James B. Comey

For some time, I have been frustrated by the poor state of public opinion data on national security matters. There’s virtually no long-term temperature polling of public attitudes towards major national security policy areas, and I’ve been talking to a variety of people about how Lawfare might fix that.

Former FBI Director James Comey judged that the President lacked a basic integrity, and that he would have to document each of their conversations to protect himself and perhaps, too, to create a record for use in a future investigation. This was a striking and, of course, deeply disturbing conclusion, and the President and his lawyer have been quick to differ. But the moment that the FBI Director arrived at this conclusion, Mr.

Make no mistake: The firing of James Comey as FBI director is a stunning event. It is a profoundly dangerous thing—a move that puts the Trump-Russia investigation in immediate jeopardy and removes from the investigative hierarchy the one senior official whom President Trump did not appoint and one who is known to stand up to power. One of the biggest dangers of Comey’s firing is that Trump might actually get away with it, ironically, because of Comey’s unpopularity among Democrats and on the political left.

We warned about this danger immediately after the election.

Two days ago, Hillary Clinton was formally cleared, again, of the specter of criminal wrongdoing in the FBI’s email investigation. The only cloud left is the one history is deciding whether to permanently affix over FBI Director James Comey.