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? The inescapable conclusion is that, as usual, Comey seems to have believed he was the last honest man at the DOJ. So long as he was shepherding the Russiagate probe, he could rest assured that it was being run with integrity. The moment he was fired, with Rod Rosenstein encouraging Trump to pull the plug on him, it was time to share the memo and hope that Rosenstein would bring in an independent outsider like Mueller to pick up where he left off. That’s actually the answer to the question Gowdy very effectively asks in the first clip below. Why didn’t Comey demand a special counsel for Emailgate if he was so worried about Loretta Lynch and other Democrats at the Department being conflicted about Clinton?

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. The irony of Comey concluding that the FBI’s investigations were necessarily above board so long as he was presiding over them is that serious bias was happening right under his nose — and he had no idea. Strzok served on Emailgate to the bitter end and continued with Russiagate until Bob Mueller, not Comey, removed him.

It’s weird to think that if Mueller turns around tomorrow and declares that probable cause exists against Trump in Russiagate, one of his biggest media defenders is destined to be … Trey Gowdy.

.@TGowdySC scorches Comey in blistering opening statement at IG hearing https://t.co/wkawa4RjQY pic.twitter.com/L33Zjy2QiU

— Fox News (@FoxNews) June 19, 2018