Francis A. Avila Jr.: What caused Bee to change its mind about Comey?
Well, what caused the editors of The Bee to change their minds on James Comey?
Recently the editorial page all but called James Comey a partisan hack who handed the election to Donald Trump by his unwarranted meddling in the 2016 election.
When Trump obliged them by firing Comey, the editors immediately pivoted to claiming Comey was an indispensable man, all the stands between us and lurking fascist tyranny. The chattering classes promptly lost their minds.
Nowhere did the editors engage the serious and cogent case laid out by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. Rosenstein found that Comey was “wrong to usurp the Attorney General’s authority on July 5, 2016,” and further that the FBI Director “is never empowered to supplant federal prosecutors and assume command of the Justice Department.” When Comey decided to act as a human heat shield for Loretta Lynch and her thoroughly politicized Justice Department, he became “a textbook example of what federal prosecutors and agents are taught not to do.”
Nevertheless, given the timing and bad optics this decision creates, it would have been more prudent for Trump to retain Comey if only to spare us the cognitive dissonance of hyperventilating Modesto Bee editorials.
Francis A. Avila Jr., Modesto
This story was originally published May 22, 2017 at 1:16 PM with the headline "Francis A. Avila Jr.: What caused Bee to change its mind about Comey?."