James Comey Tried to Take Down Trump. Now, He’s Facing Justice.

Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of today’s video from Daily Signal Senior Contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see more of his videos.

Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for The Daily Signal. I’d like to do something different today and the next day, and that is to do a two-part, short, little videos. One is on the moral implications of James Comey’s recent indictment, the former FBI director. And then, the legal ramifications. Even though I’m not a lawyer, I thought we could talk about the legal separately from the moral indications.

James Comey was indicted by the Trump Justice Department on two counts. One, he allegedly had lied under oath to Congress that he had not authorized leaks to the press by FBI subordinates. Probably, in particular, Andrew McCabe, who admittedly lied four times, I think three times under oath, according to the inspector general of the DOJ. And a second count that he obstructed, by lying to Congress, a congressional investigation.

But there’s larger questions here. James Comey, remember, was the FBI director when he interfered in the 2016 election. He said that Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee who was running against Donald Trump, had broken the law by using an unsecure private server, in which classified material was transmitted. But he didn’t think a jury would convict her, or he didn’t think it led to a level of such seriousness. That’s not his decision, really. That’s the Department of Justice. He’s supposed to bring evidence.

James Comey, remember, also, he met with Donald Trump. And they had a confidential conversation. That’s not in dispute. And James Comey assured the president of the United States that he was not the subject of an FBI investigation. That was false. Now, he may not have said that under oath, but he admitted he said that, and so did Donald Trump. They agree on that.

So, he lied to the president of the United States. And then what did he do? He took that conversation and “memorialized it.” And then he had four memos involving his interactions with the president. They were recorded on FBI machinery or devices, but he did not file them officially with the FBI. He put them in his private safe as safekeeping or insurance, so that he could embarrass the president of the United States, if he was ever threatened with firing.

And so, what did he do? He took one of those memos and gave it to a friend, who happened to be a professor at Columbia, for the express purpose of leaking it, leaking it to The New York Times, and then he wouldn’t have his fingerprints.

So, while he is legally charged with this other incident or crime—if he’s proven guilty of leaking—he admitted that he had leaked information about the president of the United States. And he also, essentially, admitted that he wasn’t the object of an investigation, when he likely was.

In addition to this, he was the one that hired Christopher Steele. Christopher Steele was working for Hillary Clinton through three paywalls: through the Democratic National Committee, through the Perkins Coie law firm, and through Fusion GPS. It’s against the law, in a presidential federal campaign, to hire a foreign national. He was on the payroll of the Clinton effort, he was also a contractor that James Comey hired, and he was the one who compiled this phony dossier.

In addition, James Comey was in the room with John Brennan and James Clapper when Barack Obama essentially said to them, both during the campaign, but even after the election of 2016: I don’t believe that your subordinate intelligence reports are accurate about not finding actionable Russian collusion. I want you to bring me something—I’m paraphrasing—that would show that Donald Trump was colluding.

He also, you remember, he laughed when he said that he sent his FBI team to interview Michael Flynn. But the administration, in 2016, during their transition, was so inept, so unprepared, they didn’t even have a lawyer. So, Michael Flynn just welcomed him naively into his office, and he talked to them and he incriminated himself without counsel. Of course, the FBI people involved felt that he had been honest to them and had not tried to mislead them.

What am I getting at? All of these things that James Comey has been responsible for—the Russian collusion hoax; trying to frame Donald Trump, or I don’t know what you would call it, by memorializing a conversation, and then hiding it from the FBI files and leaking it, indirectly, to The New York Times; or having anything to do with this scoundrel, Christopher Steele; or trying to override intelligence estimates and try to fabricate something else; or giving special treatment to Hillary Clinton.

But add it all up, at least, morally and ethically, he was bankrupt, absolutely bankrupt. Maybe not in the legal, strict sense, or not in—he couldn’t be prosecuted in a New York or Washington courtroom and get a guilty verdict from one of those juries. But he is morally culpable.

Next time we’ll talk about his legal exposure.

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