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. . . The stated reasons for Comey’s dismissal are pretextual. They are so transparently, ludicrously pretextual that we should all feel at least a little bit insulted. The putative basis for Comey’s firing is a three page memo, dated May 9, faulting his public handling of the Hillary Clinton e-mail server investigation, and a recommendation from Attorney General Jeff Sessions, also dated May 9, that Comey be dismissed on that basis. That memo levels a number of fundamentally valid criticisms. It is also, as perhaps three page memos must necessarily be, pretty conclusory: It renders a verdict without much more than a gesture in the direction of an argument, and preempts a pending Inspector General investigation that would have produced a lengthy and serious account and analysis of Comey’s actions. While I’m inclined to agree with the memo’s critiques, underdeveloped as they are, they would be an extraordinarily thin basis on which to remove an FBI director, even if you thought they were the real basis. And they’re clearly not the real basis.We are asked to believe that the decision to fire the FBI director — so abruptly he learned about it from a cable news chyron while out of D.C. — was based on a dashed off memo, and a response from the Attorney General, both issued the same day. We are asked to believe that it was motivated by Comey’s breaches of FBI protocol: First, in publicly criticizing Hillary Clinton, rather than letting Attorney General Loretta Lynch announce the decision that the former Secretary would not be indicted, and then in informing Congress that he had (fruitlessly, as it turned out) reopened the investigation into her e-mails. These are breaches both Trump and Sessions praised effusively at the time, with Sessions even declaring that Comey had an “absolute duty” to act as he did. All of them, of course, were well known long before Trump took office and chose to retain Comey.The most charitable thing one can say about this narrative is that it is not even intended as a serious attempt to advance a genuine rationale. It is an attempt to be cute. Having been directed to concoct a reason to eliminate Comey, the Attorney General ran with a slapdash pastiche of Democrats’ complaints. Anyone who’s been on a long car trip with a sibling knows this gag: “Stop hitting yourself! Stop hitting yourself!” The only people even pretending to take this explanation seriously are those paid for the indignity . . .. . . we’re unlikely to get any unambiguous, smoking gun proof of knowing collusion between senior Trump campaign officials and the Russian government, at least as far as electoral interference is concerned. But it also seems quite likely that an investigation into the campaign’s Russian ties — which on the public record alone raise more eyebrows than a Spock cosplay convention — would turn up any number of other unseemly or embarrassing facts the White House would prefer not to have aired. Comey has demonstrated that he would likely be prepared to disclose any findings he believed the American public had a right to know, whether or not they amounted to clearly indictable offenses — perhaps even over the objections of Attorney General Jeff Sessions . . .. . . The question of Comey’s replacement is hugely significant, and the confirmation hearings for the next FBI director are bound to be explosive. One consistent theme of Trump’s business career is that he has always viewed the law as a cudgel with which to bludgeon adversaries — whether it’s contractors coerced to accept half-payments by the prospect of ruinously expensive litigation or journalists mired in frivolous libel suits for printing unflattering sentences. The prospect of a Federal Bureau Investigation run in the same way ought to be genuinely frightening, and with Comey out of the way,it seems all too possible.---This article appeared on Just Security on May 10, 2017.
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Topic: Some Obvious Thoughts about the Comey Firing (Read 395 times)
