Firing James Comey Was a Win for the Rule of Law
In the matter of President Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey Democrats have reversed course so fast that, as my high school football coach used to say, “Their brains have not caught up with their butts.”
It wasn’t that long ago that Democrats were howling for Comey’s head, and as documented in Shattered, the excellent book about Hillary Clinton’s doomed presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton herself blamed Comey for her election defeat.
However, now that he’s been fired Comey is a Democratic hero akin to the victims of Richard Nixon’s “Saturday Night Massacre” which led to the resignations of then-Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus during the Watergate scandal.
But let’s be clear: The firing of James Comey is a blow for the rule of law and the exact opposite of Nixon’s attempt to stifle the Watergate investigation.
In the “Saturday Night Massacre,” Nixon was attempting to stymie the investigation of the Watergate break-in and cover-up by forcing Richardson or Ruckelshaus to fire Special Counsel Archibald Cox.
Quite the opposite happened Tuesday, when it was Comey who was fired for stymieing the investigations of Hillary Clinton and Huma Abedin by releasing and commenting on the details of the FBI investigation of their email practices, and then unilaterally clearing them, even though their conduct on its face showed a violation of a number of statutes.
(See the article and video of Senator Ted Cruz questioning Comey through this link.)
While Democrats and their allies in the media struggle to make the Watergate connection Americans should give the memo justifying Comey’s termination a close read.
In the memo, which you can read in PDF format through this link, highly respected career Department of Justice deputy attorney general Rod J. Rosenstein outlined how James Comey had repeatedly violated department protocol in his handling of the Clinton investigation.
The Rosenstein memo says in summary:
- Comey had been wrong to “usurp” the previous attorney general in July 2016 when he announced the Clinton emails inquiry should be closed without prosecution.
- That he had compounded his error by “gratuitously” releasing “derogatory information” about Hillary Clinton.
It is important to keep those two points in the context of our article “A Scandal So Great It Has No Name” in which we cover an interview with former federal prosecutor Joe diGenova.
The focus of our coverage was diGenova’s concern about the FBI’s failure—or refusal—to investigate the Obama-era unmasking of intelligence information on Americans in an effort to destroy their reputations for political purposes.
But diGenova had a lot more to say in the original interview, especially about James Comey, in which he referred to Comey as among the most “dangerous” of the Obama-era holdovers.
Joe diGenova later elaborated on this point in an interview with Fox News’ Tucker Carlson wherein he reiterated that he saw James Comey as “a danger to the country.”
DiGenova, who served under President Reagan, said Comey’s narcissism led him to take unnecessary and troubling steps during the Hillary Clinton email probe.
DiGenova said Comey thinks he “is the last righteous man left standing.”
“He surrounds himself with his own cult of personality,” diGenova said.
In this, diGenova was certainly correct, during the Obama era the rule of law, and the FBI in particular, became so completely corrupted by his arrogance that Comey could simply take it upon himself to decide who was going to have their reputation destroyed or who was going to be let off for clear felony-level violations of the law.
The firing of James Comey is a much-needed corrective to the Obama-Comey cult of government by personal whim and an important step toward the reestablishment of the rule of law; it should be applauded by all Americans. {eoa}
George Rasley is editor of Richard Viguerie’s ConservativeHQ.com.
This article was originally published at ConservativeHQ.com. Used with permission.
