Comey conducted an investigation against Trump for alleged ties with Russia, which has been denied both by the White House and the Kremlin. At the same time, Trump's defeated opponent in the presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton, accused Comey of spreading unconfirmed information about the new investigation against her just ten days before the vote.
FORMER REPUBLICAN AND THE FBI'S TALLEST DIRECTOR
The seventh director of the FBI, James Comey, was born in Yonkers, New York in 1960. He studied religion and chemistry at the College of William & Mary in Virginia, where he authored many articles for the local newspaper. He also met his wife Patrice there. Comey received a law degree from the University of Chicago in 1985.
Earlier, speaking at the hearings in the US Congress, Comey stated that he was apolitical, however, for a long time he was a registered Republican, but has not been since 2016. Records of the US Federal Election Commission show that Comey donated money to the presidential campaigns of John McCain and Mitt Romney.
Until his recent departure, Comey was the tallest-ever director of the FBI, standing at 6 feet 8 inches. He likes to play basketball.
THE CASE OF MARTHA STEWART
It was James Comey, who, as a prosecutor of the Southern District of New York in 2003, charged one of the richest women in the United States, Martha Stewart, with fraud. In March 2004, Stewart was found guilty of using insider information in 2001 to sell her share of the pharmacological company ImClone Systems, Inc. Almost the next day, this firm announced that the US Food and Drug Administration had not allowed it to produce and sell a treatment for cancer, Erbitux, leading to a sharp drop in the company's share price. Steward was sentenced to five months in prison.
THREE CASES OF CLINTON
The investigation of a high profile e-mail hacking case of Hillary Clinton, which was initiated shortly before the election of the US president in 2016, was already the third investigation by Comey of the Clintons. In the 1990s, the FBI future director, as a member of the US Senate special committee, was engaged in the investigation of the Whitewater scandal and the role of the Clintons in a case of multi-million dollar real estate fraud. Later, in 2002, Comey took on the case of the controversial pardon issued by then President Bill Clinton regarding the scandalous businessmen Pincus Green and Marc Rich. The latter donated more than $1 million to the US Democratic Party and sponsored the Senate campaign of Clinton's wife and future presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
The charges against Rich and Green included tax evasion and the purchase of Iranian oil, bypassing an embargo on it. Clinton pardoned them on his last day as president (January 20, 2001), and both immediately left the country.
ALMOST SUPREME JUDGE AND OPPONENT OF TORTURE
Comey was deputy US attorney general under President George W. Bush. In 2004, he refused the demands of the White House to resume a surveillance program of telephones and e-mail without the authorization of a court.
During the administration of Barack Obama, Comey could become a supreme judge: when Supreme Court Associate Justice David Souter resigned, some members of the administration insisted on including Comey in the shortlist of possible candidates. But Obama chose otherwise.
Comey argued against violent techniques of interrogation, for example, torture by waterboarding. In particular, he stated that the CIA would regret using such methods.
HOOVER'S SHADOW?
The FBI director is an extremely influential and independent figure in the US system of government. The founder of the Bureau was Edgar Hoover, who headed the bureau for almost half a century. None of the six presidents who worked with him dared to fire the omnipotent head of the bureau. Hoover collected dossiers discrediting politicians, including presidents, which gave him the opportunity to blackmail everyone, right up to the head of state. Critics argue that Hoover actively used these opportunities.
After Hoover's death, the FBI director's tenure was set at ten years, more than the president's maximum term (two four-year terms), senators (six years before re-election), and members of the House of Representatives (two years). Only life-appointed judges of the Supreme Court enjoy a more stable status than the director of the FBI.
However, even Hoover was never accused of having sole influence on the results of the presidential election. Hillary Clinton directly accused Comey that his statement on October 28, 2016 about new e-mails related to the investigation against her and her campaign, changed the course of history. According to Clinton, if the elections were held on October 27, she would be president. A number of sociologists agree with this, Clinton's already weak lead in the polls declined sharply after Comey's statement.
Comey stayed on as FBI director for four years. In 2013, his candidacy was supported by 93 senators against one.
Many experts considered Comey to be virtually untouchable, given that he was investigating Trump's team. Comey himself stated last week in Congress that he was worried that he had influenced the presidential election. However, Comey insisted on the correctness of his actions.
