Demise was of his own making
What a nimrod. It has been said that people don’t get fired, they get themselves fired. FBI Director James Comey, meet your fate.
The Democrats are spitting venomous comparisons to Watergate.
Including the New York Times “News Analysis” piece headlined In Trump’s Firing of James Comey, Echoes of Watergate featuring a big grim picture of Richard M. You- Know- Who. But such rhetoric only emphasizes the gutter muck that passes for politics on all sides these days.
For one thing, if firing Comey is a cunning plan to quietly smother any investigation of the Trump campaign’s Russia ties it is comically inept.
For another, what else could Donald Trump do after Comey’s latest unbelievable blunder?
In case you spent half of 2016 under a rock ( which would be understandable under the circumstances), the FBI’s investigation of Hillary Clinton’s private email server played a significant role in last year’s presidential election.
Clinton has repeatedly called Comey’s late- campaign actions a significant factor in her defeat, while senior Democrats quickly pronounced it decisive.
So offhand you’d think Trump would feel favourably toward the man he just fired. Except earlier, in the summer of 2016, Comey inexplicably let Clinton off the hook for clear violations of the law in failing to protect classified documents.
On July 5, 2016, he announced that she would not face charges, because although her behaviour was “extremely careless” there was no intent.
This is astounding, since the law plainly states that negligent as well as deliberate mishandling of such material is a felony.
Comey looked even more like a Democratic shill because his July 5 press conference was apparently the instance where the FBI publicly revealed a prosecutorial recommendation to the Department of Justice. Until 10 days before the election, when he inexplicably released a bombshell letter saying the investigation had been reopened — which turned out to be wrong.
I grant that, in order not to play politics or even seem to, law enforcement agencies ought to behave as though no election were taking place.
And perhaps the FBI would also have made that announcement on Oct. 28 of 2015 or 2017. Except eight days later Comey inexplicably announced there would be no criminal charges after all. Nothing to see here folks. Who said investigation reopened? Oh. Me. Duh.
To have such a high profile, portentous announcement 10 days before the election, and then eight days later go “Oh, heh heh, never mind” suggests a stunning lack of due diligence.
Didn’t Comey, around Oct. 27, say to his key staff: Look, are we so sure of what we’ve got that we must publicly drop this bomb now? We can’t wait two weeks? If so, what did they say to him then, or on Nov. 5, when it turned out it was all old news?
Frankly, I would have expected him to be fired over that sequence of events alone.
This April 22, the New York Times claimed Comey was so obsessed with keeping the FBI out of politics that he wouldn’t play basketball with Barack Obama ( despite, i ncidentally, being 6-foot- 8).
If so, he was obviously ragingly inept, including for not balancing his October blast at Clinton by revealing that the FBI was also investigating the Trump campaign, which we only learned about this March.
The Times f urther claimed Comey felt that once Clinton was elected, any revelation that the FBI had concealed its investigation could have dragged it into the political fray. So he dragged it in himself with explosive claims retracted at the last minute.
Fine. Take a deep breath. Forgive all that incompetence somehow. We all make mistakes. We all thrash about taking unprecedented, politically inflammatory, contradictory actions during hotly contested elections from high government posts. No, wait. We don’t. We don’t understand how anyone could be so clueless. Forgive it anyway. Then fast- forward to this May 3.
Appearing before Congress on this extraordinarily important matter — the most high- profile and controversial of his tenure as FBI director — Comey babbled that top Clinton aide Huma Abedin had “forwarded hundreds and thousands of emails, some of which contained classified information” to her husband, disgraced former Congressman and groin-selfie-king Anthony Weiner. Um… not. There were only a few emails forwarded and none were classified at the time. (Much of Abedin’s emails, including sensitive stuff, was apparently automatically backed up to Weiner’s computer, which is a very different matter: just modern people so blindly dependent on technology they don’t understand checking a software setup box and never revisiting the decision.)
Are you kidding me, James Comey? After all that ruckus and scrutiny, and after claiming you felt “mildly nauseous” at having possibly influenced the election through your earlier blunders, you went before Congress without having your facts in order, and inexplicably made another explosive false claim? #justonejob, buddy.
Guess what? You’re fired. By your own hand.
WHO SAID INVESTIGATION REOPENED? OH. ME. DUH.