Fired FBI Director James Comey accused Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh of lying to the Senate Judiciary Committee over the meaning of words in Kavanaugh’s high school yearbook. Comey made the accusation in an op-ed published by the New York Times Sunday defending the ability of the FBI to investigate uncorroborated sexual assault allegations against Kavanaugh from decades old school parties. Comey implied Kavanaugh was guilty of the alleged assaults.
The theme of Comey’s op-ed is that the FBI is capable of doing the extra background investigation into Kavanaugh ordered by President Trump. The title is , “James Comey: The FBI Can Do This – Despite limitations and partisan attacks, the bureau can find out a lot about the Kavanaugh accusations in a week.”
James Comey.
“Yes, the alleged incident occurred 36 years ago. But F.B.I. agents know time has very little to do with memory. They know every married person remembers the weather on their wedding day, no matter how long ago. Significance drives memory. They also know that little lies point to bigger lies. They know that obvious lies by the nominee about the meaning of words in a yearbook are a flashing signal to dig deeper.”
Kavanaugh is being accused of lying to the committee about his yearbook and his drinking because of differences in opinions on the meaning of slang terms and how much he could drink without blacking out (which he denies.)
Comey’s op-ed is laced with venom for the man who fired him from the FBI, President Donald Trump, and with venom for millions of Americans.
We live in a world where the president routinely attacks the F.B.I. because he fears its work. He calls for his enemies to be prosecuted and his friends freed. We also live in a world where a sitting federal judge channels the president by shouting attacks at the Senate committee considering his nomination and demanding to know if a respected senator has ever passed out from drinking. We live in a world where the president is an accused serial abuser of women, who was caught on tape bragging about his ability to assault women and now likens the accusations against his nominee to the many “false” accusations against him.
Most disturbingly, we live in a world where millions of Republicans and their representatives think nearly everything in the previous paragraph is O.K.
Comey is self-pitying in the op-ed, opening with a ‘woe is me’ tale from the Hillary Clinton e-mail investigation.
The F.B.I. is back in the middle of it. When we were handed the Hillary Clinton email investigation in 2015, the bureau’s deputy director said to me, “You know you are totally screwed, right?” He meant that, in a viciously polarized political environment, one side was sure to be furious with the outcome. Sure enough, I saw a tweet declaring me “a political hack,” although the author added, tongue in cheek: “I just can’t figure out which side.”
And those were the good old days. President Trump’s decision to order a one-week investigation into sexual assault allegations against Brett Kavanaugh, his Supreme Court nominee, comes in a time of almost indescribable pain and anger, lies and attacks.
