The former assistant director of the FBI tells Breitbart News that President Donald Trump fired bureau director James Comey for legitimate reasons.
“He was fired for cause in my view,” James Kallstrom informs Breitbart News. “When the referral came to the bureau close to a year ago, Comey knew at that point, if not soon after, that the Justice Department had no interest in conducting a criminal investigation of Hillary Clinton. They would never approve a grand jury and they would never approve an indictment.”
Kallstrom faults Comey for presiding over a “sham” investigation of Clinton. From granting unnecessary immunity deals to conducting an interview of Clinton not under oath to too slickly issuing a document dump the day after the Fourth of July, the FBI deviated from standard-operating procedure during the investigation of the former secretary of state’s reliance on private servers to send and receive classified material, Kalstrom says.
“He did something the FBI never does,” the former head of the FBI’s New York office points out of Comey. “It never discloses the charges against an unindicted person—ever.”
Kallstrom maintains, “He was so out of left field—the things he did.”
This included citing a lack of intent on Clinton’s part to rationalize not pursuing the case further when the relevant statute does not mention intent. “Intent does not matter at all,” Kallstrom explains to Breitbart News. “There’s no ‘intent’ in the statute. Nevertheless, in my opinion there’s a busload of intent.”
Comey angered supporters of Donald Trump when he refused to recommend charges against Mrs. Clinton in July despite finding numerous instances of wrongdoing. When he reopened an investigation into the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee less than two weeks prior to the election, Comey enraged the supporters of Mrs. Clinton. Ultimately, the FBI director less than four years into his ten-year term counted few friends in either party.
“The cause [for firing] is that he took upon himself authority he didn’t have, number one,” Kallstrom says of the former FBI director acting as a de facto prosecutor rather than as a mere investigator. “Number two, he told the public that he undertook a ‘thorough’ investigation. You can’t put ‘thorough’ and ‘lack of a grand jury’ in the same sentence. He threw the reputation of the FBI under the bus.”
The Trump administration noted a loss of faith in Comey and the need to bolster public trust in the bureau as reasons for the shocking dismissal of the FBI director. In the history of the FBI, just two other directors, William Sessions and L. Patrick Gray, acting as director in the wake of J. Edgar Hoover’s death, left the post involuntarily at the direction of the president.
“He’s basically a good guy,” Kallstrom notes of Comey. “I don’t think he’s done this with malice aforethought. He just lacks common sense. He just wasn’t up for the job of FBI director.”