A federal judge today dismissed the government’s case against former FBI director James Comey, whose strained relationship with the truth is the stuff of legend. A Clinton-appointed judge threw out the charges against Comey of making false statements to Congress and obstructing a congressional investigation because, she ruled, the prosecutor was improperly appointed.
The same judge, Cameron Currie, also dismissed the case against New York Attorney General Leticia James on the same basis. Her ruling does not mean Comey is an honest man, but it does mean that in Washington it is process and not justice that prevails.
Six years ago, longtime Republican Ed Rogers had his column cancelled by The Washington Post after he wrote “Comey Is Now a Verb” meaning “to repeatedly deceive while cloaking oneself in pious, self-anointed virtue.” A sacred cow of The Establishment, Comey was not be maligned – in mainstream media anyhow – and Rogers paid for his sin by losing a column he’d written for years.
Every honest American now knows the truth about ‘Russia-gate’ – that is was a cooked narrative spun up by group of partisans, prosecuted via law-fare and aided both by the Deep State and a cheerleading media. Even my Democrat friends today concede this too, but quickly qualify that concession by saying Trump is bad and he deserved it.
In his nest of suck-ups, James Comey kept company with the likes of Andrew McCabe, Peter Strozk and Charles McGonigal – men who did more to destroy the once sterling reputation of the FBI than anyone since J. Edgar Hoover.
Former director Robert Mueller would count in that company too were it not for reports of a serious cognitive impairment that suggests he might not have fully known what he was doing when serving as special counsel. As is the case with former President Joe Biden, the real abominations with Mueller were committed in his name while his full mental faculties were likely elsewhere.
When he testified before Congress about his report on Russian interference into the 2016 American presidential election, Mueller was unable to answer basic questions about its contents. A journalist who was in the room later told me you could hear a pin drop as members of Congress on both sides of the aisle came face to face with what that meant.
Talk about a prosecutor being improperly appointed. But anyway.
That’s how Washington works. It is a city of ciphers and hollow men. There back-stabbing is not a crime, it is an occupational qualification. Knowing this, we need to set our expectations accordingly.
Investigative journalist Paul Sperry wrote an expansive piece last week about Trump’s own appointees in his first administration who chose to overlook intelligence casting doubt on Russia-gate’s claims. None of this surprised me.
When he appointed Marco Rubio to be his secretary of state (and national security advisor among various other roles), Trump was well aware that the Florida senator had done him dirty during the jaundiced Senate Intelligence Committee probe. But he hired him anyway, and Rubio’s punishment is ongoing.
My friend JD Gordon penned a piece in the Daily Caller today arguing that Trump’s legacy is tied to how he metes out justice for Russia-gate. Like JD, my own life was sent into a downward spiral by the dishonest probe, but I expect no vindication and respectfully disagree with him on this point. That is because my experience with the American justice system taught me that seeking “justice” in this matter would be a fool’s errand.
Prosecuting the likes of Comey, or the walrus-mustachioed John Bolton (who plays a prominent role in Sperry’s latest), is a mistake because it makes you look small. These are men who thrived in the broken system you were elected not only to destroy, but also to fix. Holding them accountable makes no one’s life better, except perhaps those who have traded their souls for Schadenfreude. Let history deal with them instead: like Rubio’s Sisyphean assignment, it will not be kind.
Instead, the best revenge would be success, as the old cliche goes. If Trump brokers a peace that ends the war in Ukraine – a war that quite possibly would not have broken out on his watch – the cockroaches who invented Russia-gate will skitter back to their ill-smelling crevices and stay there for the foreseeable future. Far better than making martyrs of them, IMHO.
That is a tall order. But unlike revenge or retribution, it is one worth fulfilling.
