‘My book is about ethical leadership,’ tweeted former FBI Director James Comey yesterday. To which my immediate response, having watched his shockingly self-serving, unctuously arrogant and cynically exploitative ABC interview to launch the book, is this: 1) What would he know about ethics? 2) What would he know about leadership?
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Having watched Comey's self-serving ABC interview to launch his book, it's revealed by his own damning words that it's the former FBI director himself who is ‘morally unfit’
The central premise of Comey’s lengthy literary whine is that Donald Trump’s ‘morally unfit’ to be President. Yet, as revealed by his own damning words, it’s Comey himself who is not only ‘morally unfit’, but was also ultimately most responsible for getting Trump elected. It was HIS decision to announce, just 11 days before the 2016 election, that the FBI was re-opening its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails after new ones had been uncovered. Nine days later, just 48 hours before America voted, and after a week of fevered media coverage, Comey then announced the new emails had been reviewed and Hillary was in the clear. By then, the damage was done and many people, including Hillary herself, believe the sudden onslaught of negative publicity that followed the original bombshell news helped tip Trump into the White House. They or may not be right about that, but nobody could argue it was anything but massively unhelpful to the Democrat candidate. Now, astonishingly, Comey’s admitted he made this decision for political, not legal reasons. ‘It is entirely possible that because I was making decisions in an environment where Hillary Clinton was sure to be the next president,’ he told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, ‘my concern about making her an illegitimate president by concealing the restarted investigation bore greater weight that it would have if the election appeared closer or if Trump were ahead in all polls.’ Sorry, WHAT?
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Comey admits he made his decision about announcing the FBI re-opening its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails for political, not legal reasons, because he didn't want her to be seen as an 'illegitimate president.' Sorry, WHAT?
It wasn’t Comey’s job to factor in his personal interpretation of the political landscape while making any decision, and before reviewing the emails. It was his job to ensure the FBI reviewed the new information as fast as possible and then make a decision as to what may or not be relevant to inform the American public. Comey’s rush to go public without knowing the material facts was entirely in keeping with his unsettling lust for self-publicity that ensured his name and face were in the headlines throughout election year. (An odd character trait, you might think, for an FBI Director?) The reality is that James Comey’s a snivelling, egotistical worm who quite possibly swung an election through disastrous misjudgment, was correctly fired for staggering incompetence, and is now cashing in on his abject failure in a manner that should make all right-minded Americans, Republican or Democrat, puke in disgust. It seems quite outrageous to me that he should be able to publish such a lurid, sensationalist, secret-spilling, tell-all book exploiting his own ineptitude - and make millions of dollars by doing so.
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The reality is that Comey’s a sniveling, egotistical worm who quite possibly swung an election through disastrous misjudgment, was correctly fired for staggering incompetence, and is now cashing in on his abject failure in a manner that should make all right-minded Americans puke in disgust. It seems outrageous that he should be able to publish a lurid, sensationalist, secret-spilling book exploiting his own ineptitude - and make millions by doing so
The book itself is contaminated by Comey’s deep loathing of the President which is so intense it drags him into the very Trump-style gutter of personal insult and false ‘nudge nudge, wink wink’ smear innuendo he professes to find so distasteful. For instance, he gleefully recounts how Trump asked him to investigate the notorious, unverified pee-tape prostitute allegations so he could reassure his wife Melania they weren’t true. This seems a perfectly understandable reaction given the furore that erupted around such humiliating allegations contained in an intelligence dossier that’s since been widely discredited. But ‘Saint’ Comey thought differently. ‘In what kind of marriage, to what kind of man, does a spouse conclude there is only a 99% chance her husband didn’t do that?’ he opines in his book. Hmm. What kind of man concludes that such an intensely private and potentially embarrassing conversation between a president and his then FBI chief should now be made public to sell books? Comey has no evidence to support the pee-tape claims, but that doesn’t stop him hinting they may be true. Just as when Stephanopoulos pressed him on whether Russia may ‘have something’ on Trump, he replied conspiratorially: ‘It’s possible.’ For Comey, facts don’t matter when unsubstantiated rumours scream book sales ‘KER-CHING!’ Some of the content is pathetically petty. Comey wants us to know Trump’s not as tall as him and his hands aren’t as large as his, face is ‘slightly orange’ and he has ‘bright white half-moons under his eyes where I assumed he placed small tanning goggles.’ Seriously? This from a man professing to be mortally offended by Trump’s failure to live up to the high standards of public office?
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Some of the book is just petty. Comey wants us to know Trump’s not as tall as him and his hands aren’t as large as his, face is ‘slightly orange’ and he has ‘white half-moons under his eyes' from tanning bed goggles. This from a man professing to be mortally offended by Trump
The timing of Comey’s spiteful gossip-mongering tome seems especially inappropriate given Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s ongoing investigation into alleged Russian collusion. Yet I’m not remotely surprised he’s put personal fortune and self-aggrandising PR before any sense of professional propriety. When Comey was dismissed a year ago, I wrote then that he was a man with a bizarre, emotion-charged streak of narcissism for someone running the FBI. His appearance in front of the Senate committee confirmed him to be not a dispassionate, methodical gatherer of facts but a drama queen of toe-curling proportions. Comey painted a picture of heroic self-sacrifice as he weighed up his two options the week before the election: one ‘bad’ (revealing the development in the Hillary email investigation), the other ‘catastrophic’ (as he put it, ‘concealing’ that development.) ‘I knew this would be disastrous for me personally,’ he said, his face etched with torment. ‘Look, this is terrible,’ he sighed, bottom lip trembling. ‘It makes me mildly nauseous to think that we might have had some impact on the election.’ Ironically, it’s turned out to be the best thing that’s ever happened to Comey, who will now be all he ever wanted to be: a multi-millionaire celebrity; whilst making the rest of us a damn sight more than ‘mildly nauseous.’ The bottom line is this: James Comey was fired for no other reason than being bad at his job. Rod Rosenstein’s first act when he was appointed Deputy Attorney-General a year ago, was to address the ‘Comey problem’. Rosenstein spoke to all the relevant people, and then sent President Trump a memo with his assessment and recommendation. It said that under Comey, the FBI had suffered ‘substantial damage’ to its reputation and credibility.
Comey painted himself as self-sacrificing hero but the bottom line is he was fired for being bad at his job. Rod Rosenstein’s first act when he was appointed Deputy Attorney-General was to address the ‘Comey problem’. He spoke to all the relevant people and then sent Trump a memo saying the FBI had suffered ‘substantial damage’ to its reputation and credibility under the now millionaire celebrity
It hammered him for the way he handled the reopening of the Hillary email investigation, and for ‘his refusal to accept the near universal judgment that he was mistaken.’ The memo also cited former Deputy Attorneys General Gorelick and Thompson’s damning description of Comey’s behaviour as ‘real-time, raw-take transparency taken to its illogical limit, a kind of reality TV of federal criminal investigation’ that is ‘antithetical to the interests of justice.’ It concluded: ‘The FBI is unlikely to regain public and congressional trust until it has a Director who understands the gravity of the mistakes and pledges never to repeat them. Having refused to admit his errors, the Director cannot be expected to implement the necessary corrective actions.’ Trump read the memo, and rightly fired him. Now, from his own mouth, Comey’s confirmed Trump why was right. Aside from numerous other failings, he made a massive decision based on how he viewed the politics of an investigation. It was a catastrophically bad decision that may well have determined the outcome of a US election. So if Comey wants someone to blame for President Trump, he needs look no further than his own mirror. He would have us believe he’s a man of deep integrity but in reality he’s shown himself to be a treacherous, useless, money-grabbing weasel. If, as Comey offensively claims, Trump behaves like a mob boss - then he is a Sammy the Bull type rat. His book is entitled ‘A Higher Loyalty’. I wouldn’t trust James ‘Judas’ Comey to run a bath, let alone the FBI
