No matter who wins, FBI director faces tense days ahead after election

WASHINGTON — FBI Director James B. Comey sometimes rattles off the exact amount of time left in his decadelong term as if he is eagerly watching the clock.

The next six years, nine months and 30 days until Sept. 4, 2023, look a lot more difficult lately.

Depending on who wins the election, Comey will either work for a man who accused him of being part of a rigged criminal justice system or a woman who has criticized his decisions as "deeply troubling" and whose surrogates accused him of committing a stunning violation of long-standing principles of fairness.

Friends and colleagues say that, despite a controversy that has entangled the FBI in presidential politics, Comey feels no pressure to leave office and has no plans to do so. But, as one colleague recalled Comey saying recently, "It's going to be awkward."

Things will be particularly awkward if Hillary Clinton wins, those close to her and to Comey acknowledge. His decision, in the campaign's final days, to make public an FBI inquiry into emails belonging to one of Clinton's aides renewed a controversy she thought she had put behind her. He left her little time to resolve it, and provided little more than a vaguely written letter for her to rebut.

[FBI fear of leaks drove Comey's decision on emails linked to Clinton, sources say]

Clinton has sidestepped questions about whether, if she is elected, she intends to keep Comey in his job. Her surrogates and supporters say firing him, while legal, would be politically impossible.

"The political cost of firing him is greater than the political cost of keeping him," said James M. Cole, who recently served as deputy attorney general and who signed a Clinton campaign letter criticizing Comey.

That sets the stage for a Clinton presidency that opens with tension in one of the president's most important relationships. The strain would not be a new one. J. Edgar Hoover, the bureau's first director, was almost fired by more than a few of the six presidents he served under. More recently, President Bill Clinton and his director, Louis Freeh, were barely on speaking terms.

But such a relationship would be untenable in today's FBI, which since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks has become essential to counterterrorism efforts around the world. That is why people close to Comey say the next president will move quickly past the rancor of the past few weeks.

"The national security area is one where they will be bound," said Daniel C. Richman, a close adviser to Comey who worked with him as a federal prosecutor in New York in the 1980s. "It will be something that will enable them to bond."

Said another way: A national crisis has a way of making political grievances seem less important.

For now, though, this grievance is particularly raw and there is little historical precedent for it. Incoming presidents have criticized FBI directors before, but rarely so forcefully or publicly. As a candidate, Jimmy Carter said he "would have" fired Clarence M. Kelley, the director at the time, for accepting gifts and services from his staff members. He declined to say, though, whether as president he would indeed fire Kelley. And he did not.

By contrast, Democrats rallying behind Clinton have made a late-campaign strategy out of fueling outrage at the FBI. The campaign published an open letter, signed by dozens of former prosecutors, chastising Comey. President Barack Obama criticized him. The House minority leader, Nancy Pelosi, hinted that he might be pushed from office.

"Maybe he's not in the right job," Pelosi told CNN. "I think that we have to just get through this election and just see what the casualties are along the way."

[James Comey's no-win decision]

Comey ignited criticism for announcing, over the objection of the Justice Department, that FBI agents had discovered new emails that might — or might not — be relevant to an investigation that was completed in July into Clinton's use of a private email server to send classified information.

People close to Comey say his move could actually help Clinton if she wins. Only an independent-minded FBI director, one who has shown no loyalty to Clinton and a commitment to transparency, their argument goes, will have the credibility to handle what are sure to be years of accusations of Clinton wrongdoing from Republican lawmakers.

Then there is the matter of Clinton's family foundation. Keeping accusations about the foundation in the news has been a key Republican strategy to weaken Clinton, and the FBI office in New York launched a preliminary investigation into it over the summer. Some agents there believe strongly that there is evidence to move forward with subpoenas, a move that has been on hold as part of long-standing policy to not do anything that could influence an election — a policy officials say Comey violated.

After the election, however, authorities will most likely revisit that decision. Senior FBI and Justice Department officials, including Comey, have characterized the evidence — and the investigation — as weak, according to several law enforcement officials familiar with the case. They see the case as based on little more than information from "Clinton Cash," a book by Peter Schweizer that asserted that foreign entities gave money to former President Bill Clinton and the Clinton Foundation, and in return received favors from the State Department.

FBI agents, like many law enforcement officers, are often conservative-leaning. And many of today's agents came up in the bureau during the 1990s, an era of special prosecutors and mutual distrust between Bill Clinton's White House and the FBI. Institutionally, though, the FBI prides itself on nonpartisanship. It investigates public corruption in both parties with equal zeal and has rules and traditions that protect against partisan meddling.

Comey's move, and the series of news stories that followed about politically charged investigations, have led to accusations that those rules and traditions had been cast aside.

When the FBI last week published 15-year-old documents about, among other things, Bill Clinton's pardon of financier Marc Rich, the redacted records offered little information but renewed discussion of long-ago Clinton-related controversies, FBI officials said the timing was a coincidence; the requests for the documents had been filed months ago. But it seemed to confirm the suspicions among Democrats that the FBI was out to hurt Hillary Clinton, a suggestion FBI agents bristle at.

[Obama faults FBI chief for disclosure in email case]

Comey has sought to position himself as a fiercely independent director who is willing to speak his mind on issues of race, policing and encryption, even when his views are not shared at the Justice Department or the White House. The result has been a much higher profile for Comey than that of his predecessor, Robert S. Mueller III, as well as for his more low-key boss, Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch.

Many current and former Justice Department officials expressed dismay that Lynch did not personally call Comey and order him, on principle, not to disclose the latest investigative steps in the email case so close to the election.

There has been some speculation that Comey would feel compelled to provide details on the status of the investigation into the new cache of emails before Election Day. But that move, which would have been controversial within the FBI, is now unlikely.

"Damn the election," said James McJunkin, a former FBI assistant director, echoing the feeling of other agents. "He has to conduct the investigation without the politics. That's the important piece. That's is something he already knows. That's not lost on James Comey."

Adam Goldman contributed reporting.