The true story of the Comey letter debacle

One source disagrees, saying: “As immense as my criticism is for Comey, it is greater for the A.G. and the D.A.G. If they had said, ‘You can’t send that letter,’ he wouldn’t have done it.” “They claim they couldn’t have stopped it, but that is bullshit,” says a former prosecutor, who says that, even today, “they don’t get it, don’t admit responsibility. They say, ‘We couldn’t do anything—you know what he’s like.’ ”

Another observer, who is deeply familiar with the Justice Department, adds, “I know exactly why they didn’t call themselves! They were all thinking, Hillary is going to win. If you could look back and say this would swing it to Donald Trump, you would do anything to stop it, but they were worried that, if they told Comey not to do it, that would leak [from the F.B.I.], and they would be accused of interfering.” (Lynch, Comey, and Yates declined to comment for this article.)

“People say [Lynch] should have ordered him not to do it. I get with 20/20 hindsight why people feel that way,” a Justice Department source responds. “But it was not a situation where [Comey] said, ‘We need to talk.’ It was presented as ‘The director intends to do this. He has an obligation to correct a misimpression that Congress has as a result of his testimony.’ It was portrayed as ‘His reputation is on the line.’ When it is framed that way, as ‘I need to do this or Congress will be misled,’ all of the A.G.’s options are bad. Either he obeys, and she is accused of obstructing justice. Or he disobeys and does it anyway. Or he resigns. All of these are terrible. He put her in an impossible situation.”

“Lynch and Jim Comey were engaged in the same dance,” says another source. “He wasn’t going to have history judge him negatively as having covered things up, and she wasn’t going to have history judge her negatively with political interference. Both were protecting their own reputations and legacies at a great cost to the country.”