When the first allegations of former FBI Director James Comey‘s malfeasance began to surface in 2018, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich humorously compared his “behavior to a child who throws a baseball at a car and then tries to pin the blame on his cousin.” Gingrich nailed it.
Following his indictment last week for making false statements to Congress and obstructing justice, Comey naturally maintained his innocence. He and his allies characterized the arrest as politically motivated revenge from President Donald Trump, whom they claim is using the U.S. legal system to punish his enemies.
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I am not an attorney, but given the caliber of Comey’s legal team, a favorable venue, the Biden-appointed judge “randomly” assigned to the case, and the lack of details in the indictment, the Department of Justice may face an uphill battle in securing a conviction.
The current charges against Comey stem from his testimony during a Sept. 30, 2020, Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. According to the indictment, Comey stated he “had not ‘authorized someone else at the FBI to be an anonymous source in news reports’ regarding an FBI investigation concerning PERSON 1.” PERSON 1 is believed to be Hillary Clinton.
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“That statement was false, because, as JAMES B. COMEY JR. then and there knew he in fact had authorized PERSON 3 to serve as an anonymous source in news reports regarding an FBI investigation concerning PERSON 1,” it continued.
The identity of PERSON 3 is unclear. While former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe comes to mind, he said he was not contacted by the DOJ ahead of the indictment.
The second charge relates to an exchange with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) about a statement Comey made to Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) three years earlier. He had “denied approving an FBI official to be an anonymous media source about the agency’s investigations into Trump or Clinton. In his 2020 remarks, Mr. Comey told the senator he stood by his earlier testimony.”
Compared with the far more serious allegations Comey has faced over the past decade — charges now beyond the reach of the statute of limitations — the DOJ was left with a choice: pursue him on lesser counts or decline to charge him altogether.
While time has a way of diminishing the gravity of historical events, a look back at his record as FBI director reveals massive abuses of power.
For example, Comey was present at an Aug. 3, 2016, Oval Office meeting, during which former CIA Director John Brennan briefed former President Barack Obama and his national security team on Clinton’s plan to use Christopher Steele’s unverified dossier to smear Trump as a Russian asset and deflect from her private server scandal.
A month later, in September, Brennan put it in writing, sending an investigative referral to Comey and former FBI Counterintelligence Chief Peter Strzok, reiterating Clinton’s scheme.
(This information was first reported by Fox News in October 2020 and confirmed by special counsel John Durham’s 2023 report.)
Yet despite Comey’s attendance at the Oval Office briefing and his receipt of the referral that followed, he feigned ignorance during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Sept. 30, 2020, (the same one from which the current charges against him originate).
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) asked Comey, “You don’t remember getting an investigatory lead from the intelligence community? Sept. 7, 2016, U.S. intelligence officials forwarded an investigative referral to James Comey and Strzok regarding Clinton’s approval of a plan [about] Trump … as a means of distraction?”
“That doesn’t ring any bells with me,” Comey replied.
Graham continued to press, and Comey said it did not “sound familiar.”
On July 31, 2016, Comey’s FBI launched “Crossfire Hurricane,” a counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign. The bureau said it was triggered by a tip from an Australian diplomat, who said that George Papadopoulos, a junior Trump adviser, mentioned over drinks in a London bar that the Russians had “dirt” on Clinton.
In his 2023 report, Durham concluded there was no predicate — no “actual evidence of collusion” — for this investigation.
Next, FBI agents presented British ex-spy Steele’s “unverified and salacious” dossier to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court as the basis for a warrant — and three subsequent renewals — to spy on former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. Comey personally signed off on three of the four applications.
The FBI failed to disclose that the dossier was opposition research commissioned and funded by Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee. They also omitted information about Steele’s intense animosity toward Trump, as well as exculpatory evidence for Page and Papadopoulos.
Adding to the FBI’s deceptive application was its use of journalist Michael Isikoff’s Sept. 23, 2016, Yahoo News article to corroborate the dossier, knowing all the while that Steele had been Isikoff’s source.
Although the notion that Comey accepted the dossier as true when he signed the first application in October 2016 strains credibility, he likely knew it was fake when he signed the first renewal application in January 2017. Earlier that month, FBI agents had conducted the first of three interviews with Igor Danchenko, Steele’s primary subsource, who told them the stories were based on rumors and speculation, and that some were made up in a Moscow bar.
He surely knew the material was false after the bureau’s second interview with Danchenko in March 2017. Yet, when asked directly whether the FBI verified any of the information in the dossier during a House Intelligence Committee hearing on March 20, 2017, Comey replied, “I’m not gonna comment on that.”
By the time the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation was handed off to special counsel Robert Mueller in May 2017, the FBI had held its final interview with the subsource and knew, beyond all doubt, that the dossier was a collection of lies.
This was confirmed by former DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s December 2019 report on his investigation into the origins of Crossfire Hurricane and the FBI’s “significant inaccuracies and omissions” on the FISA Court applications.
Following Trump’s shock victory, Comey used meetings with the new president as opportunities to undermine him.
The most notorious occasion came 10 days before Trump’s inauguration. Following a meeting with Trump and members of his transition team, Comey asked if he might have a moment alone with him. He then briefed Trump on the existence of the dossier.
Once Trump was briefed, an Obama administration official, likely outgoing Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, signaled to the media that the document could be published. BuzzFeed, a left-leaning outlet, promptly released it in full, sparking a media firestorm and setting the stage for years of investigations over alleged Russian ties.
Just four days into Trump’s presidency, Comey dispatched FBI agents to the White House to ensnare Gen. Michael Flynn, the new national security adviser and a longtime target of the Obama administration. That encounter marked the beginning of Flynn’s four-year legal odyssey — one that ultimately cost him his home and savings.
When asked during a 2018 interview with MSNBC’s Nicole Wallace why he did not follow the usual protocol to set up an appointment with a White House official, Comey laughed. He famously said it was “something I probably wouldn’t have done or maybe gotten away with in a more … organized administration. … I thought, ‘It’s early enough, let’s just send a couple guys over.'”
Over the next few months, Trump grew increasingly suspicious of Comey and fired him.
Following each meeting with Trump, Comey drafted detailed notes of their discussions. After his firing, he gave copies of these memos to his friend, Columbia Law School professor Daniel Richman, with instructions to leak them to The New York Times — hoping the disclosure would trigger the appointment of a special counsel.
Former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, angry that Trump publicized a memo he wrote that outlined why the FBI director should be fired, immediately complied. He appointed Mueller to investigate Trump for colluding with the Russians to win the election and obstruction of justice.
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It should be noted that both Comey and former FBI lawyer Lisa Page have testified under oath that, in May 2017, the FBI had no evidence of collusion.
Comey is not a victim. He is a profoundly dishonest man who helped coordinate the greatest political dirty trick in modern American history — an abuse of power that weaponized the FBI, divided the nation, and betrayed the public’s trust. History will not remember him as a martyr, but as the man who tried and failed to take down a president.