Sometimes Democrats are bullied by Republicans into denouncing critical-thinking people who see through the morass of bureaucratic regulations and commit a minor transgression. I’m talking about piling on FBI agents Peter Strzok and Lisa Page for criticizing then presidential candidate Donald Trump during the 2016 race. They exchanged text messages in which Trump was called an “idiot,” and more.

Yes, in one sort of ideal world, it would be proper if FBI agents, and even all government employees, were thoroughly non-partisan in American politics. But like all rules, there is a need for exceptions when circumstances go outside the bounds of questionable behavior. In other words, when there is a threat that power will become too concentrated in the wrong hands and steps are taken towards undermining the fabric of our democracy, something must be done. It becomes reasonable for government agents to think about these issues and even to share them with one another and others. That’s precisely what Strzok and Page did.

Here is some of what Agents Strzok and Page texted to one another, as reported in the Washington Examiner on July 2, 2018:

In November 2015, Page said she hopes House Speaker Paul Ryan “falls and crashes in a blaze of glory,” to which Strzok replied: “Yes, And me too. At some point the Rep party needs to pull their head out of their *ss. Shows no sign of occurring any time soon.”

In March 2016, Strzok and Page discuss telling someone who they will vote for in the coming 2016 presidential election.

Strzok texted Page, “I suppose Hillary,” and then moments later, “I would D [Democrat.”

“He doesn’t think you’re an R, does he?” Page asked Strzok, but it is unclear who “he is.

Strzok replied in a series of texts, “He think I wouldn’t vote for her right now. He knows I’m a conservative Dem. But now I wonder.”

Days after the exchange — March 2016 — Page texted Strzok, “God trump is a loathsome human,” to which Strzok replies, “Yet he may win.”

Moments later, Strzok asked whether Trump would be a worse president than Sen. Ted Cruz, to which Page says, “Trump? Yes, I think so.”

FBI agents are citizens of our country. They cannot be expected to thoroughly turn off their thought processes and let the flow go wherever it may. That would be totally contrary to how they are trained to do their jobs.

It may be that Democrats have no way of removing Trump from office other than through the electoral process, although there are some who doubt even that will work. But because of Trump’s coziness with Russia, his disregard for the U.S. Constitution, his impulsive behavior and his lack of qualified advisers, he puts us all at risk every single day. We as individual citizens are largely helpless except to the extent that we can participate in the political process. But those among us who are in intelligence agencies such as the FBI can keep close eyes on what is happening. It is important that they recognize that this is not a normal presidency and extreme caution is needed.

As is so often the case, what Strzok and Page communicated with one another may not have been the problem. It was their lack of care in using government devices for texting.

The FBI higher-ups were left with little choice but to dismiss them. I only hope that in the aftermath, we have plenty of other federal agents who share their views and are more careful in their communication techniques. When all is said and done, there may be quite a few people thanking Strzok and Page.

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Rep. Chris Stewart, a Republican from Utah made this statement on Monday at the House Intelligence Committee, “Every media organization, every political organization, every government organization that I’m familiar with last fall thought that Secretary Clinton would be the next President of the United States.” and FBI Director James Comey replied “I think the Russians agreed”. The prevailing argument among spurned liberals is that Comey thought the election was close and some bias of his caused him to send his letter to Congress days before the election, knowing that it would shift votes to Donald Trump. But Comey’s statement seems to suggest that not only were the Russians sure of an impending Clinton victory, but so was Jim Comey. If Comey didn’t think Clinton could lose, then the argument about him purposefully trying to elect Trump becomes a little dubious. So why then did he send that letter to Congress?

Jim Comey needed to appear objective, because he was building a case for prosecuting Trump associates, and after Trump had threatened to appoint prosecutors to investigate Clinton during the campaign, he understood he needed to build credibility because he’d be accused of playing revenge politics for President Clinton. Which is understandable, because he’d be leading an investigation, after a very bitter election of the would-be President’s former opponent and whether or not his campaign committed treason.

Or so he thought, but as we know Hillary Clinton won the election and Donald Trump won the presidency.

The FBI had been investigating the Trump campaign and its connections to the Russians since July, and it seems likely that at some point in the fall, the FBI discovered some fire underneath all that smoke. Through that investigation, and leaked documents from intelligence agencies, we now know some things that we might not have known otherwise.

We know that Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, had been on the payroll of several projects aiding the interests of Vladimir Putin, as recently as May of 2016.

We know that a senior policy advisor, Carter Page, has financial interests in the Russian energy sector and contacted Russian officials on more than one occasion while employed by the Trump campaign.

We know that Trump confidante Roger Stone, had contact with Julian Assange and seemed to have foreknowledge on WikiLeaks document leaks.

We know that the hackers who stole information from the DNC and distributed other classified materials with the intent of helping Trump, did so at the direction of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

We don’t know to what extent the Trump campaign was involved in the Russian interference in this election or whether President Trump knew, and if he did when did he know it.

But Comey didn’t need the leaks to know what we’ve all slowly been piecing together in the last few weeks, because as Rep. Trey Gowdy said “I would hope that you had access to everything as the head of the world’s premier law-enforcement agency…So if you had it all, the motive couldn’t have been to help you, because you already had it.”

It would seem that Comey had intelligence linking Trump associates to Russia, had intelligence that Russia was intervening on behalf of Trump, and perhaps had intelligence pointing to collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign for months. Yet, none of that was revealed to us until it was much too late.

Despite taking a very active role in the election, Comey tried his best to appear as a non-political figure with no partisan loyalties. Comey after all was a Republican when he was appointed by former President Obama, a Democrat, to his current position. Commenting on Trump would give the appearance of the FBI being a tool of a Democratic White House, and when he did comment on Clinton many observers maligned Comey as just another part of the “vast right wing conspiracy” against the Clintons.

I don’t imagine Comey wanted to comment on Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump unless he absolutely had to. The recent hearing showed a man who is deeply uncomfortable with making even the vaguest of political statements. But once it became clear, or at least most of us thought it had become clear, that Hillary Clinton was without a doubt going to become President, Comey made a judgement call. He decided that it was worth pissing off his future boss, if it meant that he’d get to see his investigation of the Trump campaign to fruition.

He’d found no criminal wrongdoing the first time he investigated Clinton, he knew that whatever files were on Anthony Weiner’s computer likely weren’t going to amount to the 18½ minutes of missing Nixon tapes. But he announced his re-opening of the investigation anyway. He probably figured that with a week left, voters had already made up their minds, and he had a sure-fire plan for saving face.

Sabotaging Hillary Clinton, in Comey’s mind, might’ve been the only way to maintain his legitimacy. Imagine if after the election, it was leaked that the FBI hid an investigation of Clinton in the final weeks of the campaign. Her presidency would be crippled, the FBI would lose the confidence of the public, he’d be removed from his post and justice would be delayed in the case of the Trump-Russia connection. Russia would intervene in 2018, 2020, or as long as they needed in order to get results. Jim Comey must’ve been cognizant of that. But Hillary lost in the biggest upset since 1948, and now Comey is in the awkward position of investigating the President of the United States of America who is much more powerful than if he were just a loser billionaire.

That’s the theory, Jim Comey was too confident in polling, tried to save America and maybe ended up handing the reins of government to a Russian puppet. There’s also the possibility that Jim Comey is just really bad at his job. Which, isn’t a total stretch of the imagination either. Whatever happened then doesn’t matter now, what matters is following the facts about Trump wherever they may lead.

And so far, they lead to the Kremlin.

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I think that I screwed up when I wrote several days ago that it might be a good idea for us to cut current FBI director James Comey a little slack on the letter that he sent to certain Congressional leaders on Friday, Oct. 28 in which he said reopened the Pandora’s Box on Hillary Clinton’s e-mails. Now it seems that Comey may be on a mission to clearly do political harm to Clinton. No sooner had the Weiner tie-in with the e-mails found its way to the press than Comey released information on a clearly ill-advised pardon that President Bill Clinton gave on his last day in office to financier Marc Rich. Comey is clearly a man who must be judged by his deeds rather than his words, because he simple ain’t talking. In that respect, he is a straight arrow about doing his job by the book.

I think that my problem in correctly understanding Comey comes from my attachment to a television show that ran from 1965 – 1974. It was aptly named “The F.B.I.” and it literally starred a character from central casting, Ephrem Zimbalist, Jr. Zimbalist and the character he played, Lewis Erskine, had a profound impact on my post-adolescent mind. Perhaps my problem was that I allowed Erskine to be my “boy hero” long past the time for such reverence. As a teenager, I was smart enough to know that J. Edgar Hoover was bloviating myth, but I desperately wanted the head of the F.B.I. to be someone I could respect. Well into my 20s, Zimbalist was my man.

Back to the real world. Comey gained my admiration in 2004 when as assistant Attorney-General to John Ashcroft, he stood between the attorney general, bed-ridden in intensive care, and two key White House aides in the George W. Bush administration.  White House Counsel Alberto R. Gonzales and President Bush’s chief of staff, Andrew H. Card Jr., wanted Ashcroft to sign off on Bush’s reauthorization of the domestic surveillance program, which the Justice Department had just determine was illegal. Comey kept the two from steam-rolling Ashcroft and the result was that the domestic surveillance program was not renewed at that time.

There obviously was another part of me wondering how good could Comey be if he was the Number Two person to the Bible-thumping reality-challenged Attorney General from Missouri. But then again, I had seen some decent Republicans in my day including Charles Percy, Jacob Javits, Earl Warren and John Lindsay. These are all people who would not have been let into the Quicken Arena in Cleveland last July for the Republican National Convention because they wouldn’t check their empathy at the door.

I should have known that if Comey was in the good graces of Bush and Ashcroft, that he was not an upstanding fellow like Lewis Erskine from “The F.B.I.” But if I was fooled, I was in good company with the likes of perhaps America’s best judge of character, Barack Obama.

The old saying, “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me” seems to apply here. So I guess that my feelings for Comey have gone from bewilderment to something called “pissed empathy.”

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Having worked with high school students for the past 45 years, there are a couple of descriptors of life that involve the word “shit.” Some call it Murphy’s Law, but to students, the appellation “Shit happens” seems to have more resonance. And how better to describe the moment when then dog ate your homework than as an “Oh shit” moment.

A lot of progressives and even some Republicans are disturbed by FBI director James Comey’s letter last Friday to leaders of Congress stating that the Bureau was going to further investigate e-mails from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The reason is that they were found in an unrelated investigation.

Why did Comey send this letter at this time? After all, his one-time boss and former Attorney General Eric Holder had established a rule that investigations of political figures should not be announced within sixty days of an election, unless the circumstances were extremely unusual. The problem with Comey’s call last Friday was that he told the public just enough to say that he was further investigating e-mails, but he gave no indication of whether urgency or serious matters of national security were involved.

An even greater question is why Comey sent his letter without first running it by Attorney General Loretta Lynch. Standard protocol is for the FBI to investigate possible wrong-doing and then to recommend to the Justice Department whether there is sufficient evidence to warrant judicial review, or possibly even prosecution. The attorney-general is the director’s boss, something that J. Edgar Hoover did not recognize in his day but which subsequent directors have. What would give cause to Comey to move ahead as if he was a prosecutor without running the flag up the pole for Attorney General Lynch to see?

One explanation is that because the investigation involved Hillary Clinton, and because several months ago her husband, former President Bill Clinton, somehow positioned himself on the Attorney General’s airplane at Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix, perhaps Comey thought that Lynch had been compromised and could not be impartial in this investigation.

There may well have been substance to this line of thinking, but there is protocol for what to do next when such a development occurs. Rather than free-lancing it, the Director of the F.B.I. could have taken his information to top aides of Lynch who had not had personal contact with Bill Clinton. [Comey was an assistant Attorney-General in the George W. Bush administration]. They could have decided what to do next. Instead of following proper channels, Comey pulled an end run around the Justice Department and went directly to Congress.

There may indeed be circumstances in which government officials should not work within proper channels. The morality of what to do when in messy situations is never easy. But in this case, Comey was taking action without a “wing-man.” He was flying solo and the only person who could explain what he was doing was himself.

That is where it gets particularly sticky. The Director of the F.B.I. is not supposed to talk to the press about on-going investigations. So what we have here is a classic “Catch-22” situation. The Director chose to not follow established procedure and instead to take unilateral action. Perhaps it’s warranted. But how can anyone know when the Director is not allowed to, and has chosen not to, speak about the situation. In essence, the nation is being held hostage for reasons only known to the Director.

I do hope that this is an “Oh shit” moment for Director Comey. I hope that he is wishing that he had a “do-over.” From a global perspective, nothing short of the future of the United States is at stake. From a personal perspective, Comey is a man with what seemed to be an impeccable record who seems to have tarnished himself inaptly.

Perhaps if he just said, “Oh shit,” we would all understand.

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