In his important and engrossing book, Barrett has laid out a damning portrait of the FBI in the run-up to the election. Despite Comey’s perspective of himself, history has only further sullied his reputation, and this book adds to the portrait. In Barrett’s telling, Comey foisted a double standard on the FBI and on the American public in the summer and fall of 2016. He attributes the breakdown to a collapse of trust between the Justice Department and the FBI, Comey and McCabe, and the bureau’s headquarters and its New York field office. “By mid-2016,” Barrett writes, “Justice Department officials had come to suspect Comey viewed himself as the most moral, ethical actor in any room he was in.

Source: Washington Post September 25, 2020 17:04 UTC