A Higher Loyalty by James Comey

A Higher Loyalty by James ComeyPiling on Donald Trump seems to be a sport these days. In everyone else’s defense, he doesn’t exactly make it difficult. That said, James Comey’s memoir was expected to be another Trump beatdown. Instead, the former Deputy Attorney General and FBI Director barely mentions Trump until the last fourth of the book. Instead, Comey focuses on his career in the US Attorney’s office in both Manhattan and Virginia, then his time as Deputy Attorney General under George Bush. Most of the book compares Bush and Obama’s styles of leadership and establishes something the current POTUS does not understand at all. The FBI functions independently of the White House and has to. Otherwise, it has no legitimacy to do its job.

One of the things Comey makes clear is that FBI agents check their politics at the door. For all his railing on the FBI as biased, he fails to point out that 1.) law enforcement tends to lean right even when serving under a liberal administration, and 2.) Comey twice investigated HIllary Clinton, regardless of the election. And yes, the election was taken into account when the email investigation was reopened. It was discounted when Comey determined it would be worse reopening the investigation against a sitting president.