Comey Takes the Oath

By Scott Horton

James Comey was deputy attorney general for the first year of Alberto Gonzales’s term as attorney general. He’s a career prosecutor with a well-established reputation for integrity and earnestness (he wrote a thesis on Reinhold Niebuhr). Comey was subpoenaed to testify before the House Judiciary Committee today.

His appearance was extremely impressive in every respect. There are people who just seem to ooze candor. Comey is one. I came away being completely sold by his presentation.

Unfortunately, that’s not good news for his successor or for Attorney General Gonzales. Comey spoke in great depth about the evaluations process and about the specific cashiered U.S. attorneys. There were, it turns out, questions about exactly one of them. What he had to say about others—and particularly Carol Lam of San Diego—comes close to eviscerating the official account covering their firings.

Comey refuses to provide cover or explanations for what was done, and his description of the process for firing two U.S. attorneys during his tenure seems sensible and professional and something quite different from what Sampson and Goodling did.

Comey damns the Gonzales-McNulty period by consistently providing a positive example. Jason McLure reports in the Legal Times:

In a rebuke to the Justice Department's current leadership, former Deputy Attorney General James Comey gave high praise to five of the eight prosecutors fired by the department last year when he testified Thursday before a House subcommittee probing the firings.

Comey, who, as the department's No. 2 from December 2003 until August 2005, directly supervised all 93 U.S. Attorneys, said he was unaware that other Justice officials had begun a formal process to identify U.S. Attorneys for dismissal during his tenure at the department. Asked by House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers Jr., D-Mich., about the performance of former U.S. Attorneys Carol Lam, John McKay, Daniel Bogden, David Iglesias and Paul Charlton, Comey said, "My experience with the U.S. Attorneys you just listed was very positive."

Comey also provided a strong defense to Milwaukee U.S. Attorney Steve Biskupic. This was persuasive up to a point—when Comey acknowledged that he had no familiarity with the cases or facts which have given rise to charges against Biskupic. Comey gives the distinct impression of a man whose loyalty to the country and to the institution of the Department of Justice top any sort of political calculus—but perhaps that explains why he is no longer at Gonzales’s Justice Department. Among the documents circulated at the Judiciary Committee meeting was an email that Comey sent to Bud Cummins, the cashiered U.S. attorney in Little Rock. It said:

"You're a good man and have handled this maelstrom with great dignity. Watching it causes me great pain, for the USAs, whom I respect, and the Department, which I love," Comey wrote. "Regardless, I will not sit by and watch good people smeared. What's that quotation about all that's necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to remain silent?"

The quotation is a paraphrase of a line of Burke’s in Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents (1770), and James Comey was not silent.