Comey's Devastating Unprofessionalism

On Wednesday, we learned that former FBI Director James Comey's public communications during the election about the Hillary Clinton email probe were influenced by a fake Russian intelligence document.

And it gets even worse.

[Content Note: Video autoplays at link] Dana Bash, Shimon Prokupecz, and Gloria Borger at CNN report that not only was the document fake, but Comey knew it was fake.

Then-FBI Director James Comey knew that a critical piece of information relating to the investigation into Hillary Clinton's email was fake — created by Russian intelligence — but he feared that if it became public it would undermine the probe and the Justice Department itself, according to multiple officials with knowledge of the process.

As a result, Comey acted unilaterally last summer to publicly declare the investigation over — without consulting then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch — while at the same time stating that Clinton had been "extremely careless" in her handling of classified information.

...US officials now tell CNN that Comey and FBI officials actually knew early on that this intelligence was indeed false.

In fact, acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe went to Capitol Hill Thursday to push back on the notion that the FBI was duped, according to a source familiar with a meeting McCabe had with members of the Senate intelligence committee.

...In classified sessions with members of Congress several months ago, Comey described those emails in the Russian claim and expressed his concern that this Russian information could "drop" and that would undermine the Clinton investigation and the Justice Department in general, according to one government official.

Still, Comey did not let on to lawmakers that there were doubts about the veracity of the intelligence, according to sources familiar with the briefings. It is unclear why Comey was not more forthcoming in a classified setting.

As Eastsidekate succinctly summarized: "They admitted to intentionally using hostile propoganda to undermine HRC in order to prop up their own credibility?" Yup.

You know how I keep hammering away about how this war between Donald Trump and intelligence community is not a good thing? And issuing reminders that pro-Comey leakers are shaping their narratives to be favorable to him? Yeah, this is why.

Comey engaged in devastating unprofessionalism during the election, and it had catastrophic consequences. There is very good reason to withhold enthusiastic cheerleading for James Comey, and many of the people on "his team" in this escalating war.

As usual, Hillary Clinton gets it right (commenting before this news broke) in a new profile by Rebecca Traister:

"I am less surprised than I am worried," she says of the Comey firing. "Not that he shouldn't have been disciplined. And certainly the Trump campaign relished everything that was done to me in July and then particularly in October." But "having said that, I think what's going on now is an effort to derail and bury the Russia inquiry, and I think that's terrible for our country."

It will be days before newspapers report that Trump asked Comey to move away from the Russia investigation prior to firing him, but the implications are already clear. History, says Clinton, "will judge whoever's in Congress now as to how they respond to what was an attack on our country. It wasn't the kind of horrible, physical attack we saw on 9/11 or Pearl Harbor, but it was an attack by an aggressive adversary who had been probing for many years to figure out how to undermine our democracy, influence our politics, even our elections."

Her hope, in the wake of Comey's dismissal, is that "this abrupt and distressing action will raise enough questions in the minds of Republicans for them to conclude that it is worthy of careful attention, because left unchecked … this will not just bite Democrats, or me; this will undermine our electoral system."

The takeaway here is that it is the Republicans' job as the majority in Congress to take this stuff seriously. That's the way our system of government is supposed to work.

When they refuse to take action—and we can be certain they will refuse to take action on this newest revelation of breathtaking failure, as they have on every other piece of the colossal scandal that was the 2016 election—they are actively preventing the government from working the way it was designed. They are breaking it.

Because they are enemies of the state.

Will Comey ever face meaningful accountability for the role he played in 2016? I suspect not. And that is a real shame. For us all.