Schmidt S. - Donald Trump V. the United States - Inside the Struggle to Stop a President

And just weeks later came the disgrace of Abu Ghraib, as photographs depicting dehumanizing abuse from the military prison in Iraq were published, sparking a reckoning across the government about the use and definition of torture and whether the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation” methods were legal or moral. In spite of his silence, Patrice could tell that the revelations agonized Jim. She confronted him on the issue.

“Torture is wrong,” she told him one night that spring. “Don’t be the torture guy.”

“What?” Jim responded. “You know I can’t talk about that stuff.”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Patrice said. “Just don’t be the torture guy.”

“Don’t be the torture guy” became a refrain in his head. Patrice’s warning had a profound effect on Jim and took on a larger significance than even the issue itself: It was a bracing reminder to Jim that people in power simply cannot be counted on to do the right thing, that people in power can seek to justify almost anything, and that power itself can hopelessly distort right from wrong.

In the aftermath of the scandal he stayed at the Justice Department, even though he would later come to question the decision.

“I convinced myself I was protecting the institution and that, without me, it would be worse off,” he says of that period. “Of course, that’s an easy thing to convince oneself of. I think a factor—maybe unconscious—was my desire to get out of there in a way that wouldn’t ruin my employment prospects.”

“Don’t be the torture guy” also brought home to Jim the extent to which Patrice served as a conscience. Unalloyed and unvarnished, Patrice’s appraisal was always there to put him straight. But in the end, Jim alone would step out before the lights.

He had tried to dedicate his life to getting at the truth of disputed matters. And with the Clinton investigation, he was confident that he could prevent a political firestorm by throwing facts at the problem.

“There was going to be a bad fire, and it would hurt the FBI,” he says. “That was inevitable. I never doubted it. When you are standing in the middle of hell, there is going to be fire damage.”

III

THE POINT OF NO RETURN

JULY 5, 2016

199 DAYS BEFORE DONALD TRUMP IS SWORN IN AS PRESIDENT

BONAPARTE AUDITORIUM, FBI HEADQUARTERS, WASHINGTON, D.C.—Comey picked up the phone in his office that morning and called his boss, Attorney General Loretta Lynch. He told her he was going to hold a press conference. But he refused to say what it was about. She could have ordered him to tell her what he was up to, but she didn’t.

Around that time, the FBI alerted the media that the director planned to make a statement at headquarters later that morning, also declining to elaborate on what Comey might be saying. Reporters and photographers rushed over to a small auditorium on the bureau’s ground floor.

At home, Patrice had the television on as she anxiously waited.

Early that morning, as Jim was getting ready for the day, she had walked into his closet, examining his ties. “What tie…,” she said, deliberating what would look best on television.

They agreed on gold—not red or blue. Best to avoid the gang colors.

At 11:00 a.m., Jim walked out into the small auditorium and began his presentation.

“Get to the point, Jim,” Patrice said to herself. “Get to the point.”

But he didn’t get to the point. In anticipation of the criticism that he was in for, Comey’s speech first detailed all the ways in which Clinton had been reckless. Fact upon fact, his presentation was creating the unmistakable impression that the FBI director was building an argument for why the Democratic nominee should be charged with a crime.

“There is evidence to support a conclusion that any reasonable person in Secretary Clinton’s position, or in the position of those government employees with whom she was corresponding about these matters, should have known that an unclassified system was no place for that conversation,” Comey said about Clinton’s use of her personal email system.

Patrice’s friends who were also watching at home started sending her text messages.

Is he going to indict her? Oh my god?

“There is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information,” Comey said.

After thirteen minutes, his tone abruptly shifted as he at last got to his point.

“No reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case,” Comey said. “No charges are appropriate in this case.”

Patrice said to herself, Jeez, Jim, why did you take so long to say that?

“If I had led with the exoneration,” Comey would say, “nobody would have listened to anything else.”

In reaction to the press conference, the Clinton campaign made a strategic decision to embrace the director’s conclusions. Although they saw Comey as arrogant and out of line for holding the press conference and criticizing Clinton, they ultimately decided that there was no good reason to pick a fight with the head of the FBI in the middle of a presidential campaign. Instead of litigating that in the media and attacking Jim, they moved on. The rest of the Democratic Party fell into line behind the Clintons.

In fact, many top Democratic leaders praised Jim for how he handled the Clinton investigation.

“This is a great man,” the House minority leader, Nancy Pelosi, said about Comey shortly after the press conference. “We are very privileged in our country to have him be the director of the FBI.”

Tim Kaine, the Virginia senator Clinton would choose as her running mate, would say on the campaign trail that Comey displayed the “highest standards of integrity.”

One of the few Democrats who went public to criticize Jim was a former Department of Justice spokesman who was known only to Washington insiders. The former spokesman, Matt Miller, took to cable news to say Jim had broken Justice Department rules. Miller said that it was not the department’s practice to use the fruits of an investigation to go out and tarnish the reputation of someone who has no ability to defend herself in court. If the department found wrongdoing, it should bring charges; otherwise, it should say nothing. Miller wrote a Washington Post op-ed titled “James Comey’s Abuse of Power” that claimed that by going public, Comey had set a dangerous precedent.

“Generations of prosecutors and agents have learned to make the right call without holding a self-congratulatory news conference to talk about it,” Miller wrote. “Comey just taught them a different lesson.”

Fellow Democrats told Miller that they wished they could also speak out, but that they feared doing so because they had their own relationships with the FBI to maintain.

But while Democrats—save for Miller—moved to put the investigation behind them, Republicans—who had been Jim’s main concern—dug in. For Republicans to understand Jim’s press conference, they needed a bit of intellectual dexterity, but not much. It asked Republicans to understand and appreciate two concepts at the same time: that Clinton might have done something improper related to national security but that she should not be charged with a crime. But that was a level of nuance that much of Washington lately could not accommodate. Because the finding was disagreeable to them, congressional Republicans assumed it was dishonest and called it suspicious. Given Comey’s harsh criticism of Clinton, they were enraged at his recommendation that she not be charged. His statements were useful to undermine Clinton, but became a target, too.

What is the difference, they argued, between Comey’s “extremely careless” and the “gross negligence” from the criminal statute? His language was proof enough that Clinton was a criminal and that Jim—apparently a Clinton lackey—was covering up her crime.