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If the FBI concludes that Americans within Trumps orbit colluded with Russian intelligence officials to disrupt the U.S. election, the evidence and prosecutions should speak for themselves. But no matter what conclusions the FBI ultimately comes to, its director, James Comey, owes the country a public accounting of what his agents foundeven if nobody ends up being indicted.

Comeys own intrusions into the election look worse and worse with each passing day of the Trump administration. At every turn, we are reminded that Comey did horrible damage to Clintons campaign, notwithstanding his unique visibility into the Trump-Russia nexus.

Comey announced in July that hed recommended no charges be filed against Hillary Clinton, despite what he called her extremely careless handling of classified information through the use of a private email server. But eleven days before the election, he told several congressmen in a letter that there might be new evidence in the email investigationor there might be nothing. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid wrote to Comey shortly afterward, decrying the clear double-standard Comey appeared to exhibit. As soon as you came into possession of the slightest innuendo related to Secretary Clinton, Reid wrote, you rushed to publicize it in the most negative light possible.

What Comey did was unforgivable, and likely history-changing. The most generous interpretation of it is that he inappropriately prioritized the FBIs reputation and his own over his obligation not to discuss investigations. In so doing, he ended up offering a play-by-play of the Clinton-email investigation, in a way that had a clear partisan effect. Making the public statement about closing the investigation last summer put him on the hook to testify before Congress; testifying before Congress arguably compelled him to keep Congress apprised of unexpected changes in the status of the investigation, which in turn compelled him to exculpate Clinton a second time, days before the election.

Comey made a huge and unnecessary mess.

But if we are being intellectually honest ourselves, we have to hold him to the precedents he set for himself, not to ones that would make things seem more fair. Comey should have kept quiet throughout the campaign, but by his own lightsaccording to his testimony before Congress last July, and contemporaneous reportinghe broke silence for three reasons that made the Clinton inquiry so unusual:

1. Because Clinton skeptics believed Attorney General Loretta Lynchas the head of the department investigating Clintons emailshad compromised her independence when she met privately and unexpectedly with Bill Clinton on her plane in Arizona.

2. Because the public interest in transparency was extraordinaryClinton was a presidential candidate, after all.

3. Because the investigation had essentially run its course, and could thus be aired without undermining its integrity. We sometimes think differently about closed investigations, he told Senator Angus King last month, after King implied Comey applied a double standard to Clinton and Trumpan acknowledgment, perhaps, that he wont be able to sit on Trump-related inquiries forever.

The Russian hacking and conspiracy investigations already meet the first two of these standards, but wont meet the third until they come to a close.

The new attorney general, Jeff Sessions, one of Trumps main campaign surrogates, is far more compromised than Loretta Lynch ever was. Sessionswho once called on Lynch to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Clintonis, in an act of astounding hypocrisy, refusing to recuse himself from the Trump/Russia investigation.

Likewise, the publics interest in knowing the FBIs findings in this case exceeds its interest in knowing the findings of the email investigation: Clinton was a candidate for the presidency, but Trump is now the president.

Comeys actions last summer and fall raised the question of whether he had committed an honest-but-profound error of judgment or an intentional act of grotesque partisanship. What, if anything, he ultimately tells us about Trumps ties to Russian election saboteurs will provide us an answer.

See the rest here:
James Comey Had Better Treat Donald Trump Just Like He Treated Hillary Clinton - New Republic