RUTHFULLY YOURS

It’s obvious he deserved to be fired. All there is to quibble about is the precise reason why.

For months, the media and President Trump’s loudest opponents convinced themselves that James Comey’s much-anticipated book was the ticking bomb that would blow up the Trump administration. Instead: No boom.

Comey hoped to guide the spotlight to his self-image as ultimate G-Man — a stalwart, sober, nonpartisan public servant whose courage and rectitude guided him through a moral, legal, and political thicket. Instead, the book reveals Comey to be a hack. A blunderer. A blowhard. He took a mighty swing at Trump and managed to punch himself in the eye.

Not only does the book offer zilch in the way of damaging new evidence against the president in the Russia matter or anything else, but its most revealing and most noticed passage pulverizes Comey’s own reputation. The former FBI director is being pilloried from left, right, and center. Perhaps even worse for him, he is being mocked as a pompous ass from left, right, and center. This is quite an achievement when you consider that it isn’t a Fire and Fury–style exposé but Comey’s own memoir that is making a fool of him.

“Donald Trump is contagious: He turned James Comey into Donald Trump” runs the headline of Karen Tumulty’s column in the Washington Post. Tumulty highlights Comey’s “pettiness, insecurity and need for affirmation,” plus an “ego” that “stays in high gear.” Fellow WaPo columnist Alexandra Petri relentlessly spoofs Comey’s gassy references to Reinhold Niebuhr and his sanctimonious self-regard: “In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God, and then, on Dec. 14, 1960, I, James Comey, was born. The initials, as Reinhold Niebuhr would tell us, are no coincidence.” The paper’s nonfiction-book critic, Carlos Lozada, compares Comey’s lack of self-awareness to Trump’s, questions Comey’s ethics, and says his “self-criticism — and self-regard — is almost comical,” scorning Comey both for lying about playing basketball for William & Mary and for ostentatiously flogging himself for the fib later. The very D.C. collision of the trifling and the sanctimonious in Comey’s personality is irresistibly funny: He’s James Comedy.

Before there was Andrew McCabe, there was Mark Felt. Or, as he is better known, “Deep Throat.”

Both Mr. McCabe and Felt were FBI deputy directors. Both leaked information about an FBI investigation that was under way. Both did so for the sake of their own careers, lied about it to their bosses, and even let other FBI agents take the blame.

Start with Felt, who died in 2008. Though sometimes cast as the noble truth-teller of Watergate—in “All the President’s Men” he was memorably played by a chain-smoking Hal Holbrook—reality is less flattering. Felt saw himself as the rightful heir to J. Edgar Hoover. When he was passed over for L. Patrick Gray III, Felt flattered Gray to his face while sabotaging the new FBI director behind his back.

He also let others take the fall. On a Saturday morning in June 1972, a furious Director Gray summoned 27 agents from the Washington field office to the conference room at FBI headquarters. He then cussed them out over a leak to Time magazine. Paul Magallanes, an FBI agent working the Watergate burglary, said Gray called them all “yellow-bellied sniveling agents” and demanded the guilty party step forward. No one did, of course, and Gray vowed to find out who the leaker was and fire him.

Felt never corrected the record on behalf of his falsely accused brother agents. To the contrary, Deep Throat would himself assume control over the investigation into who was leaking—and use that position to admonish other agents about leaks for which he himself was the culprit.

The ex-director’s first TV interview finally broke the loyalty of one longtime FBI colleague, others reacted with disbelief as their former boss pontificated.

James Comey’s first interview since President Trump fired him as director of the FBI has enraged his former agents, who deluged The Daily Beast with their disdain as they watched him tell his side of the story to George Stephanopoulos on Sunday night.

Seven current or former FBI agents and officials spoke throughout and immediately after the broadcast. There was a lot of anger, frustration, and even more emojis—featuring the thumbs-down, frowny face, middle finger, and a whole lot of green vomit faces.

One former FBI official sent a bourbon emoji as it began; another sent the beers cheers-ing emoji. The responses became increasingly angry and despondent as the hourlong interview played out.

“Hoover is spinning in his grave,” said a former FBI official. “Making money from total failure.”

When a promo aired between segments announcing Comey’s upcoming interview with The View, the official grew angrier.

“Good lord, what a self-serving self-centered jackass,” the official said. “True to form he thinks he’s the smartest guy around.”

A current FBI official said it was bizarre that Comey seemed so pleased with the whole episode. “It’s how happy he looked on TV while cashing in on the biggest mistake in history. His mistake,” they said. “Jim Comey made that mistake. We all just wonder what could have been and what we could’ve done to change it.”

‘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?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.

Allies and advisers to Hillary Clinton can finally agree with President Trump on one thing: former FBI Director James Comey is no hero.

After reading excerpts from Comey’s new book, “A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership,” and watching his first interview since being fired, with ABC anchor George Stephanopoulos on Sunday night, former aides on the Clinton campaign are collectively gnashing their teeth.
“Of course they’re upset,” said Patti Solis Doyle, who served as Clinton’s campaign manager during her 2008 presidential bid. “How could you not be if you worked on that campaign?”

“I think he displayed unreliably poor judgment in the Clinton investigation by bucking [Department of Justice] procedures and having a press conference when there were no charges brought, and I think he has displayed incredibly poor judgment in the timing of this book before the end of the [Robert] Mueller investigation,” she added.

While much of the coverage generated by Comey’s book has centered on his feud with Trump, Clinton allies are focused on his disclosures about the 2016 election.

They are particularly incensed by Comey’s acknowledgment that, when deciding how to handle the investigation into Clinton’s email server, he took into account polls showing she would win the White House.

“Nobody is satisfied with anything he’s been saying,” said one longtime Clinton adviser. “We thought that Comey was always a factor in her loss, but now nobody can deny that perceptions were changed because of it.”

“I’ve made peace with it, but it’s still a punch in the gut,” the adviser said.

Clinton and her allies have argued that Comey helped swing the election to Trump when he announced in late October 2016 that he was reopening the FBI’s email investigation. He made that decision after new emails were uncovered on the laptop of Anthony Weiner, the husband of longtime Clinton aide Huma Abedin.