In short: During the 2016 election, James Comey in his capacity as FBI director behaved as a committed and highly effective partisan of Donald Trump.

But that’s not all. Let’s consider his previous most famous career moment, when he helped prevent an end-run around proper legal procedures in March 2004. At that moment, Attorney General John Ashcroft was severely ill in the hospital and Comey (then Ashcroft’s deputy) was temporarily serving in his place. Head of the Office of Legal Counsel Jack Goldsmith had judged that an ongoing warrantless wiretapping program was illegal, and he, along with Comey and then-FBI Director Robert Mueller, threatened to resign unless the program was stopped. In response, White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales and then-Chief of Staff Andrew Card went to Ashcroft’s hospital room to try to trick the delirious man into signing off on it. Comey got wind of this and went blazing across D.C. in the middle of the night to try to head them off. (Remarkably, Ashcroft told Card and Gonzales to go pound sand.)

And sure, good for them. But what the focus on this dramatic confrontation overlooks is that Comey went on to approve a warrantless wiretapping program that was still plainly illegal and a bald violation of the Fourth Amendment.