RUTHFULLY YOURS

The city I live in is sometimes called the biggest little town in the country because everybody seems to know everybody else’s business, but we have nothing on the nation’s capital. After James Comey’s bombshell announcement that thanks to Anthony Wiener’s laptop, the Hillary investigation is back on, who gets drafted by the Clintons to fight back? Jamie Gorelick. Yeah, that Jamie Gorelick, the Clinton’s cover-up artist who left DOJ for the big bucks at Fannie Mae, was involved in everything from the 9/11 hearings to the IRS scandal and was even considered by Obama to run the FBI.  (Today, Ms. Gorelick tells us, James Comey is a threat to our very democracy, but just three years ago, her friend was “one of the great lawyers of the Justice Department.”)

Of course, when President Bush came to office he wanted to clear away all the Clinton mess, even appointing a lawyer of immeasurable talent and integrity, he was told, to look into the 2001 Pardongate scandal. A guy by the name of James Comey. It seems he had the goods on Hillary, her brother Hugh, Bill, and his brother Roger. But Mr. Comey went all squishy. If you’re a Republican, don’t expect that kind of treatment, though. Even if you quit and resign your office, then like Nixon, you’d better hope to get a pardon on the way out.

Comey certainly crossed me up earlier this year when I thought the enormous FBI investigation taking place meant he was serious about the Hillary’s latest scandals. In retrospect, it was just to keep from empaneling a grand jury that might get out of control. Comey is best friends with Patrick Fitzgerald, the special counsel/weasel who spent four years investigating the leak of CIA desk jockey Valerie Plame’s name, even though he knew within days of his appointment Richard Armitage was the leaker and no laws had been broken. No matter, scalps must be taken, so journalists were jailed for months on end and Scooter Libby eventually found guilty of an utterly trivial offense, most likely with false evidence.

Comey and Fitzgerald have an interesting pattern of prosecutorial toughness when it comes to Democrats. If you have no political pull, like Martha Stewart, or are an embarrassment like Rod Blagojevich, they throw the book at you, but the big shots get a pass. Lee Cary’s article in AT nicely explains the extent to which Comey, Fitzgerald and Loretta Lynch were willing to steer prosecutions around then Sen. Obama and nail Tony Resko and Blagojevich. No doubt Obama was grateful, for he even thought to reward Comey with a Supreme Court appointment.

It should also be noted Hilary and all her team had a combined defense using the big-time DC attorney Beth Wilkinson, David Gregory’s wife; about as well connected an insider as they come. Wilkinson was plucked out of obscurity in 1993 for a top post in the Reno/Hubbell DOJ, then followed Jamie Gorelick, (who else?) from DOJ to Fannie Mae when the place was run by the most crooked of Clintonistas, starting with Franklin Raines. Washington, DC is a pretty small place, especially among the best-connected DOJ lawyers.

So you have to think that James Comey knows a lot more than he is letting on. Starting with the likely fact that too many people involved in the Wiener sexting investigation already know too much — from Preet Bharara, the U.S. Attorney in Manhattan, who was already tracking the Clinton Foundation, to all the state and local law enforcement that began the investigation.

I am sure Mr. Comey also understands that lawyers who help the Clinton’s don’t always fare so well. Ms. Gorelick has her Fannie Mae fortune but not her reputation, to show for her efforts. On the other hand, Webb Hubbell had to endure several years in prison for destroying evidence in the Castle Grande scandal, and his colleague and collaborator, Vince Foster, died, they say by suicide, rather than face the music.

I should think Mr. Comey further understands, no matter who is elected president, he won’t be FBI director much longer, and that is now the least of his concerns.