When Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s long-awaited critique of the FBI investigation into Russian election meddling was released, much of the reaction in media circles focused on the political implications for President Trump. Did Horowitz’s finding that no “political bias or improper motivation influenced” the investigation render Trump’s complaints moot, or did the “at least 17 significant errors or omissions in the Carter Page FISA applications” vindicate Trump?
But the real victim in this dystopian melodrama that has dragged on for more than three long years is not the president who enjoys immense powers and the platform to punch down at his antagonists at will. There’s only one apology owed, and it is not to self-professed victims such as James Comey and Lisa Page.
The Comey-era FBI officials who destroyed Carter Page’s life with an investigation that should have quietly folded its tents shortly after it was opened owe him an apology.
Page, you will recall, was the Naval Academy graduate cum petroleum industry consultant who had the misfortune of serving for a brief period as a foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign.
Peter Strzok and Lisa Page (no relation to Carter Page) deserve no such apology. Victimhood typically relates to someone who acted on by outside forces. How do you present as a victim when you are the architect of your own undoing?
Lisa Page recently shattered her silence with an exclusive interview in the Daily Beast. For all the piece’s fawning adulation and propping up of her victimhood, Page never addresses the gravity of her actions.
Look no further than her ultimate boss at the FBI, James Comey. He has made quite the comfortable post-FBI living by playing the victim card. Predictably, shortly after the report was made public, Comey maintained his cozy relationship with the press as yet another perfectly timed “rebuttal” to the inspector general’s scathing criticisms of his leadership magically appeared, this time in the Washington Post.
Comey is a lot of things. Self-aware is not one of them. As William McGurn points out in a piece entitled, “The ‘Vindication’ of James Comey,” in the Wall Street Journal, “[Comey] has always been at his most natural when most aggrieved.”
In a succession of damning inspector general investigations into his stewardship and actions at the FBI, Comey has deftly memory-holed valid criticisms from Horowitz that he was “insubordinate” (in the Clinton email case), then dishonest with FBI agents dispatched to his home to retrieve FBI memos after he was fired in 2017. In that instance, Horowitz proclaimed that Comey had set “a dangerous example” (by leaking) for the FBI, and he criminally referred Comey for prosecution to DOJ.
And yet the eternally aggrieved former director demands apologies from his critics.
Maybe Carter Page could borrow a tweet from Comey, who once famously sneered at his critics – “I don’t need a public apology from those who defamed me, but a quick message with a ‘sorry we lied about you’ would be nice.”
DOJ IG “found no evidence that Comey or his attorneys released any of the classified information contained in any of the memos to members of the media.” I don’t need a public apology from those who defamed me, but a quick message with a “sorry we lied about you” would be nice.
— James Comey (@Comey) August 29, 2019
Don’t hold your breath, Carter. Comey is still out on his combined “victory lap” and “victimhood tour.”
James A. Gagliano (@JamesAGagliano) worked in the FBI for 25 years. He is a law enforcement analyst for CNN and an adjunct assistant professor in homeland security and criminal justice at St. John’s University.
