On Thursday, James Comey became the first former Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation to be indicted for a federal crime.
James Comey became the first former Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation to be indicted for a federal crime.
That is likely the only fact upon which you will receive anything close to agreement in the country.
For some, the two-count indictment is a long-overdue accountability for a man who pushed through the now-debunked Russian collusion investigation.
For others, it is another abuse on President Donald Trump’s revenge tour.
There are legitimate concerns about the targeting of a political critic of the President, who publicly complained just days ago that Attorney General Pam Bondi was not indicting Comey and others.
However, Comey is hardly the pristine model of “ethical leadership” that he described in his book. Putting aside his critical role in the Russian collusion investigation, Comey tossed aside even the pretense of ethics after Trump fired him.
The Inspector General, Michael Horowitz, issued a scathing report that found Comey was a leaker and had violated FBI policy in his handling of FBI memos.
On his way out of the Bureau, Horowitz wrote, Comey improperly removed FBI materials, including those containing the “code name and true identity” of a sensitive source.
While he did not find that he disclosed the classified information, Horowitz found that Comey took “the unauthorized disclosure of sensitive investigative information, obtained during the course of FBI employment, in order to achieve a personally desired outcome.”
He further added that Comey “set a dangerous example for the over 35,000 current FBI employees — and the many thousands of more former FBI employees — who similarly have access to or knowledge of non-public information.”
Comey later admitted that he asked his friend, Columbia Law Professor Daniel Richman, to leak information from the documents to the New York Times.
