… of its investigation of James Comey and the Clinton e-mail investigation has been released and is available here. It’s 568-pages long, so I haven’t read it yet. I have read the Executive Summary, and it doesn’t point toward anything that isn’t already common knowledge.
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Comey violated procedural norms in his pre-election press conferences, the first to announce that there would not be a recommendation for prosecution of Hilary Clinton, and the second announcing that the investigation was being reopened.
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Comey’s violation of established policies was insubordinate, but not animated by bias for or against either candidate.
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Some FBI agents loathe the Liar-in-Chief.
I share the view that Comey made a very serious mistake, but am disinclined to view him as harshly as some others. Knowing that Trump was also under investigation, and for crimes that flirt with treason — about which he said nothing — placed him in an extraordinary, probably unprecedented, situation; we should not judge him too harshly if he did an awkward job of attempting to thread that needle. What precedent, after all, could he consult?
In the event, he undoubtedly tipped fence-sitting voters toward Trump.
Though there doesn’t appear to be anything new in the report, Trump will probably turn this into a narrative about ‘deep state’ hostility to him.
Scanning the Executive Summary, and scanning some of the commentary that is already appearing, I am struck once again by how little (much of) the public understands about the work life of professionals — the shorthand vocabulary, the often sardonic and frequently cynical or self-deprecating humor, the responsibilities and ethical constraints. Every single day, civil engineers prepare designs for clients whose project they dislike, lawyers represent clients that they don’t want to see within 5-miles of their family, doctors and nurses provide care to clients they despise, journalists accurately report events that sicken them. Every day.
I wonder, occasionally, if Joe Citizen has any idea what goes on inside the army of well-educated professionals who keep society functioning, or if Mr. Citizen even knows it exists.