These antic actions, along with the subsequent FBI leakfest aimed at undermining the president it just helped to elect, might be written off as a singular consequence of Mr. Comey’s overweened sense of importance.

But this doesn’t explain the FBI’s top counterintelligence deputy, Peter Strzok, engaging in compromising political banter on an FBI network while playing a central role in the FBI’s most politically sensitive investigations. It doesn’t explain FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith’s criminal act of falsifying agency submissions to the surveillance court.

Ask yourself: In what way, in anyone’s memory, has the FBI covered itself in glory? The Larry Nassar case, in which it failed to pursue a serial abuser of teenage gymnasts? The Noor Salman case, in which it trumped up a failed prosecution of the innocent and abused wife of the Orlando nightclub shooter? The Hatfill case, in which it attempted to railroad an innocent scientist over the 2001 anthrax attacks?

Ironically, Hollywood is now the FBI’s biggest devotee because the agency’s screw-ups are fodder for its best movies.