Comey Was A Partisan Hack Driven By Fear Of The GOP

Over the weekend, the New York Times had an in-depth analysis of James Comey's actions during the election and kindly decides that his actions were not partisan even though the outcome of those actions created a purely partisan result. According to the Times, Comey was doing his best to protect the institution of the FBI and was largely working in uncharted waters.

Of course, the reason Comey was largely in uncharted waters is because he decided to comment on the Clinton email investigation in July. The Times goes even further into absolving Comey by saying, "For all the attention on Mrs. Clinton’s emails, history is likely to see Russian influence as the more significant story of the 2016 election." This statement is against all evidence pointing to the decisive element of Comey in his October letter about the Abedin emails and his silence on the Trump campaign's Russian connections. In fact, the only way for the Times' statement to be true would be for collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Kevin Drum did a great job over the weekend of highlighting the fact the Comey's actions were always driven by the fear that Republicans would go after him and by the unfounded assumption that the Department of Justice was trying to sabotage the investigation. The initial, by-the-book decision by the DOJ to call the email investigation simply a "matter" for the FBI struck Comey as a disingenuous attempt to help Clinton and hew toward her talking points. A third party email from Democratic operative claiming AG Loretta Lynch would keep the email investigation from going to far was taken at face value, despite no supporting evidence, and furthered Comey's suspicions about the DOJ. That letter and Bill Clinton's meeting with Lynch on the airplane in Arizona convinced Comey that he must make the announcement about the results of the investigation rather than the DOJ in order to protect his and the Bureau's "independence" and avoid the wrath of Republicans. Comey's indictment of Clinton while admitting that there was no reasonable case to charge her was also designed to insulate himself and the Bureau from attacks from Republicans that the FBI was being lenient on a Democrat and to appeal to his own agents' prejudices. Finally, Comey's main concern in releasing the October letter about Abedin's emails before they knew whether or not they were relevant was driven by his desire not to have to face Republican investigations should Clinton win the election and the emails turned out to relevant. In fact, despite Comey's assumptions, the DOJ was so afraid of looking political that it continually let Comey violate DOJ rules and procedures when it came to Clinton's email investigation.

When it came to Russia, however, Comey was downright infuriating in his demands to follow the rules and not comment. Having offered to come forward in September about Russian attempts to influence the election, Obama and the DOJ wanted a united front from all intelligence agencies when making that charge. When that time came in October, Comey stuck to policy and said it would be too political to comment so close to the election and refused to sign on to a statement that he had been willing to say a month earlier.

What you realize from reading the Times story is how much Comey feared attacks from Republicans and how much that drove his actions and his supposed desire to "protect" the Bureau. Comey and those in senior leadership at the Bureau apparently believed that the FBI would be destroyed as an institution by Republicans if Hillary Clinton was elected and the Abedin emails turned up some new incriminating information. According to a senior Comey adviser, "I don’t think the organization would have survived that [Republican investigations]". His decision to comment on the investigation in July was driven by the idea that the DOJ would not be trusted and that the FBI needed to insulate itself from attacks by Republicans that it was muzzled by the DOJ.

Sadly, in many ways Comey's fear of Republicans is somewhat justified. For two decades, the GOP has made a habit of destroying the institutions and norms of governance in pursuit of raw political power. Comey's fear that the GOP would destroy the FBI was probably unreasonable but not unfounded. It shows just how effective and destructive the constant Republican partisan attacks have been and the power of the right wing media outrage machine. And look what the result has been for our democracy.

Update: I see as I was writing this, Kevin Drum has also highlighted Michael Tomasky who makes a similar point to this post but from the opposite view. Tomasky's take is that there was one group that never figured into any decision that Comey or the FBI made and that was Democrats. According to Tomasky, "[T]here is one group Comey appears not to have feared at all: Democrats.
....The Times talked to 30 people, and apparently the idea that Comey may have feared how the Democrats would react to any action of his just wasn’t brought up. Amazing." Apparently Comey was determined to be non-partisan only when it came to Democrats.