The James Comey I knew at the FBI fully deserves – Latest News
The Justice Department’s announcement that former FBI Director James Comey has been indicted by a federal grand jury on prices of making a false assertion and obstruction of a congressional continuing is all however a fait accompli.
Pious, sanctimonious self-righteousness and hypocritical moralizing had long in the past value him his skilled fame.
With prices of perjury and obstruction, Comey might face imprisonment.
If that involves move, his tattered legacy will earn yet one more stain.
More tragically, the narcissistic chief, who was relieved of his duties by President Donald Trump quickly into his first time period, will proceed to break the company I love and served for a quarter of a century.
And that makes me — and lots of others in my ranks — weary, saddened and indignant. Based on my own observations and people of my colleagues at the bureau, it was clear from the begin that Comey was hellbent on altering FBI tradition.
In the first of his 5 sermonizing books, 2018’s “A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership,” the former director mused about his initial assembly with staff at FBI headquarters in 2013.
He describes inserting himself atop a stool, sans go well with jacket, however with a blue shirt and tie.
Tradition had long held that FBI administrators wore darkish fits and white shirts — holding their jackets on whereas addressing staff to be able to project correct image.
Yet per Comey, proudly resplendent in his blue shirt: “I thought that shirt color was one early, small way to set a different tone.”
Sadly, for thus many of us at the bureau, Comey’s conduct and actions impacted far more than fashion at our company.
His tenure as FBI director, blessedly, was comparatively short — much less than 4 years.
If he was initially well-intentioned, his galling hubris coupled with poor instincts doomed his tenure.
Consumed from the starting together with his legacy, he didn’t sense the apparent character flaws within his internal circle of hand-picked acolytes.
That alone did irreparable injury to the bureau.
Many of us at first purchased the fable of “Cardinal Comey” — a chief of appreciable probity and ethical rectitude.
It was a lie.
One of his deadly flaws was surrounding himself with younger, callow sycophants on the Seventh Floor at FBI headquarters.
They informed him what he wished to listen to and positioned themselves for promotions.
Some lied to proceed the Russia hoax or about leaking to the press.
Some boasted of plans to “stop Trump.”
Confirmation bias permeated every thing inside that circle — together with the “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation that was predicated on partisan “opposition research” and prolonged illegally to hinder a presidential marketing campaign and cripple an administration.Other contributing components in Comey’s fall from grace: conceitedness and lying.
In an interview on ABC News in 2018, he pretended to not know that the Steele Dossier — which “Crossfire Hurricane” was shamefully predicated on — had been deemed rubbish by the Intelligence Community, together with the FBI.
With a straight face and the indifference of a sociopath, he uttered these disgraceful statements: “I never thought these words would come out of my mouth, but I don’t know whether the current president of the United States was with prostitutes peeing on each other in Moscow in 2013. It’s possible, but I don’t know.”
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Oh, he knew.
He actually knew.
But he selected to permit that falsity, that smear, to breathe new life into the “resistance.”
Much as he pretended to not know the that means of these seashells set in a “86 47” association.
Now the disgraced former director faces a powerful legal street forward.
Under different circumstances, some prosecutors might need let his indiscretions slide.
But the odious stench of the Russia-collusion investigation, two failed impeachment efforts and the nakedly cynical lawfare employed by the Biden Justice Department and prosecutors in New York and Georgia have made the course of right here virtually as important as the penalties.
Last yr, Comey flippantly mused that if Trump had been despatched to jail, he may very well be positioned “in a double wide, somewhere out near the fence, out in the grass, and he would eat there, shower there, exercise there.”
He relished the image of his adversary in such a place.
The worm has turned.
Comey ought to’ve made good on his promised objective in 2018: “I hope to be forgotten.”
We hope so, too, Ex-Director.
You’ve embarrassed not solely your self, however the total FBI.
Please simply go away.
Retired FBI Supervisory Special Agent James A. Gagliano served underneath 4 FBI administrators from 1991-2016.
