A letter concerning Comey the God!

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 2016

Striking facts which have gone unreported: We were surprised by a letter we read in yesterday's New York Times.

The letter came from Evan Stark, professor emeritus of public affairs at Rutgers. It concerned the professional history of the man called Comey the God:

LETTER TO THE NEW YORK TIMES (11/2/16): Hillary Clinton should be excused for associating James B. Comey’s letter to Congress with the Kenneth Starr investigation of her husband. Yes, Mr. Starr doggedly pursued the Clintons over Whitewater. But it was Mr. Comey who, as deputy special counsel of the Republican-led Senate Whitewater Committee, publicly accused Mrs. Clinton of the mishandling and destruction of documents as well as of patterns of concealment—comments that sound eerily similar to his equally unsubstantiated and unsolicited accusations about her emails in 2016.

Following his transparently political role in the failed Whitewater investigation, Mr. Comey pursued Bill Clinton for pardoning Marc Rich in 2001. To his credit, when Mr. Comey brought no charges, he refused to comment on his investigation, noting it would be unethical to do so. Would that the lesson had stuck.

We didn't recall being aware of the highlighted facts. Today, we get a rough idea why. Extending back to Comey's first intrusion on the White House campaign in early July, these facts had gone unreported by the Washington Post and the New York Times.

Using the Nexis search engine, we find no sign that either paper reported these parts of Comey's background. Until yesterday, that is, when the Washington Post published this account of Comey's role in the Rich pardon and its aftermath:

HELDERMAN, HAMBURGER, HORWITZ (11/2/16): This week's release of the Rich files demonstrates how many of the players in the current Hillary Clinton drama played roles in Clinton-related battles of the past.

Comey, for instance, as a young prosecutor in New York, helped lead the case against Rich. Later, as U.S. attorney, he led the office that handled the investigation into the Clinton pardon from early 2002 to the end of 2003.

Former attorney general Eric H. Holder Jr., a Clinton backer who this week wrote in a Washington Post op-ed that Comey made a "serious error" in announcing the resumption of the email probe, was deputy attorney general at the time of the pardon and acknowledged that he had been contacted directly by Rich's attorney. The pardon was criticized in part for bypassing an established process in which Justice Department lawyers review applications for merit. Holder's name was one of only a few not blacked out in the redacted files released this week.

Comey eventually supported Holder's nomination for attorney general but told senators in 2008 that he had been "stunned" by the Rich pardon and that Holder's actions in the case reflected a "huge misjudgment."

Comey first intruded on the White House campaign on July 5. At that time, he offered an irregular, scolding assessment of Hillary Clinton's past behavior.

He intruded on the campaign again last Friday, October 28. Two days ago, the FBI mysteriously posted its ancient files concerning its probe of the Rich pardon, which had left Comey "stunned.".

Almost four months have passed since Comey's first intrusion on the campaign. It's hard to believe that these parts of his professional history went unreported all that time. But it seems they did.

For readers of the New York Times, the contradiction may not seem all that jangling. The New York Times hasn't even reported the fact that the FBI has weirdly released its files concerning the Rich pardon. Kept suitably clueless by Big Brother, Times readers won't have to wonder about this deeply irregular confluence of events.

Comey the God is a powerful god. When he roars, "journalists" scatter. Could such a god possibly act in bad faith?

"Unthinkable," Carl Bernstein said.