Gowdy: Why Didn’t Comey Try To Get A Special Counsel Appointed In The Hillary Probe Instead Of Deciding Everything Himself?

Via Mediaite, a perfectly fair question. Comey’s answer, I assume, would be that investigating a sitting president, which is what Trump was when Mueller was appointed, is different from investigating a would-be president, which is what Clinton was during Emailgate. Yes, there’s a conflict in a Democratic-run DOJ deciding whether to indict the Democratic nominee, all but dooming her electoral chances if they chose to proceed. But it’s not the sort of direct conflict involved when the DOJ is required to investigate its own boss, as has been the case with Trump and Russiagate since January 20, 2017.

But that raises a question. Why didn’t Comey demand a special counsel on January 20, 2017 instead of waiting until he was fired and then trying to get a special counsel appointed by releasing his memo about Trump and Mike Flynn? 

[….]

Because he, an American super-patriot and man of unimpeachable integrity, was available to make the decision himself. Who needs Bob Mueller investigating Hillary when you could have James “Solon” Comey giving thumbs up or thumbs down as needed?

The punchline, as Gowdy explains at length in the second clip (via the Free Beacon) in an exchange with IG Michael Horowitz, is that Comey was wrong in thinking Emailgate was being run with integrity. Anti-Trump partisan Peter Strzok was his lead investigator. And Comey himself had begun preparing to announce that Clinton lacked the intent needed to establish a crime in mishandling classified information even before the FBI interviewed her to try to determine whether that intent existed. The outcome of that probe was prejudged before it ended, Gowdy notes, and, per Strzok’s texts to Lisa Page, the outcome of the Russiagate probe seems to have been prejudged before it began….