The media is treating Comey like a hero. He’s not one.
By Alex Ward@AlexWardVoxalex.ward@vox.
Back in October 2016, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) called then-FBI Director James Comey’s decision to look into new Hillary Clinton emails just days before the election “appalling.” Her comment reflected the general sentiment among Democrats at the time.
But in May 2017, President Donald Trump fired Comey because the FBI wouldn’t end an investigation into a former top Trump aide’s Russia ties. Democrats, almost in unison, openly warned that dismissing Comey meant Trump may have tried to obstruct justice. And after reports surfaced that Trump had called Comey a “nut job,” Feinstein herself defended the former FBI director, saying that “Comey is no way, shape, or form a nut job.”
As Comey now sits down for high-profile interview after high-profile interview to promote his new book, expect the good feelings from Democrats and the media alike to keep coming.
Comey’s new memoir, A Higher Loyalty, is due to come out on Tuesday. The already-released excerpts indicate that it’s highly critical of Trump, and the tome will assuredly inspire more Comey fandom on television, radio, and print. It may lead to even more arguments, like Damon Linker’s in the Week last June, “that the former FBI director is a bona fide American hero.”
But painting Comey that way misses a lot. He led the FBI when the bureau possibly mishandled its investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server when she was secretary of state, perhaps costing Hillary Clinton the election. He was also the FBI director when he oversaw increased surveillance of Muslim communities and a culture of suspicion against Muslims and used suspect methods to stop terrorists.
Put together, as the Washington Post’s Margaret Sullivan noted on March 31, Comey is undeserving of the veneration and softball questions he will surely field in the coming days in response to his much-hyped new book. That, in part, is because he did a successful job at cultivating his holier-than-thou persona, says Matthew Miller, a top Justice Department spokesperson in the Obama administration.
“He wanted to position himself as the hero,” Miller told me, “the man of integrity who was going to tell the American people how it is — the last virgin in town.”
The problem, though, is that the media fell for it.
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