NY Times Calls Out Comey For Planting ‘Hottest Political Football’ Of 2016

New York Times headquarters
Start your day with TPM.
Sign up for the Morning Memo newsletter

The New York Times editorial board criticized FBI Director James Comey on Monday for his “election-shaking” letter, which it asserts inappropriately politicized the intelligence community and threw the presidential election into turmoil with just days to go.

The editorial board called Comey’s letter announcing to Congress the discovery of emails that “may or may not be new or relevant” to the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server “rash and irresponsible.”

“This is not how federal investigations are conducted. In claiming to stand outside politics, Mr. Comey has instead created the hottest political football of the 2016 election,” it wrote.

While Comey wrote in his letter to several House committee chairs that he was updating them on the Clinton server investigation in the interest of transparency, the editorial board noted that it’s difficult to square that with Comey’s efforts to shield the FBI in other instances. The board pointed to Comey’s reported efforts to avoid signing onto a letter from various intelligence agencies blaming Russian-backed hackers for the theft of private emails from the Democratic National Committee, Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta and others.

Comey reportedly agreed with the conclusions laid out in the letter, the Times noted, but did not want the bureau to appear overly political ahead of Election Day.

So why did Comey break a long-standing Justice Department rule not to disclose sensitive information about an investigation within 60 days of an election?

“[H]is logic makes even less sense than it did on Friday,” the editorial board wrote.

Latest Livewire

Notable Replies

  1. My gut sense from how the “email Clinton scandal worse than Watergate/Dreyfuss” affair has gone in the past is that heavy damage is done to Democrats’ chances just because the words “investigation”, “email” and Clinton showed up in a new story. No amount of calling Comey out will make up for that, on its own.

  2. Avatar for paulw paulw says:

    Sure is a good thing that the Times didn’t maniacally spread the dirt around when the letter first came out. Oh, wait.

Continue the discussion at forums.talkingpointsmemo.com

24 more replies

Participants

Avatar for system1 Avatar for paulw Avatar for antaresting Avatar for hoppy Avatar for sysprog Avatar for maksutov66 Avatar for renatastar Avatar for deewus Avatar for sniffit Avatar for notborneveryminute Avatar for maxaroo Avatar for captaincommonsense Avatar for dave_mb Avatar for emilianoelmexicano Avatar for tena Avatar for jinmichigan Avatar for wsayscoupgood Avatar for asturcot Avatar for coimmigrant Avatar for jsrtheta Avatar for dorkmeister Avatar for centralasiaexpat Avatar for gregangelo

Continue Discussion
Masthead Masthead
Founder & Editor-in-Chief:
Executive Editor:
Managing Editor:
Deputy Editor:
Editor at Large:
General Counsel:
Publisher:
Head of Product:
Director of Technology:
Associate Publisher:
Front End Developer:
Senior Designer: