Now we know: Bill
Clinton cost his wife
the presidency
Hillary Clinton tells CNN Chief International Correspondent Christiane Amanpour her victory in the 2016 presidential election would have been "a really big deal" for women. (Women for Women International)
So now it can be told: Bill Clinton cost his wife the presidency.
Almost three hours into a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee on
Wednesday, FBI Director James Comey shed new light on his decision to
go public about his agency’s investigations into Hillary Clinton’s emails,
first in July 2016 and again, with devastating effect, in late October, 11
days before the election.
The specific reason he cited: Bill Clinton’s decision to board Attorney
General Loretta Lynch’s plane in late June, when their planes were
both on a tarmac in Phoenix. “The capper was — and I’m not picking
on Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who I like very much — but her
meeting with President Clinton on that airplane was the capper for
me,” Comey said. Comey decided to “step away” and announce,
without consulting the Justice Department, that Hillary Clinton
shouldn’t be charged.
In Comey’s telling, this public announcement in turn required Comey
to speak up again in October, when more emails were found. “Having
done that [the public announcement] and then having testified
repeatedly under oath that we’re done,” he said, “it would be a
disastrous, catastrophic concealment” not to go public on Oct. 28 with
the newly discovered emails.
It’s a tragic chain of events: If Bill Clinton hadn’t boarded that plane
in June, Comey might not have spoken out in July, which means he
wouldn’t have felt compelled to speak up again in October, which
means Hillary Clinton would have won the election in November.
FBI Director James Comey responded, May 3, before the Senate Judiciary Committee
to a question from Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) on his announcement about re-opening
the probe into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server days before the election.
(Reuters)
These were Comey’s fullest comments to date on his indefensible
decision to announce on the eve of the election that he was reopening
the investigation into Clinton, almost certainly handing the election
to Donald Trump. It wasn’t a compelling explanation, but, knowing
the self-righteousness and independence that drives the FBI director,
it seemed genuine. He made a disastrous decision but for reasons that
weren’t entirely wrong: Bill Clinton’s clumsiness created a vacuum of
credibility, and Comey, self-appointed guardian of the justice system,
stepped in to fill the void.
Comey said he was physically ill over his role in the election, which
Trump and Hillary Clinton are again arguing about this week. “Look,
this is terrible,” he told the senators. “It makes me mildly nauseous to
think that we might have had some impact on the election.”
If Comey is mildly nauseated by the thought that he had “some impact,”
he should have his face over the toilet bowl when he considers that he
handed Trump the presidency. Certainly, there were many factors
behind Clinton’s loss. But in an election this close there can be no doubt
that Comey’s action was enough to swing the outcome.
Comey’s performance Wednesday was maddening at times. He was
unfailingly pious. “Lordy this has been painful,” he pleaded. “But I think
I have done the right thing at each turn. . . . The honest answer — I don’t
mean to sound arrogant — is I wouldn’t have done anything differently.”
And Comey was full of inconsistencies when he tried to explain why he
spoke out about Clinton’s case during the campaign yet remained
adamantly silent about the FBI’s investigation into Trump’s Russia ties.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (Calif.), top Democrat on the panel, shook her head
in disbelief when Comey maintained that “I didn’t make a public
announcement” on Oct. 28 that he was reopening the Clinton
investigation. “I sent a private letter” to Congress, he said — as if it
wouldn’t immediately leak.
Comey proclaimed that “I’ve lived my entire career by the tradition that
if you can possibly avoid it, you avoid any action in the run-up to an
election that might have an impact.” Yet he acknowledged an aide told
him “what you’re about to do may help elect Donald Trump president,”
and Comey said he considered “not for a moment” that huge impact.
The director asserted that he had only “two doors” on Oct. 28 — speak
or “conceal.” Thus did he ignore the obvious third option: Let his agents
find out whether there was anything worthwhile in the new batch of
emails (there wasn’t) before throwing the election into chaos.
But there was something that rang true in Comey’s account. Dating
back to his showdown at John Ashcroft’s hospital bed during the Bush
administration, he has been the incorruptible exemplar of justice. “I have
lived my whole life caring about the credibility and the integrity of the
criminal-justice process,” he proclaimed Wednesday.
His time as FBI director, a position independent by design, no doubt
reinforced his instincts. And after Bill Clinton climbed onto Lynch’s
plane last year, Comey told the senators, he decided “the best chance
of the American people believing in the system” was for him to go
public.
Comey’s intervention ultimately did the justice system worse harm.
But at least we now know why he did it.
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