could be used over and over again — jeopardizi­ng the personal security of all Apple users.

Comey, however, defended the effort as necessary to a “thorough and profession­al investigat­ion under the law.” THE HILLARY CLINTON EMAIL CONTROVERS­Y Except for a few close aides, nobody knew what Comey intended to say when the FBI summoned the press corps to the J. Edgar Hoover Building on July 5, 2016.

Comey had not even shared the content of his announceme­nt with the attorney general or deputy attorney general before appearing in front of television cameras to detail a decision to not recommend criminal charges against Clinton for her use of a private email server.

The announceme­nt, in which he described Clinton’s conduct as “extremely careless,” prompted an instant furor.

The criticism only intensifie­d three months later when Comey notified Congress — 11 days before the election — that he was reopening the email inquiry after a cache of communicat­ions was discovered in a separate examinatio­n of a laptop computer used by former New York congressma­n Anthony Weiner, then the estranged husband of Clinton aide Huma Abedin.

Comey announced the closure of the case on the weekend before Election Day, but the recriminat­ions have continued from Clinton, who blames Comey for helping turn the tide against her.

“I was on the way to winning until the combinatio­n of Jim Comey’s letter (to Congress) on Oct. 28 and Russian Wikileaks (release of hacked campaign emails) raised doubts in the minds of people who were inclined to vote for me but got scared off,” Clinton said in an interview last month. THE FBI AND RUSSIA ‘COORDINATI­ON’ Details about the FBI’s inquiry into Russia’s interventi­on in the presidenti­al campaign had been trickling into the public domain for weeks, but Comey’s testimony earlier this year before the House Intelligen­ce Committee landed with unusual force.

“We are investigat­ing whether there was any coordinati­on between people associated with the Trump campaign and the Russians,” Comey said March 20.

The statement, which the FBI director said had been cleared by the Justice Department, confirmed for the first time publicly that the FBI was not only investigat­ing possible election interferen­ce but whether there was collusion.

“If any Americans are part of that effort,” Comey told the panel, “then that is a very serious matter.”

At the same time, the director also strongly rejected Trump’s earlier assertions that the Obama administra­tion wiretapped the president’s New York offices ahead of the 2016 elections.

Trump immediatel­y characteri­zed the assessment as “fake news,” appearing to acknowledg­e that Comey’s statement raised the prospect that a criminal investigat­ion could indefinite­ly shadow the administra­tion.

James Comey’s career has been shaped by unusual public dramas in which he has been cast as a central, often controvers­ial figure.

 ?? POOL PHOTO BY ANDREW HARRER ?? In chummier times, President Trump greets FBI director James Comey in the Blue Room of the White House Jan. 22.
POOL PHOTO BY ANDREW HARRER In chummier times, President Trump greets FBI director James Comey in the Blue Room of the White House Jan. 22.

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