In a truly shocking turn of events, former FBI Director James Comey, who has a history of being fair-minded when it comes to President Trump, changed his mind overnight as to whether President Trump should be impeached.
As Fox News reports, speaking on Tuesday with KCRA-TV, Comey stated, “I think the American people would be let off the hook if Donald Trump were impeached and removed from office and a lot of his supporters would think some sort of coup had taken place.”
Only hours later, on Wednesday, Comey changed his tune, tweeting, “Some media are quoting me from last week about my hope that America will remove Donald Trump by an election, not Impeachment. But we may now be at the point where members of the House and Senate can’t uphold their own oaths to support and defend the Constitution without acting.”
Some media are quoting me from last week about my hope that America will remove Donald Trump by an election, not Impeachment. But we may now be at the point where members of the House and Senate can’t uphold their own oaths to support and defend the Constitution without acting.
— James Comey (@Comey) September 25, 2019
As has been noted, Comey wrote in one memo that he told President Trump: “I don’t do sneaky things, I don’t leak, I don’t do weasel moves.” This is the same Comey who protested that seven memos he composed about conversations he supposedly had with President Trump were his personal documents, a contention the Inspector General dismissed, writing, “Comey’s characterization of the Memos as personal records finds no support in the law and is wholly incompatible with the plain language of the statutes, regulations, and policies defining Federal records, and the terms of Comey’s FBI Employment Agreements.”
As far as supporting and defending the Constitution, the Inspector General’s report stated regarding Comey, “By not safeguarding sensitive information obtained during the course of his FBI employment, and by using it to create public pressure for official action, Comey set a dangerous example for the over 35,000 current FBI employees — and the many thousands more former FBI employees — who similarly have access to or knowledge of non-public information.”
More defending of the Constitution: the IG report also noted of Comey’s midyear 2016 pronouncement that the FBI had completed its midyear investigation, only criticizing Clinton and her senior aides for “extremely careless” handling of classified information and stating that the FBI was recommending that the Department should decline prosecution of Clinton, claiming “no reasonable prosecutor” would prosecute Clinton based on the facts developed by the FBI:
We concluded that Comey’s unilateral announcement was inconsistent with Department policy and violated long-standing Department practice and protocol by, among other things, criticizing Clinton’s uncharged conduct. We also found that Comey usurped the authority of the Attorney General, and inadequately and incompletely described the legal position of Department prosecutors.
The IG report concluded:
… in key moments, then Director Comey chose to deviate from the FBI’s and the Department’s established procedures and norms and instead engaged in his own subjective, ad hoc decision making. In so doing, we found that Comey largely based his decisions on what he believed was in the FBI’s institutional interests and would enable him to continue to effectively lead the FBI as its Director. While we did not find that these decisions were the result of political bias on Comey’s part, we nevertheless concluded that by departing so clearly and dramatically from FBI and Department norms, the decisions negatively impacted the perception of the FBI and the Department as fair administrators of justice.