You may recall that on Friday, Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, claimed that the Donald all but forced FBI director James Comey to write his now-infamous letter about emails that might (or might not) be connected to Hillary Clinton’s email server. If you believe Lara, her father-in-law’s bleating and screeting about the election being “rigged” against him left Comey with no other option–and Justice Department policy and fundamental fairness be hanged.
Well, on Sunday morning, we got confirmation that Comey threw years of precedent out the window because he was too scared of being bullied by Trump and his alt-right army. Pete Williams of NBC News has more or less taken ownership of this story since it broke on Friday. It was he, for instance, who discovered that the emails in question were not from Hillary in the first place, and had not previously been withheld by Hillary or her campaign. In other words–there was nothing that even began to justify sending such a letter to Congress just 11 days before the election.
On Sunday’s edition of “Meet the Press,” Williams shed some light on Comey’s reasoning. Watch here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-GSKTVZrFk
Williams told host Chuck Todd that Comey and his inner circle believe they did the right thing. They supposedly felt they had to go to Congress because they feared that the existence of the emails would be leaked “in all sorts of different ways.” Additionally, Comey reportedly feared that if the FBI waited until after the election to reveal this, “that would play into this whole scenario about how the system is rigged.”
Todd asked the question that most of the reality-based world has been asking–why would Comey tell Congress about this development when he didn’t even know what they have? Williams replied that while “they don’t know what’s in those emails,” the FBI felt it needed to look at them since their mission was to look at the emails that went through Hillary’s server, they had to look at them as well.
Okay. Fair enough. But in an investigation this explosive, wouldn’t you think you would take the time to review what you had before telling Congress about this development? Apparently based on what Williams has learned, Comey and his friends were scared that if they waited to see if the emails were even relevant, they would get bombarded with tweets and Facebook posts about how they rigged the election for Hillary.
What about leaks? Well, as Judge Jeanine Pirro pointed out on Saturday, Comey could have easily solved that problem by privately briefing the committee chairmen and ranking members, and putting them on notice that he would know they were responsible for any leaks. But apparently he was too craven to do that.
If you’re wondering how anyone could suggest that could be proof the FBI had a thumb on the scale for Hillary, you have to remember that a significant element of the GOP base thinks that no Democratic president is legitimate–whether he or she is white, black, or polka-dotted. So any attempt to stand up for fundamental fairness is standing up for a rigged system. Yeah, OK.
If anything else, this only proves why the rule against speaking about politically sensitive investigations this close to an election was written in the first place. Comey let fear of being attacked by a gaggle of alt-right thugs get in the way of basic standards of fairness and impartiality.
There’s another, more fundamental, reason why this should unnerve us. If Comey is so worried about being trolled by the alt-right, would he be willing to resist a President Trump’s more outlandish demands for investigations? After all, Trump has already let it be known that he will initiate a witch hunt of Hillary if he’s elected. All told, this proves that we are asking too many questions about the FBI that we shouldn’t even have to ask. It’s yet more proof Comey has to go, and has to go now.
(featured image courtesy FBI, part of public domain)
