Few of the forty four presidents who preceded the present one have been as vilified as Donald J. Trump is. The billionaire with his passion for dealmaking is detested by the Republican establishment as an outsider who beat sixteen allegedly more qualified Republicans. The Democrats treat him as an illegitimate impostor, an incompetent upstart, and a marauding gravedigger of the United States of America. The overwhelming majority of the biased media alternately label him as a fraud, a criminal, a soulless money grubber, a traitor, and a deranged warmonger. Additional lurid claims about the forty fifth president are fueled by the Washington, DC grapevine without any factual basis and even a kernel of truth.
The ubiquitous hatred that the electoral victory of President Trump aroused is in itself an alarming sign of the authoritarian nature of the power hungry members of the entrenched power centers within all three branches of the federal government and beyond – including
bureaucracies on the states’ levels, educational establishments from kindergarten to universities, and single issue nonprofit organizations, with the sole aim of indoctrinating the people with outlandish ideas. In this falsely depicted brittle world of vile politicians and hysterical opinion makers the United States of America appears to hover on the brink of catastrophic decline.
The latest attempt at proving that President Trump is a liar, the epitome of political corruption, and the filthy source of every moral disease that has eaten into the national fabric of this great nation, was personified by the nauseating performance of the former director of the FBI, James B. Comey. Throughout his professional career, Comey was a typical bureaucrat. As the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, as the Deputy Attorney General under the Bush Administration, as the general counsel for Lockheed Martin, as the general counsel for Bridgewater Associates, as a Senior Research Scholar at Columbia University, as a member of the Board of Directors of HSBC Holdings, and finally as the Director of the FBI, he managed to build up a reputation for average professional competence and bureaucratic savvy. In none of his jobs did he exhibit brilliance or heroism.
The two individuals – the professional frightened to commit mistakes that would endanger his career and the calculating government worker deeply immersed in office politics – were never completely separated. The former drew on the latter for support, while the latter was continually in personal conflicts by navigating the dangerous labyrinths of the federal government. When the bureaucrat was in the forefront, Comey exhibited professionalism posing as defender of the rule of law. However, when the political side took over, Comey became a dishonest, intriguing, paltry individual, who willingly betrayed his professional self for political survival.
And so, at the age of fifty five, in 2016, the professional and the career bureaucrat came into conflict when the Clintons, who with the full support of former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, orchestrated the ultimate kabuki play of removing the latter from playing a public role in former candidate Hillary Clinton’s criminal investigation. Suddenly, Director Comey was on his own. Abandoned by his superior and forced into a place of unattractive choices, Comey turned out to be neither a smart man nor a hero. He committed the cardinal mistake of an FBI director by crossing the line between being only in charge of investigations and the exclusive domain of the
Department of Justice to decide about the legal fate of any investigated person.
Assuming the irreconcilable roles of an investigator and a prosecutor, Comey also damaged the rule of law. To add insult to injury, he became a schemer. As such, he wanted to play game with the people of the incoming Trump Administration, yet he desired to remain in good terms with the anti-Trump rabble – wishing to have both on his side. Thus Comey transformed himself into a deceitful bureaucrat, lacking in professional and moral integrity, while attempting to exude impartiality and good will. For all these reasons, his testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee was nothing but a failed try to keeping up appearances. In fact, he self-distracted. For this, history will note that he was not only disliked but also despised and hated by both sides.
In conclusion, instead of being an impartial professional amidst the warring Republicans and Democrats, Comey’s testimony turned into one of the greatest disasters, because he abysmally failed in finding the proper balance between his personal feelings and his duty of impartiality. Indeed, the questions that will haunt Comey for the rest of his life are: Why, did he succumb to the illegal machinations of the Clintons and former
Attorney General Lynch? Why, after being fired by President Trump did he betray the organization that he headed? Why did he allow the anti-Trump rabble to use and abuse him? Why did he become a criminal himself by leaking information to the press, while simultaneously striving to save his job? The answers to these questions can be found in the poisonous political climate of Washington, DC. Those who desire power for power’s sake only want to destroy the constitutional order, regardless of the consequences. The Democrats, with the former FBI Director Comey, have unleashed a political and cultural chaos that no longer believes in anything but lawlessness and political hatred that, in turn, threatens the very foundations of American democracy. Instead of rising to the occasion and serve the constitution and the truth, Comey ultimately remained the prisoner of his split personality. Because of this reason, he should be ashamed of himself and disappear as quickly as possible into the gray fog of history.