A disgraceful politicization of justice
Never before has the credibility of the law’s purportedly apolitical enforcers been at so low an ebb. For that, we can thank FBI director James Comey and Attorney General Loretta Lynch.
In the pre-Comey era, if we heard it once, we heard it a million times: “The FBI can neither confirm nor deny the existence of any investigation.” Often, the disclaimer seemed robotic to the point of parody, since the context made it perfectly clear that some public controversy had indeed spawned an investigation: Subpoenas flew, defense lawyers postured, and the media dug. Even then, though, the FBI and its Justice Department superiors insisted that law enforcement would make no comment: not on whether there was an investigation, not on the status of any investigation, and certainly not on the substance of any evidence uncovered.
But we have now entered the sanctimonious Comey Zone, in which the FBI director is policeman, prosecutor, and jury: deciding whether the Justice Department will indict (not his job); calling a self-aggrandizing press conference to describe evidence in an uncharged case (a violation of his job’s principal responsibilities); picking and choosing which investigations to comment on and which not — leaving the electorate utterly confused, and his own investigating agents dispirited, while Hillary Clinton, a suspect in a major corruption probe, claims a clean bill of health from the FBI director.
On Sunday afternoon, Comey dropped his third bomb on the campaign. Having abruptly revived, just eight days before, the Clinton e-mails investigation he’d “closed” in July, Comey issued a meek “Never mind.”
The FBI director informed Congress that the bureau had reviewed all relevant e-mails among the reported 650,000 found on a computer shared by Clinton confidant Huma Abedin and her estranged husband, the disgraced former congressman Anthony Weiner. Inevitably, Comey advised lawmakers that the new e-mails do not alter the conclusion he reached in July — the flawed legal and factual analysis by which he “cleared” Mrs. Clinton of mishandling classified information.
All the while, mind you, the FBI has been investigating pay-to-play corruption at the State Department during Mrs. Clinton’s tenure as secretary. It is obvious that Clinton’s “private” e-mails, including the estimated 33,000 she deleted and attempted to destroy in violation of federal law, are critical to that probe. Left unclear in Comey’s latest missive is whether the director is saying the e-mails prove no classified-information felonies, or no felonies period.
We are hard-pressed to believe that the FBI, in just eight days, could have competently examined hundreds of thousands of e-mails to detect the presence of classified information. It took the bureau over a year to examine the approximately 62,000 e-mails on Clinton’s private server because, Comey and the State Department told us, the task required painstaking consultation with multiple agencies in the government’s sprawling intelligence community.
Even if the FBI got to the bottom of the classified-information questions, it would remain difficult to fathom that agents could have plumbed the new Abedin/Weiner e-mails to determine their pertinence to the corruption investigation so quickly. This would involve reading the relevant e-mails, mining them for investigative leads, and forwarding those leads throughout the country and to legal attachés overseas to methodically attempt to build a case.
Throughout its probe, the FBI has encountered resistance from Attorney General Lynch’s Justice Department. The DOJ has denied the FBI the use of the grand jury, which must be employed if the production of evidence and testimony is to be compelled — as the bureau, generally working in conjunction rather than at cross-purposes with federal prosecutors, does in virtually every other case.
Lynch disgraced herself by furtively meeting in a plane parked on a Phoenix tarmac with Mrs. Clinton’s husband. Right after the airport meeting, Hillary Clinton sat for a perfunctory FBI interview (at which other suspects of the investigation, who had sweetheart immunity deals, were permitted to appear as her lawyers). Three days later, Comey closed the classified-information investigation, notwithstanding a mountain of evidence and interview statements that were patently false.
We have now entered the sanctimonious Comey Zone.
Now, Comey has evidently appeased Lynch again, caving in to her demands for a rushed judgment that serves no investigative purpose. It has been a shameful performance. Lynch, an ever-faithful courtier, might retain her slot if Clinton wins. But the former secretary of state will deservedly remain under a cloud of suspicion no matter what happens on Tuesday. And Comey has succeeded in antagonizing both sides of the political aisle, as well as former law-enforcement officials and the current FBI rank-and-file.
Notwithstanding the six years left on his presumptive ten-year term, he looks like a short-timer.