Callan: Time for FBI director Comey to go
Story highlights
- Paul Callan says that the FBI director, by foolishly making a public announcement that the agency is reviewing newly discovered emails related to Hillary Clinton's personal server, has inserted himself yet again into the campaign
- He says his clumsy handling of the probe is reason for Comey to resign
Paul Callan is a CNN legal analyst, a former NYC homicide prosecutor and currently is "of counsel" to the New York law firm of Edelman and Edelman, PC, focusing on wrongful conviction and civil rights cases. Follow him @paulcallan
(CNN)Donald
Trump's oft-repeated claim that the FBI's investigation of "Crooked
Hillary" and the presidential election itself were and are "rigged,"
seems to have thrown FBI Director James Comey into a state of panic. In
foolishly making a public announcement that the bureau is reviewing
newly discovered emails related to Hillary Clinton's personal server, he
has inserted himself yet again into the presidential campaign.
The
FBI virtually never announces the commencement or termination of
ongoing criminal investigations or the discovery of new evidence. Such
inquiries are often conducted in relative secrecy, enabling a more
efficient investigation.
It
is not unusual for investigations in so-called "white collar" cases to
go on for years, luring the target into an unfounded belief that he or
she is in the clear. Then the hammer falls. A grand jury indictment is
announced by the Department of Justice and the handcuffs are swiftly
employed.
The old, sensible FBI
rule book apparently has been thrown on the trash heap this year. While
undoubtedly attempting to be open and "transparent," to protect the
reputation of the FBI, the FBI director has tossed a Molotov cocktail
into the presidential race.
The
FBI was now taking "appropriate investigative steps. ... to assess
their importance to our investigation." What in the world does this
mean? One thing it means is that this issue will move to front and
center during the final days of the presidential campaign.
Voters
must now be subjected to endless speculation in the press and explicit
accusations from the Trump campaign and other Republican candidates
that Hillary Clinton is a "criminal" aided and abetted by a rigged FBI
and Justice Department. Comey's "openness and transparency" will blow up
in his face and further tarnish the FBI's reputation. He has reinserted
the Bureau into the political process.
The
director probably feared that leaks would lead to speculation that a
renewed Hillary investigation was underway. In trying to get ahead of
criticism of the FBI for jumping to a conclusion too quickly and closing
the original Hillary Clinton email investigation, he has only made
matters worse and dropped a huge new issue into the presidential
campaign, 11 days before the election.
In
truth, investigations open and close routinely and secretly when new
evidence comes to light. Each new scrap in a pile of useful or useless
evidence is not announced in real time, like a scandal in a scripted
reality TV Show. Perhaps it's time for the embattled FBI director who
seems to have forgotten how to conduct a proper investigation to resign.
Comey's
public announcement in July that the FBI had concluded its
investigation regarding Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server
in the conduct of official State Department business and would not
recommend the lodging of criminal charges was historically unprecedented
in a high-profile political case.
The
decision to commence or terminate a criminal investigation by the FBI
is rarely disclosed. In the case of high-profile political figures such
as presidential candidates, the process normally requires that an FBI
"recommendation" based on the evidence it has gathered must be forwarded
to the Justice Department, where a career, nonpolitical unit reviews
the matter, making a recommendation to the attorney general, who makes
the final decision.
This sensible
process was thrown into disarray when former President Bill Clinton made
a surprise airport tarmac visit to none other than the sitting attorney
general, Loretta Lynch. Both parties claimed that they engaged in
harmless small talk involving their families and, of course, nothing
about the FBI's investigation of Hillary's classified document and email
server practices.
The meeting was
utterly improper and the attorney general recognized this, promptly
asserting that she would not personally make the decision about the
Hillary Clinton email investigation, though strangely she would review
the work of her subordinates before any public announcement of
prosecution or non-prosecution was made.
This
was then followed by the highly unusual announcement of "no criminal
charges" and the end of the investigation by the FBI director. In the
very rare case where an announcement of "no criminal charges" occurs,
the prosecutors in the Justice Department would make such an
announcement because Justice, not the FBI, makes prosecutorial
decisions. The FBI makes a recommendation; Justice makes the decision.
Comey,
while presumably attempting to insulate the Justice Department and the
attorney general from claims that the Bill Clinton tarmac meeting had
corrupted the investigative process, took the Justice Department and
Loretta Lynch off the hook and made the announcement himself.
In
defending the statement he made today, Comey might assert that he was
attempting to clarify his prior Congressional testimony. But that
elaboration on his testimony could legitimately have waited until the
FBI completed its analysis of the new emails. He has been around long
enough to understand that any new FBI statements regarding the email
scandal during the final 11 days of the campaign had a high probability
of improperly placing the Bureau into the political process.
Trashing
the Justice and FBI rule books in the interest of "openness" is likely
to put the FBI front and center in one of the most contentious
presidential races in recent US history. J. Edgar Hoover loved to
influence elections, but he had the good sense to keep quiet about it.
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