Nine years ago, progressives wanted James Comey strung up in the public square. Today, he’s their cause celebre. How times change.
In 2016, Democrats lambasted the then-FBI director for going public days before the presidential election with potentially damaging details on the probe into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server. Many partisans later accused him of costing Clinton the election.
Nearly a decade later, the Justice Department under President Donald Trump has pushed two felony charges against Comey alleging that he lied to Congress in 2020 when he testified about leaks regarding the Russian collusion hoax that dominated the president’s first term. Democrats are now aghast, rushing to defend Comey.
But their efforts to rehab his reputation depend on historical revisionism.
The FBI has been politicized virtually since its founding (think: J. Edgar Hoover). Comey continued in that tradition. Let’s not forget that he initiated the Russia investigation based in large part on the nonsense in the Steele dossier — a primary source of which had ties to Russian intelligence.