{"id":72575,"date":"2017-05-13T14:27:40","date_gmt":"2017-05-13T18:27:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=72575"},"modified":"2017-05-13T14:28:35","modified_gmt":"2017-05-13T18:28:35","slug":"comeys-firing-is-a-gift-to-the-fbi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=72575","title":{"rendered":"Comey\u2019s firing is a gift to the FBI"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Michael Walsh
\n<\/a>New York Post<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

James Comey Getty Images<\/p><\/div>\n

Let\u2019s cut right to the chase: James Comey should have been fired immediately following his disastrous press briefing last July, in which he candidly laid out the case against Hillary Clinton over her mishandling of classified information<\/a> and then refused to recommend charges.<\/a> Overstepping his authority while radiating sanctimony, arrogating power while clumsily intervening in the election, Comey deserved to be sacked on the spot.<\/p>\n

Everything since has been one long slow twist in the wind for Comey, a former US attorney in Manhattan, where his most notable accomplishment was sending Martha Stewart to jail.<\/p>\n

Ignore for the moment Comey\u2019s series of missteps resulting from the Clinton investigation and his increasingly erratic and unconvincing public fan dance as he sent the nation into electoral paroxysms over the past 10 months.<\/p>\n

On his watch, the FBI continued its politically correct, see-no-evil attitude toward radical Islam and thus failed to prevent the atrocity in San Bernardino<\/a>; it also investigated the Orlando nightclub shooter <\/a>for 10 months before closing its case, allowing him to kill or wound 102 people. Meanwhile, the federal office of personnel management was hacked by the Chinese<\/a>, resulting in a serious data breach. That\u2019s failure on an unacceptable level.<\/p>\n

Now the bureau\u2019s tied up and bogged down in the almost certainly chimerical \u201cRussian hacking\u201d fantasy, which bubbled up out of the leftist fever swamp in the wake of Clinton\u2019s loss in November, and for which there is exactly zero evidence.<\/p>\n

So when President Trump finally put Comey out of his \u2014 and our \u2014 misery<\/a>\u00a0last week, it was the best merited cashiering since Truman fired a showboating MacArthur.<\/p>\n

Ignore the political firestorm that\u2019s followed. Trump could cure cancer, solve the Israeli-Palestinian crisis and appoint Oprah as his special envoy to Mars and the Beltway press corps would still howl for his head. The fires fueling this politically motivated hatefest will abate only when the Democrats accept that they lost an election they fully expected to win.<\/p>\n

As the nation\u2019s chief law-enforcement officer, the FBI director shouldn\u2019t be a political figure.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And that\u2019s the key word \u2014 political. As the nation\u2019s chief law-enforcement officer, the FBI director shouldn\u2019t be a political figure.<\/p>\n

The bureau began as a financial-crimes investigatory arm of the justice department in 1908, and grew to maturity under J. Edgar Hoover, monitoring domestic Bolshevik radicalism in the early 1920s, then tackling interstate violent crime during the wild and woolly \u201930s: the birth of the \u201cG-Men.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet the temptation to be a Washington player is always present. Hoover, who served under eight presidents and whose reign lasted until his death in 1972, amassed a storehouse of inside dirt on politicians, which made him essentially unfireable and which led to congressional insistence on Senate confirmation of future directors and 10-year term limits.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s needed now is a restoration of what should be the FBI\u2019s primary mission, as it was in the early Hoover days: counterterrorism. Since the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, it\u2019s far less important for the bureau to be chasing bank robbers in Burlington and Butte than it is for it to function as the nation\u2019s first line of homeland security defense.<\/p>\n

The country doesn\u2019t need another politician, jurist or prosecutor at the bureau. It needs someone dogged, determined, experienced, impartial and fearless.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Although the parallels are not exact, historical circumstances have demanded that the FBI now function in relation to the CIA and NSA similar to the way Britain\u2019s MI5 (domestic) and MI6 (foreign) intelligence services work together. Nearly 16 years on, the Washington establishment still hasn\u2019t accepted that 9\/11 really did fundamentally change our notions of crime, prevention and punishment.<\/p>\n

But the American people have, which is one of the many reasons Trump won the election. Further, far from damaging the president in the eyes of his supporters, Trump\u2019s decisiveness in canning Comey will only endear him to them even more.<\/p>\n

So who should replace Comey? The rumor mills are already churning out names of the usual suspects<\/a>: a judge (Michael J. Garcia), a prosecutor (Assistant Attorney General Alice Fisher), a politician (Sen. John Cornyn of Texas) and a veteran fed (Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe)<\/p>\n

But the country doesn\u2019t need another politician, jurist or prosecutor at the bureau. It needs someone dogged, determined, experienced, impartial and fearless. Someone sworn to protect and serve, who will follow the evidence wherever it leads and make the appropriate recommendations in the name of justice. Incorruptible and impartial.<\/p>\n

In other words, a cop \u2014 the best one we have.<\/p>\n

___
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