FBI chief feeling heat all around
WASHINGTON — FBI Director James Comey once called it a crucial leadership test: Anticipating whether a decision makes sense “through the eyes of others.”
Now his own big decision has Democrats and even some Republicans wondering whether he failed his own test.
The FBI director who prides himself on moral rectitude and a squeaky-clean reputation is being criticized from all sides for lobbing a stink bomb into the center of the presidential race. His disclosure that investigators have found more e-mails that may — or may not — relate to Democrat Hillary Clinton’s use of a private e-mail setup as secretary of state has jolted the race and generated far more questions than answers.
Former Justice Department officials and lawmakers from both parties are calling Comey’s revelation about Clinton’s e-mails just 11 days before the election an improper, astonishing and perplexing intrusion into politics in the critical endgame of the 2016 campaign.
It’s an unexpected predicament for the man who has painted ethical decision-making as an easy call.
“There’s right, and there’s wrong, and it ain’t hard to tell the difference,” he once said.
Comey, a former Republican who is no longer registered with a political party, spent 15 years as a federal prosecutor before serving in the George W. Bush administration. His office brought the case that led to Martha Stewart’s conviction on obstruction of justice and lying to government investigators. As an assistant U.S. attorney in Virginia, he handled the investigation of the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers housing complex in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 members of the U.S. military.
President Barack Obama, when he nominated Comey for a 10-year-appointment to the FBI job in 2013, cited his willingness to stand up to power “at key moments when it’s mattered most.”
Aides say Obama’s high opinion of Comey still stands. But the White House is leaving the FBI director dangling, saying it is up to him to defend himself in the face of what spokesman Josh Earnest called “significant criticism from a variety of legal experts, including individuals who served in senior Department of Justice positions in administrations that were led by presidents in both parties.”
Comey, 56, made his disclosure about the Clinton e-mails despite admonitions from officials within the Justice Department not to go there. It is long-standing Justice Department protocol to avoid taking investigative action in the run-up to an election that could affect its outcome.
