From the Washington Post, about today’s White House press conference:
White House press secretary Josh Earnest praised Comey as “a man of principle . . . integrity and talent” and said that President Obama, who nominated Comey three years ago to serve a 10-year term, does not believe that he is trying to influence the presidential election.
“The president’s assessment of his [Comey’s] character has not changed,” Earnest said. “The president doesn’t believe he is secretly strategizing to help one candidate or one political party.”
This . . . infuriates . . . me. I mean, I can see the political benefit of the White House remaining neutral on this matter, but why praise this man and express confidence in him?
Integrity means using one set of principles in all areas to which they might apply. Clearly, Comey’s willingness to raise the issue of “new” emails 11 days before the election because the public has a right to know is inconsistent with his unwillingness to comment on Russia’s intervention in our election because of the effect that might have on the election, or his unwillingness to even say whether the matters regarding Trump that have been referred to the FBI are even being investigated because the FBI doesn’t comment on pending investigations. Comey is not a man of integrity.
Let’s just review: Comey sent a letter to Congressional committees to inform them that more information had surfaced in the Clinton email investigation. His excuse—and it is just that—is that he promised them that he would tell them if anything new was discovered.
There are several problems with this. First, no one had (legally) seen the emails at the time of the letter, so no one (legally) knew whether they were related to the earlier investigation. Second, the FBI had no evidence that the entirety of these emails were not duplicates of those that had already been reviewed, and, hence, not new. (And they are now saying that, after they finally got a search warrant permitting them to look at these emails, they don’t have time between now and the election to review them all, which is an admission that they don’t know whether there is anything new in them, and won’t know before the election.) (And here I leave aside the issues raised in other diaries and comments about the technology available to search these emails quickly.) So as far as keeping Congress informed if anything new was discovered, Comey wasn’t doing that because nothing new has, as yet, been discovered.
So why is the White House continuing to say he’s a good guy, and that he’s not trying to influence the election? Do they seriously buy his line that he was just keeping Congress informed like he promised them he would? Are they hoping against hope that he will just resign quietly after screwing up royally?
And if Obama truly believes what Josh Earnest said about Comey, what would possibly change between now and the election that would cause Obama to fire him?