Recollections of the former FBI director differ sharply with the assessment of President Trump, who fired him.<\/b>
\nHometowns speak to us in unique ways.
In the case of the recently fired FBI director, James Comey, the portrait that emerged in conversations in the streets and taverns of Allendale, the northern New Jersey hamlet where he grew up, conflicts starkly with the harsh assessment that President Trump offered after dismissing him.
Trump called Comey a \u201cshowboat\u201d and a \u201cgrandstander.\u201d In Allendale, however, residents who knew Comey, 56 \u2014 including his father \u2014 described a man who always had a basic sense of right and wrong and regularly attended Mass at the local Catholic church with his parents, two younger brothers and an older sister.
\u201cAnyone from Allendale that knows the family and grew up around him knows that he is a good person and has an honest character and has the utmost integrity, \u201d said Patty Corn, who runs an online women’s clothing business and was a classmate of Comey\u2019s at Northern Highlands Regional High School. \u201cThat doesn\u2019 t leave you.\u201d
\u201cThere\u2019s nothing phony about him, \u201d added Molly Kissel Patrick, a real estate agent who graduated from Northern Highlands several years after Comey. \u201cHe\u2019s real.\u201d
Comey’s father turned Trump’s harsh opinion of his son against him, calling the president’s credibility into question.
\u201cI never was crazy about Trump, \u201d J. Brien Comey, 86, a Republican and a former borough councilman, said in an interview. \u201cI\u2019 m convinced that he\u2019s nuts. I thought he belonged in an institution. He was crazy before he became president. Now he\u2019s really crazy.\u201d
In the coming months, as investigations mount in Washington over allegations that Trump\u2019s presidential campaign may have colluded with Russia \u2014 and that Trump may have even tried to derail the FBI investigation that Comey was leading into those alleged Russian links \u2014 the conflicting portraits of Comey will likely be on full display.
Which portrait emerges as the most credible could become an important factor in resolving a political maelstrom that threatens to paralyze the president\u2019s legislative agenda and perhaps upend his entire administration. Was Comey so inept that Trump had to fire him? Or was he a diligent lawman, just trying to do his job under intense pressure from a brazen president who had crossed an ethical line?
Comey first courted controversy last July \u2014 in the midst of a tense presidential campaign \u2014 when he took the unusual step of publicly announcing that he would not recommend that Hillary Clinton be charged for her use of a private email server while she was secretary of state.
Republicans fumed at Comey. Democrats, in turn, praised him. Then, in late October \u2014 this time with Republicans lauding him and Democrats lambasting him \u2014 Comey announced that the FBI was reopening the Clinton email investigation on the eve of the election.
Comey explained that he was trying to be transparent. Trump praised him for his courage and \u00ab\u00a0guts, \u00a0\u00bb adding this cryptic piece of advice: \u00ab\u00a0He’s got to hang tough, because there’s a lot of people want him to do the wrong thing.\u00a0\u00bb
Comey\u2019s announcement was widely viewed as contributing to Clinton\u2019s narrow election defeat 11 days later. The Justice Department has since launched an internal investigation into whether Comey followed proper FBI procedures.
Now Comey is at the center of an even larger dispute \u2014 with Trump.
In firing Comey, Trump initially cited the FBI director’s handling of the Clinton email probe. Then, in an interview with NBC News two days later, the president appeared to modify his rationale \u2014 and indicated that Comey’s support of the FBI’s investigation of the Trump campaign’s alleged Russia links was also a factor in the firing.
On Tuesday, the dispute widened yet again when The New York Times reported that Comey had drafted a memo after meeting with Trump in February in which he said the president had pressured him to drop an investigation of Michael Flynn, the former national security adviser, over possible collusion with Russia. Sources said Comey created similar written records of every meeting and phone conversation he had with Trump.
The leak of that memo and other reports of Trump appearing to pressure and demand loyalty from Comey raised questions that the president may have breached longstanding legal protocols and may even have tried to block an FBI investigation, allegations that Trump emphatically denies. On one occasion, after Trump telephoned him directly to ask about the status of the FBI investigation, Comey reportedly told the president that he should refer such questions to senior Justice Department officials.
On Wednesday, the Justice Department appointed a special counsel \u2014 Robert Mueller, Comey’s predecessor as FBI director \u2014 to lead an investigation that Trump labeled a \u00ab\u00a0witch hunt.\u00a0\u00bb
On Friday, The New York Times reported on a leaked White House memo describing an Oval Office meeting with Russian officials a day after Comey’s firing in which the president referred to the former FBI director as \u00ab\u00a0crazy\u00a0\u00bb and \u00ab\u00a0a real nut job.\u00a0\u00bb
\u201cI faced great pressure because of Russia, \u00a0\u00bb the White House memo quotes Trump as saying. \u00ab\u00a0That\u2019s taken off.\u201d
Back in Allendale, normally a Republican bastion, the election turned out to be something of an aberration; Clinton beat Trump by just three votes \u2014 1,759 to 1,756. Election officials say at least one write-in vote was cast for an undeclared, yet popular candidate: James Comey.
Many borough residents believe Comey has been harshly treated \u2014 and largely misunderstood.
\u201cThere\u2019s nobody in Washington that I respect more for his integrity, \u201d said former Mayor Vincent Barra, a Republican. \u201cI think it\u2019s unfortunate that he got caught in this whirlwind of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.\u201d
That James Comey was fired was painful enough. But what many in Allendale find even more troubling is that their favorite son\u2019s character, credibility and judgment as a law enforcement official have been called into question.
Comey’s grandfather, William, rose from a beat cop to become commissioner of the Yonkers Police Department. Before taking the job as FBI director in 2013, Comey was widely respected as a federal prosecutor in New York City who led investigations of organized crime, terrorism and bank fraud. Later, in Washington as a high ranking official in the Justice Department, Comey drew praise from civil libertarians for opposing efforts by President George W. Bush to expand domestic surveillance and allow so-called \u00ab\u00a0enhanced interrogation techniques, \u00a0\u00bb such as waterboarding of suspected terrorists.
Comey has not commented publicly since his firing on May 12. But his hometown is hardly reticent.
\u201cEvery decision Jim has ever made is with a moral compass, \u201d said Chris Kunisch, whose family has run the Allendale Bar and Grill, one of the borough\u2019s prime watering holes, for three generations. \u201cJim would never do anything against that compass.\u201d
That Allendale would find itself associated with a controversy of any sort, even tangentially, is unusual. The borough, which covers only 3 square miles and is home to about 6,500 people, was once considered so quiet that Babe Ruth regularly sought refuge in a hotel there to get away from the frantic pace of New York City.
The main thoroughfare, Allendale Avenue, is bookended by symbols of stability \u2014 a church at one end, a train station at the other. The borough\u2019s winding streets are lined with Victorian homes, many with inviting porches that look out on tall maples and oaks that cast deep and calming pools of shade on lush lawns.
If there is a unifying factor now among residents, it\u2019s their belief that Trump treated their favorite son unfairly.
\u201cWatching what he is going through turns my stomach, \u201d said Judy Bruinooge, who lives around the corner from the single-story home where Comey grew up.
Like many others in town, Bruinooge said the rest of the nation does not understand James Brien Comey Jr. Former friends \u2014 Democrats and Republicans alike \u2014 depict him as a thoughtful, quiet man who goes out of his way to listen and does not trumpet his status as a respected federal prosecutor and FBI director.
Bruinooge adds one more character trait: an ability \u2014 perhaps unexpected, given Comey’s strait-laced public persona \u2014 to make people laugh in tense times.
Two months ago, Bruinooge\u2019s doorbell rang unexpectedly. It was Comey, who was in town to visit his father and was immersed in the early stages of his conflict with Trump that led to his eventual firing.
\u201cI\u2019 m collecting for The Record, \u201d Comey announced \u2014 a reference to his days when he delivered the paper to Bruinooge\u2019s door each day.
\u201cHe gave me a big hug, \u201d Bruinooge said.
In his hometown, Comey was never seen as the sort of person who would seek attention for himself \u2014 even though, at 6-foot-8, he was hard to miss. He was in the news only once \u2014 in October 1977, when the so-called \u201cRamsey rapist\u201d broke into the family\u2019s home, forcing Jim, then 15, and brother Peter, 13, to hide in a bathroom.
Even in later years, after Comey had built a reputation for prosecuting mob and anti-terror cases, he rarely talked about his own brief brush with a notorious criminal who had much of Bergen County on edge \u2013 and was never caught.
Comey\u2019s father, a widower who still lives in the home on a cul-de-sac near the center of town, said that his son did not even call to say Trump had fired him from his FBI post.
\u201cHe and I have an unwritten secret agreement that I don\u2019 t talk about his job, \u201d said J. Brien Comey Sr., who retired as a vice president of the Curtiss-Wright Corp. \u201cIt\u2019s just a father-son relationship. We never talk about what he does. I read it in the papers.\u201d
But the elder Comey, a Republican who served several terms on the Allendale council in the 1990s, was hardly shy about what he thinks of Trump, especially in light of how the president has treated his son. And while Comey voted a straight GOP line in last November\u2019s election, he did not cast a vote for any presidential candidate.
\u201cI just couldn\u2019 t vote for Trump, \u201d he said.
As for James Comey Jr., more than a few Allendale residents said they would like to see him run for public office.
\u201cWe haven\u2019 t seen the last of Jim Comey, \u201d Chris Kunisch said as he finished serving the lunch crowd at the Allendale Bar and Grill on Thursday. \u201cWho\u2019s not to say he could be president someday? I think he\u2019s going to emerge out of this and be whatever he wants to be.\u201d
Email: kellym@northjersey.com<\/p>\n

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