Jones: Comey's actions against Clinton are reminiscent of J. Edgar Hoover
I RECOILED when I learned that FBI Director James Comey had dragged the cold, dead corpse of Hillary Clinton's emails into the final days of the presidential race.
I RECOILED when I learned that FBI Director James Comey had dragged the cold, dead corpse of Hillary Clinton's emails into the final days of the presidential race.
By sending a letter to congressional leaders announcing that the FBI wanted to examine a computer that does not belong to Clinton, in search of emails that might not have been sent or received by Clinton, to scrutinize evidence that might not be germane to the investigation, Comey confused us all. But, according to some published reports, he did so with good reason.
If those reports are to be believed, Comey is the director of an FBI whose right-wing veteran agents are more powerful than Comey himself. Sources say those agents made clear that they intended to leak news of the emails if Comey did not tell Congress about them. Thus, Comey was trapped in a precarious position. Either tell bloodthirsty congressional Republicans about the presence of the emails before the FBI could even legally read them, or risk having his subordinates paint Comey as the architect of a coverup.
I, for one, am not buying it. I believe Comey, a lifelong Republican until July, is abusing his position by engaging in partisan politics. But he's not doing it because right-wing agents threatened to ruin him. He's doing it because he can.
Comey's actions remind me of a terrible time in our nation's history - a time when the FBI was used to maintain racist and sexist social structures, to destroy those who dissented and to bully government officials into submission.
Comey's actions remind me of J. Edgar Hoover.
Hoover, who ran the FBI for nearly half a century, is credited with turning the agency into a professional crime-fighting force. But along the way, Hoover broke the very laws he claimed he wanted to uphold.
He used burglaries - commonly referred to as "black-bag jobs"- to illegally obtain evidence. He kept files on hundreds of thousands of Americans he identified as subversive. To make that list of dissenters, Americans did not have to commit crimes. They had only to defy the racial, sexual or social norms of conservative American society.
Those who dared to do so risked facing Hoover's wrath.
It was Hoover who used bugging, infiltrators, threats and harassment in an effort to browbeat civil-rights icon Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. into suicide. It was Hoover who used his agency to undermine and criminalize the leaders of the Black Power movement. Hoover depicted the Vietnam antiwar movement as a menace to the American way of life. Hoover portrayed the Black Panthers, a small group of progressive blacks that exercised its Second Amendment rights, as the biggest threat facing America.
But it's Hoover's other activities that most remind me of Comey's current course of action.
Hoover, you see, used his position against government officials and those close to them. He gathered files on people such as first lady Eleanor Roosevelt and Supreme Court Justices Louis Brandeis and Felix Frankfurter. With information and rumors about the public and private lives of government officials, he could keep enemies at bay, bend leaders to his will and, yes, even influence American democracy.
Comey, in releasing a letter that tells us nothing new about Clinton's emails, has brought back the tactics of Hoover. He has tainted the electoral process, and he is wrong.
He was wrong in July when he announced that no charges would be filed against Clinton, then embarked on a rant that painted her as incompetent, uncaring and careless. He was wrong Friday when he sent a letter to Congress about emails he hadn't even read. He is wrong even now because he has flouted Justice Department rules by opining on an ongoing investigation.
Unlike Hoover, Comey won't stay at the FBI for half a century. But by doing the bidding of the Republican Party, by assuring that Clinton's emails will follow her into the White House, by essentially creating a controversy where there was none, Comey has used his position to create a political advantage for the GOP.
It doesn't matter now that Comey eventually will be ousted as FBI director.
His decision to create a Hoover-like file on Clinton will assure that he'll always have a job.
Solomon Jones is the author of 10 books. Listen to him mornings from 7 to 10 on WURD (900-AM).
@solomonjones1