Opinion: Even Comey’s critics should be glad he’s staying

President Trump reportedly has decided to retain FBI Director James Comey, though no official announcement has been made by the White House.

If Comey is indeed staying on, that will be disappointing news to some — notably supporters of Hillary Clinton who blame Comey (along with Vladimir Putin) for her defeat — but also other disinterested critics of Comey’s actions during last year’s presidential campaign. But it’s the right outcome.

Comey is in only the fourth year of a statutory 10-year term, fixed by Congress as a way to insulate the director of the FBI from partisanship and to distinguish that law-enforcement official from other officials — including the attorney general, the FBI director’s nominal superior — who are expected to implement a president’s policy preferences.

True, the president can remove the FBI director at any time, but the fixed term ought to be honored unless the official has engaged in misconduct.

Of course, some of Comey’s more caustic critics believe he is guilty of just that. They cite one or more of these actions:

* His decision to go public last July with his recommendation to the Justice Department that Clinton not be charged with a crime for mishandling classified information about her private email server.

* His simultaneous statement that there was evidence that Clinton and her aides had been “extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.”

* His decision to provide Congress with documents relating to interviews with Clinton and other witnesses.

* Last and most controversial, his decision 11 days before the election to send Congress a letter (which quickly became public) saying that the FBI had learned of new emails that “appear to be pertinent” to the Clinton investigation. Although Comey sent Congress another letter two days before the election saying that nothing in the additional emails had altered the FBI’s earlier recommendation, the damage had been done.

The Justice Department’s inspector general is investigating whether “policies or procedures were not followed” in connection with the Clinton email matter, and he is looking not only at Comey’s actions but also those of others. If that investigation were to produce evidence of illegality, Trump obviously could dismiss Comey. But that seems highly unlikely.

Even some of Comey’s critics acknowledge that the director was faced with a difficult dilemma last summer: a presidential candidate under investigation whose husband — himself a former president — had recently met with the attorney general who would make the final decision on whether criminal charges would be brought against his wife.

Given that situation, Comey’s decision to go public with his recommendation is defensible; his later actions, including the letter about the additional emails, much less so. But a firing offense?

Then there is the fact that if Comey were to go, Trump would nominate his replacement, at a time when the FBI is continuing to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election designed, in the view of U.S. intelligence agencies, to assist Trump and harm Clinton. Even Comey critics who otherwise might favor a new FBI director will think twice before calling for his head under these circumstances..

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