Jim Comey, the Biggest Loser

My New York Post column today takes a look at the sorry spectacles of the wreck of former FBI chief James Comey. It’s not a pretty sight:

If you want a visible symbol of all that’s wrong with Washington these days, look no further than the 6-foot-8-inch frame of James B. Comey Jr., whose DC circus act finally closed on Thursday with an unctuous performance before the Senate intelligence committee. Seeking to take down the president of the United States for unceremoniously firing him, the former FBI director succeeded primarily in embarrassing himself and the bureau.

Call him the Biggest Loser.

But Comey’s not alone. During his much-hyped testimony — treated by the media as the second coming of Joe Valachi ratting out the Mafia — Comey did manage to smear president Trump’s character (a “liar”). He also succeeded in wounding his former boss, Loretta Lynch, embarrassing The New York Times and hurting the feelings of the anonymous-quoting media by likening them to “feeding seagulls at the beach.”

For a White House press corps praying for Watergate Redux, Comey even outed himself as this year’s model of Deep Throat, freely admitting he leaked his own memo regarding his unease with Trump via a buddy at Columbia Law School. He admitted he did it to provoke the appointment of a special counsel to investigate the alleged Russian interference with the 2016 presidential election.

How does Comey return to private life after this and still look himself in the mirror? Never mind the possible legal jeopardy he’s put himself in by outing himself as one of the leakers-in-chief — does anybody really think the Phantom Memo leak via Columbia professor Dan Richman to the partisan journalistic fences and bagmen at the New York Times was Comey’s first rodeo? Just think, as we Irish Catholic schoolboys are always wont to do, of the shame. There’s no sin greater than shaming yourself and your associates in our cultural hierarchy of peccadilloes, and surely Comey must be aware of how thoroughly he disgraced himself last week.

But wait — it gets worse: for Comey, for the Democrats, for the #neverTrumpumpkins, and for the whole D.C. racket.

We know for sure that Trump was never under investigation during the FBI’s probe into former National Security Adviser Mike Flynn and the phantasmagorical “Russian hacking” of the election. We know because James Comey finally confirmed one of the few details of this case that had somehow not leaked out.

We know that the Obama administration had its thumb on the scale throughout the entire Clinton investigation; we also know that Comey accommodated every break his boss Lynch gave Clinton without a smidgen of dudgeon.

Still up for debate is the insinuation that Trump is guilty of obstruction of justice for telling Comey he “hoped” the FBI could let “good guy” Flynn off the hook for his contacts with the Russians. There’s still no concrete evidence of any malfeasance, and the Times’ discredited story ought to concern other reporters that Obama loyalists could be manipulating them as part of the “resistance.”

At least we finally we know something important about Washington today: that getting and keeping the job in DC is more important than actually doing the job. If the sensitive Comey felt pressured by Trump to drop the Russia probe, his proper recourse was informing his boss, Jeff Sessions, not leaking a “Dear Diary” entry to the media when it served the purposes of bureaucratic infighting.

Still, the underhanded Comey accomplished his purpose of provoking a special counsel in order to investigate… what? Everybody knows the Russians and others are constantly trying to influence the course of events in the United States; think of them as unregistered foreign lobbyists, using the services of teenaged hackers in Moldova to press their cases. That the dishonorable American media was a willing accomplice in Comey’s endeavor tells you all you need to know regarding the extent of corruption in official Washington.

Perhaps the president should simply declare victory, and in light of Comey’s testimony, close down the Robert Mueller investigation. The end game for the Democrats and the media is and always has been the destruction of the Trump presidency, so best to confront and defeat them now, before the Chuck Schumers of the world can continue their campaign to overturn the election.

Despite all the collateral damage, the political situation remains unchanged. Those who refuse to accept the results of the election will continue to harry the White House, while Trump’s defenders will redouble efforts to stop them. Meanwhile, there’s a new FBI director on the way, health care and tax reform, and Donald Trump remains president.

Jim Comey lost his job. Now let The Donald do his.

A characteristic American virtue used to be fair play: you got your at-bats and your opponent got his. But the red-diaper-baby media and its fellow travelers in Congress, academe and elsewhere play by no such rules. Henceforth, deal with them accordingly.