James Comey Gets Indicted

"The Giraffe" played a very clever game, but the nation's tallest teenage girl may now face a reckoning

It’s always good to be in the Special Report Krauthammer chair when news breaks, and that’s what happened last night.

For as much as the media will focus on process complaints here, namely that this is a “witch hunt” of some kind against the former FBI Director, the truth is that this case is a very simple question of fact: either Comey lied, or Andrew McCabe lied. Both of their statements regarding an authorized leak simply cannot be true.

Beyond the context, the case itself has its eager critics — here’s Jacob Heilbrunn claiming “Comey is a drip, but hardly the type to try and bamboozle Congress”, which would come as news to pretty much every Republican (and many Democrats) in Congress. As Catherine Herridge notes, this is a pretty cut and dry case — the prior attorney was pretty clearly slow-walking it to run out the statute of limitations, and key releases from the current administration “revealed Comey’s role authorizing media leaks (at least one involved classified information) through his FBI subordinates or through his Columbia law school professor Richman with SGE (Special Government Employee) status.” We’ve known all about this for ages, and it shouldn’t be hard to prove.

There’s the question of why bring the case at all if it fell into that murky category of unlikely conviction. Why Andrew McCarthy (caveat that I tend to disagree with more Andy often than I agree) would be so bold as to say “I don’t think there’s a case” betrays the actual underlying idea that this is a case worth bringing on the traditional merits. Except as someone who’s worked for Congress, unlike Andy, I happen to think lying to Congress matters. It is on the basis of what Comey himself has said, as he has a long history of defending the idea that “small lies matter” and that they deserve prosecution when provable as they “send a message” that no one is above the law — it was the entire justification for his ridiculous decision to send great American Martha Stewart to jail for which I will never, ever forgive him (and neither will she, telling the folks at Netflix that he “should have been put in a Cuisinart and turned on high”). Comey himself seems to welcome this test of his honesty in even the smallest particular, even asking for a trial in his ring-lighted video statement on the matter. Well, let’s go then!

One more fun note on the media coverage you’re going to see about this, from Matt Taibbi:

NBC’s sole reference to Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report on “James Comey’s Unauthorized Disclosure of Sensitive Information and Handling of Certain Memoranda” concerned statements by Andrew McCabe. It did not mention sixteen other witnesses, nor the conclusion: “We have previously faulted Comey for acting unilaterally and inconsistent with Department policy. Comey’s unauthorized disclosure of sensitive law enforcement information… merits similar criticism.”

NBC does not mention the name of Columbia University professor Daniel Richman, about whom recently released FBI memos disclosed: “Comey instructed the FBI to hire Richman as a Special Government Employee (SGE)” and “grant him a Top Secret clearance with access to Sensitive Compartmented Information” in 2015, so he could “discuss sensitive matters, including classified information, with someone outside of the FBI’s regular leadership.”

Finally, NBC also does not mention the name Michael Schmidt, the New York Times reporter who used Richman as a source in stories describing Comey as “apolitical and independent.”

Schmidt is the husband of MSNBC anchor Nicolle Wallace.

I’m sure that sort of connection is utterly irrelevant, why are you so paranoid?