When Democrats blame James Comey for costing Hillary Clinton the election, they refer to the Oct. 28 letter he sent to members of Congress informing them that the FBI had found new emails of Hillary Clinton’s — they were on the computer of Democratic former congressman Anthony Weiner, husband of Clinton confidant Huma Abedin.
Why did Comey feel the need to inform Congress? “The duty to correct” is the phrase Comey uses. Comey had previously testified to Congress that there were no emails they hadn’t reviewed. The letter of course went public. It landed on the front page of the New York Times. Hillary Clinton and millions of Democrats and half of the media accused him of throwing the election to Donald Trump. This was very unpleasant for him.
Comey in his prepared statement explained:
the FBI and the Department of Justice had been reluctant to make public statements that we did not have an open case on President Trump for a number of reasons, most importantly because it would create a duty to correct, should that change.
In normal circumstances, the FBI director would have no duty to publicly announce he was investigating the president. Declaring publicly in March that Trump was not under investigation would, Comey believes, would require Comey to go public if later the investigation turned to him.
If we grant Comey that such a “duty to correct” would be created by a public exonerating statement, there’s another question: Why would that be so bad? Isn’t that a political question? If Trump wants to put himself in the position of possibly one day compelling the FBI director to announce the president is under investigation, isn’t that up to Trump? Why should Comey protect Trump from that political problem?
Another explanation is that Comey, after having “lived” the unpleasantness of publicly pointing a finger at a top politician, didn’t want to go through that again. Is that fear of political firestorm a valid reason to stay quiet?
Timothy P. Carney, The Washington Examiner’s commentary editor, can be contacted at [email protected]. His column appears Tuesday nights on washingtonexaminer.com.
