Hans von Spakovsky, a Heritage Foundation senior legal fellow, described former FBI Director James Comey as “one of the most arrogant, egotistical people I’ve ever run into in Washington, DC.” He offered his remarks in a Tuesday interview with Breitbart News Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow on SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Daily.
Von Spakovsky recalled, “I was actually at the Justice Department when James Comey was still there during the Bush administration, and I remember him bragging about the fact that they had gotten Martha Stewart under that same statute for lying to them, even though her underlying business conduct was perfectly legal, and I was just disgusted by that at the time. Nothing’s changed That law is still being abused the way it’s being abused by the special counsel.”
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Von Spakovsky continued, “[James Comey] is one of the most arrogant, egotistical people I’ve ever run into in Washington, DC, which is saying a lot. And I will tell you, I think this is something that people know about in Washington, is that when he was at the U.S. Justice Department, anytime he was faced with a situation or a problem, his reaction was never, ‘What’s the right thing to do?’ His reaction was always, ‘Hmm, well, what is the best way to handle this that will make me look good?’ That hasn’t changed. You can see in the way he’s been acting in recent months.”
Marlow recalled Comey’s recent admission, in an interview with MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace at the 92nd Street Y in New York City, NY, that he circumvented standard protocol in sending FBI agents to question then-National Security Adviser Michael Flynn at the White House. According to Comey, the newly minted Trump administration was vulnerable to such a move given its being less “organized” than its predecessors.
Jonathan Turley, a constitutional law professor at Georgetown University, wrote of the aforementioned circumvention of protocol by Comey:
“I probably wouldn’t have … gotten away with it.” Those words this week from former FBI Director James Comey could well be chiseled in marble as his epitaph. He was explaining another violation of bureau policy during his tenure days after meeting behind closed doors with House members.
What was shocking was not that Comey violated protocols or policies again but the reaction of the audience to his admission. In describing how he set up a critical meeting with Michael Flynn, former national security adviser to President Trump, the audience was audibly thrilled by his cleverness in keeping Flynn unrepresented by legal counsel and unaware of the true nature of the meeting. Scheduled to testify to House members again next week, Comey may find a less rapturous reception in Congress.
Von Spakovsky also described Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s ostensible investigation of alleged Russian political interference in 2016’s presidential election as akin to a “general warrant from the king.”
Von Spakovsky explained, “The whole reason we have a Fourth Amendment is because the Founders and the colonists didn’t want to have happen in America what happened in England, which was that the King used to give prosecutors what they called general warrants, which wasn’t that some Englishman was suspected of a crime, it was a warrant for prosecutors to simply investigate someone that the king didn’t like until they could find a crime, and we specifically outlawed that.”
Von Spakovsky concluded, “Here, supposedly in this county under our Constitution, the police can’t investigate someone unless they first have evidence that some kind of crime was committed. But the way this special counsel operates, it’s like he’s got a general warrant from the king to just investigate until he finds crimes.”
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