On Jan. 13, 2017, these columns featured a history of then FBI director James Comey’s career and offered some advice to President-elect Trump:
‘’The best service Mr Comey can render to his country now is to resign. Failing that, Jeff Sessions should invite him for a meeting after he is confirmed as Attorney General and ask him to resign. If Mr. Comey declines, Donald Trump can and should fire him in the best interests of the nation’s most important law enforcement agency.”
That didn’t happen, but imagine how much grief Mr. Trump and the country would have been spared. The President thought Mr. Comey looked like a G-man from central casting at 6-foot-8, even as Mr. Comey after their meeting wrote a memo to himself that he’d eventually use to trigger Robert Mueller’s special counsel investigation of the President.
Eight years later we’re still stuck in the Comey-Trump revenge cycle that escalated again Thursday with an indictment of the former FBI director for lying to Congress. None of this has served the country well. But it’s important to understand that Mr. Comey is as much the antagonist as Mr. Trump.
***There’s no doubt that this is a political prosecution with a revenge motive. Mr. Trump has all but directed Attorney General Pam Bondi to indict Mr. Comey and other adversaries. Mr. Trump fired a U.S. Attorney who declined to indict, replacing him with a former personal attorney with no prosecutorial experience. The statute of limitations on Mr. Comey’s alleged offense was set to expire next Tuesday.
Mr. Comey says he’s innocent, and the indictment on its face looks weak. It accuses him of lying to the Senate in 2020, saying he didn’t know about a leak to the press. The indictment leaves much unclear, but the most popular theory is that it involves a leak by Mr. Comey’s FBI deputy, Andrew McCabe.
Perhaps prosecutors have some previously undisclosed evidence showing that Mr. Comey was deliberately lying. But former special counsel John Durham had access to this testimonial record and declined to indict. So did other prosecutors.
Given all this, it’s possible the judge could dismiss the case for selective prosecution or insufficient evidence. Proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt to a jury would be a challenge even if the case goes forward. As so often in Mr. Trump’s Presidency, his unbound rhetoric may undermine his own interests. This could end up in legal vindication for Mr. Comey.
Yet please spare us the media narrative that this prosecution “shatters norms” at the Justice Department. Mr. Comey led an FBI that spread lies about Mr. Trump’s ties to Russia in an attempt to defeat him in 2016. A member of his team lied to the FISA court to get a warrant to surveil an adviser to Mr. Trump’s campaign.
The Biden Justice Department prosecuted Mr. Trump in an attempt to disqualify him for a second term. New York prosecutors indicted him, and Attorney General Letitia James campaigned explicitly on a promise to find something to charge against him. Target the man, then find the crime. That is what Mr. Trump now wants Justice to do, but the Biden crowd was there first.
Mr. Comey is portraying himself as a victim, but many of his prosecutorial targets know how he feels. There was Frank Quattrone, the Wall Street financier indicted for obstruction of justice based on a snippet of an email. His conviction was tossed on appeal.
There was Scooter Libby, the Dick Cheney aide unfairly indicted by Mr. Comey’s pal, Patrick Fitzgerald, for false statements in the Valerie Plame leak case. Soon after Mr. Comey named Mr. Fitzgerald as special counsel, he learned the leak of Ms. Plame’s identity had come from State Department Deputy Secretary Richard Armitage, but they still went after White House aides. The Libby case was a political prosecution from start to finish.
And don’t forget Mr. Comey’s Captain Ahab pursuit for years of Steven Hatfill as the supposed anthrax mailer of 2001. Mr. Comey went so far as to drain a one-acre pond to nail Mr. Hatfill, as Mr. Comey ignored contrary theories of the case. Mr. Hatfill was later exonerated and won a legal settlement against the feds.
***Mr. Comey’s great flaw as a prosecutor was his righteous streak. Time and again it led him to awful judgments that hurt individuals and the country. In the greatest irony, his October intervention in the 2016 election to reopen the classified document case against Hillary Clinton helped Mr. Trump win that close election. He has that on his conscience—not that he seems given to much self-reflection.
None of this justifies this week’s indictment of Mr. Comey. But it does go some way to explain why Mr. Trump has become a reverse Ahab against his enemies. A better President would have considered re-election the best revenge, but that isn’t Mr. Trump.