2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumcomey violated not one, but (at least) two fbi departmental policies
first, he obviously violated the policy not to say anything controversial within 60 days of an election.
second, he violated the policy not to comment regarding an ongoing investigation except for specific circumstances (announcing an indictment, e.g.). certainly the vague possibility of additional evidence which they don't even have yet and may be neither relevant nor material doesn't qualify as one of those exceptions.
and what was his excuse?
he can't get any mileage out of the excuse that voters have the right to know, because that logic is expressly contradicted by the first policy to stay out of such matters.
so the only excuse he really has is that he had testified before congress (itself a partisan witch hunt) and felt the need to revise/clarify/update his testimony.
there are (at least) two problems with this:
first, there's *zero* reason to provide this update now as opposed to in two weeks, especially because the information is not actionable.
second, at best it puts his own interests (avoiding a distantly, theoretically possible perjury charge) ahead of the interests of the people involved in the investigation, as well as the voters.
altogether a terrible, inexcusable, nakedly partisan action on the part of comey.
NBachers
(17,170 posts)niyad
(113,776 posts)CentralMass
(15,265 posts)TryLogic
(1,723 posts)Blue Idaho
(5,065 posts)The Justice Department can take care of Comey - we need to make sure the guy that loves Putin, buys Chinese steel, gropes women, and loves white supremacists gets crushed on Nov. 8th. While we're at it - let's take back the Senate and the House. That would be justice for Comey's betrayal of office.
vadermike
(1,417 posts)Might be out of play now but we need to at least get the senate with the WH
Plucketeer
(12,882 posts)to tediously wade thru the robo-answering system at FBI headquarters to try and convey a message to Director Comey about what he's done with this virtual wrench he's thrown into the gears. Heh - have you ever tried to call to lodge a complaint? There's even a choice where you're told to press one to lodge a complaint - of course, that only leads to another "menu" under which there IS NO "complaint" number to punch. But no matter, I choose the one that is listed to report a federal crime. Aha! A real human voice! So after spelling my name and giving my phone number (what the hell? They don't have the technology that displays a caller's number??? My shitty old flip fone does that!) the gent asks "How can I help you?" I started in by saying I wished to convey a message to Dir. Comey - as a US citizen - that his decision to release unverified and unwarranted information about MORE E-mails at this late date is...... "Thank you for your call - CLICK."
DesertRat
(27,995 posts)GeorgeGist
(25,326 posts)AG Lynch should suspend him and appoint a Independent Counsel to investigate.
TryLogic
(1,723 posts)Francis Booth
(162 posts)She has to tread carefully around firing Comey, although he does deserve to be canned for so blatantly violating longstanding policy.
Can he be impeached somehow?
This whole situation is just unprecedented.