By Paul McGeough
Washington: FBI director James Comey stands 203cm tall, prompting this endorsement by President Barack Obama at Comey's swearing-in three years ago – "[he's] a man who stands very tall for justice and the rule of law."
But in detonating a bomb beneath Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign on Friday, some of the director's former colleagues aren't so sure.
FBI insiders defended their boss, explaining he was driven to disclose the renewed investigation of Clinton's controversial email server by a sense of obligation to lawmakers, and by anxiety that if news of the discovery of a trove of new emails was leaked before they were fully examined, he would be accused of a cover-up for Clinton.
In a memo to FBI employees soon after his disclosure to Congress, Comey said he felt "an obligation to do so, given that I testified repeatedly in recent months that our investigation was completed," The Washington Post reported.
James Comey, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation last month.Credit: Bloomberg
"Of course, we don't ordinarily tell Congress about ongoing investigations, but here… I also think it would be misleading to the American people were we not to supplement the record."
Comey's explosive letter to Congress seemed to have been preordained by his testimony given under oath to congress in July. While defending his decision to close the file on Clinton's email without laying charges, he responded when asked if he might reopen the investigation: "It's hard for me to answer in the abstract…we would certainly look at any new and substantial information."
A registered Republican voter for much of his life, Comey has been in tight corners before – at 17 he was held hostage in his family's New Jersey home, by a gun-wielding rapist; and he has investigated the Clintons twice before his dig into Hillary Clinton's email server – first in the mid-1990s, over the fabled Whitewater land deal that went bust; and in 2002, over a controversial pardon by former President Bill Clinton for tax fugitive Marc Rich, whose wife made a hefty donation to the Clinton presidential library and to Hillary Clinton's senate campaign, which were seen in some quarters as quid pro quo.
In both cases he didn't - as the Trump mobs might demand - "lock 'em up". But in 2000 Comey did have lifestyle guru Martha Stewart locked up for five months, for lying to the authorities and investors over a dodgy stock deal.
Hillary Clinton and FBI Director James Comey.Credit: AP
Importantly, Comey rose to the upper echelon of the FBI during the Bush years and when Obama ushered him into the top office Republicans had no complaint; the Senate confirmed his appointment with as 93-1 vote.
It wasn't till July 2016, that the GOP started tearing him down – when he decided not to press criminal charges against Hillary Clinton over her controversial private email server.
Controversial: FBI director James Comey.Credit: AP
But after his sensational announcement on Friday, in which he revealed that the FBI had reopened the email investigation of Clinton, all the more explosive because it was bereft of detail, Comey came under sustained attack.
"This is as bad for Comey as it is for Hillary," Tom Fitton, the president of Judicial Watch, a conservative advocacy group that has successfully sued for access to thousands of Mrs Clinton's private emails, told The New York Times.
Donald Trump enthusiastically greeted the explosive return of Hillary Clinton's private email server to the presidential race just minutes after the FBI announced its decision on Friday.Credit: Bloomberg
Criticising the paucity of information in Comey's letter to congress, Fitton said "this letter raises all sorts of questions that Comey and the FBI should have to answer. They can't roll this out in the middle of a presidential campaign and just leave it at that."
Former federal prosecutor Peter Zeidenberg told Politico magazine: "I got a lot of respect for Jim Comey, but I don't understand this idea of dropping this bombshell which could be a big dud. Doing it in the last week or 10 days of a presidential election without more information? I don't think that he should because how does it inform a voter? It just invites speculation ... I would question the timing of it. It's not going to get done in a week."
Fireworks explode during a campaign rally with Donald Trump, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa on Friday.Credit: Bloomberg
Nick Ackerman, a former federal prosecutor in New York and an assistant special Watergate prosecutor, was scathing. He told The Washington Post that Comey "had no business writing to Congress about supposed new emails that neither he nor anyone in the FBI has ever reviewed.
"It is not the function of the FBI director to be making public pronouncements about an investigation, never mind about an investigation based on evidence that he acknowledges may not be significant."
Hillary Clinton.Credit: AP
Comey's critics questioned the propriety of a decision he made in July, after clearing Clinton on the email question, to take the unusual action of defending the decision and explaining publicly the process by which it had been arrived at by the FBI – and how that clashed with the agency's public silence on what arguably, in the context of the election, are related investigations into suspected Russian hacking of the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign and of possible links between Russia and several Trump campaign staffers.
Former Justice Department and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spokesman Matthew Miller tweeted that Comey's July explanation "was the original sin, & it begat the rest."
He told reporters: "The Justice Department's longstanding practice is don't do anything seen as trying to influence an election. That's usually interpreted as 60 days, let alone 11. ... It's completely unfair to Secretary Clinton and it's really unfair to the voters. There's no reason he had to send this letter [to Congress]."
Another former Justice Department spokesperson, Emily Pierce, suspected his Friday letter was a bid to appease internal FBI critics who supported the Trump campaign's charge that he had cleared Clinton in July for political reasons.
"He's come under a lot of criticism from his own people for how he's handled this. He's trying to gain back some of their respect," she was quoted in Politico. "His ability to do what he does largely depends on the respect within his own ranks. He often does things because he's trying to prove his bona fides to his rank and file. I think that's part of it."
Other former officers defended Comey, arguing it was inconceivable that he'd make such a politically charged announcement without having been advised that the newly uncovered emails were of substance.
"Comey's not that way. He's a very practical man. It must be something that goes to the substance," one former FBI staffer said. "It can't be cumulative. He's not a grandstander... It's not his style."
Columbia law school professor Dan Richman, also a former federal prosecutor, told Politico "after being roasted from both sides, but even without that, the director's approach is to just keep your head down and do what one normally does.
"[But] the last thing anybody wants to do is have the organisation sit on something where Congress has shown such particular interest. There's no winning this game, and one of the clearest things the director has been on so far is he's trying not to play the game and to keep his head down."
It is telling, that Comey was just as ornery in dealing with the George W Bush administration – spectacularly so.
In an incident that took some years to surface – by his own telling while giving testimony to a Senate committee in 2007 – Comey and others in the Attorney Generals office decided in 2004 that they could not sign-off on a White House demand that a federal domestic surveillance program be expanded.
John Ashcroft, the attorney general of the day was in intensive care in hospital, and late at night White House lawyer Alberto Gonzales and Bush chief of staff Andrew Card made a late-night visit to the hospital, to plead with the ailing Ashcroft to overrule his minions.
Ashcroft refused the request. The other person, standing quietly at his bedside, was Comey.