The New York Times has a deep-dive into Comey’s FBI suggesting what we've long suspected; Comey's letter to Congress "informing" them that the FBI had "new" information in the long-running hunt for something damning in Hillary Clinton's emails was done not out of high-minded concern for the country but two considerably less noble concerns; distrust of Democrats in the Justice Department—especially Attorney General Loretta Lynch—and protecting the department itself from criticism.
Fearing the backlash that would come if it were revealed after the election that the F.B.I. had been investigating the next president and had kept it a secret, Mr. Comey sent a letter informing Congress that the case was reopened.
He most emphatically did not, of course, acknowledge that his FBI was actively investigation the Donald Trump campaign for potential collusion with Russian hacking efforts. The public deserved to know that the FBI was investigating the next president—but since Trump wasn’t going to be president there wouldn’t be any point in making announcements about that, now would there?
“In my mind at the time, Clinton is likely to win,” [ex-senior FBI official Michael B. Steinbach] said. “It’s pretty apparent. So what happens after the election, in November or December? How do we say to the American public: ‘Hey, we found some things that might be problematic. But we didn’t tell you about it before you voted’? The damage to our organization would have been irreparable.”
Yes, we certainly wouldn’t want the public to know you’d found out something “problematic” about one of the candidates but that you didn’t tell anyone until after the voting was over. Just think of how damaging that would be.
So Comey made his announcement post-haste, with no knowledge of what the supposedly "new" emails actually consisted of. Many of his agents were "stunned" by his choice.
At the Justice Department, career prosecutors and political appointees privately criticized not only Mr. Comey for sending the letter but also Ms. Lynch and Ms. Yates for not stopping him. Many saw the letter as the logical result of years of not reining him in.
We know the rest. When the emails were actually sifted through, they were confirmed to be irrelevant and/or duplicates of those the FBI already had. Clinton was, once again, cleared. But the supposed "reopening" of the investigation sent shudders through the closing weeks of the campaign; the sheepish never-mind-we-goofed proclamation Comey dispatched only days before the election did nothing to erase weeks of fevered Republican and pundit speculation over what new information the FBI had found that would possibly cause Comey to make such an explosive announcement in the first place.
When it came to the Russia investigation, however, Comey's instincts steered him in the other direction. After once wanting to pen a newspaper op-ed himself calling out Russian interference in the election, by October he was no longer willing to even acknowledge it.
At their second meeting, Mr. Comey argued that it would look too political for the F.B.I. to comment so close to the election, according to several people in attendance. Officials in the room felt whiplashed. Two months earlier, Mr. Comey had been willing to put his name on a newspaper article; now he was refusing to sign on to an official assessment of the intelligence community.
So we have, from FBI insiders, the same narrative that much of the public had guessed all along. FBI Director James Comey is a straight shooter—when it comes to protecting his own reputation. FBI Director James Comey adheres stringently to department policy—unless the Attorney General is a Democrat he doesn't much like. FBI Director James Comey would never think of upending a national election in order to save his own skin from potential criticism down the line—except for just once, perhaps.
Well, at least now nobody can accuse James Comey of being either inconsistent or partisan. Mission accomplished.