It all makes for unedifying stuff. Not so much the high-minded work of a whistleblower with a cause as a lurid rant of an ego untethered. Is this how former directors of the FBI are supposed to behave?

And it comes with dangers. At a time when this White House is under intense scrutiny, as investigators close in on former officials and their lies, at a time when Trump is weighing what might be the most consequential decision of his presidency and mulling whether to launch punishing military strikes against Syria, along comes James Comey’s Ego, nursing a grievance.

If we know anything at all about the ego in the White House it is that personal slights provoke immediate rage and unilateral distraction of the headline-generating kind.

After first helping Mr. Trump win power, James Comey’s Ego has thrown itself back into the political maelstrom and into the Syria calculus.