By
Tuesday, July 5, shall forever be known as the anniversary of former FBI Director James Comey’s foray into politics.
Six years ago today, Comey held an infamous press conference at the height of the 2016 presidential election, in which he announced that although Hillary Clinton hadn’t committed any crimes in using a private email server as secretary of state, she’d still done things Comey personally thought were “extremely careless.”
In hindsight, I think it’s clear July 5 was also a foundational moment for Trump’s perversion of the Justice Department.
Comey’s announcement may well have helped tank Clinton’s campaign. (He’s kinda, sorta, not-really apologized for his language at the press conference, and a late-stage announcement that he was investigating new Clinton emails). But I argue the political impact goes even deeper than 2016. In hindsight, I think it’s clear July 5 was also a foundational moment for Trump’s perversion of the Justice Department. Comey showed Trump the value of a DOJ willing to launch or close investigations based on pretext and politics.
In fact, Trump was so impressed with how Comey’s Clinton investigation worked — in his favor — that he reportedly asked Comey to end an investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn, and to meddle in the investigation into Trump, as well.
Comey didn’t go along with his boss, but by then Trump was so hooked on the drug that is fascism he merely fired Comey with hopes of replacing him with a more loyal stooge.
After Comey was fired, Trump embarked on a scorched earth campaign to establish a more servile DOJ. He pressured then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions to fire Comey’s second-in-command, FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, for his role in the Russia probe. Then, Trump pressured Sessions himself to resign. Trump briefly named the “masculine toilet" guy (a.k.a. Matthew Whitaker) acting attorney general before appointing Bill Barr, the ultimate Trump sycophant, as his new AG.
Short of literally waging an insurrection, Barr did pretty much everything Trump wanted as attorney general, from targeting his political critics to — surprise, surprise — opening pretextual investigations to varnish Trump’s image.
During his four years in office, Trump cycled through a series of DOJ officials whom he used and discarded. But you never forget the first time. And Comey showed him why.