CNN senior legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin continued vocalizing his opposition on Monday afternoon to FBI Director James Comey’s Friday letter revealing the discovery of new e-mails in the Hillary Clinton investigation as having “violat[ed]” a “principle” of the Justice Department to not “interfere in elections” but instead “go dark.”
Speaking to CNN Newsroom host Brooke Baldwin, Toobin claimed he could “certainly understand what Comey was doing but you know, even I as a lowly assistant U.S. Attorney in the 1990s, knew there was a bedrock principle at the Justice Department” to keep investigations tampered down around elections.
“I investigated political corruption at a much lower level than we're talking about here, but is that you don't interfere in elections. Two months before, you go dark. You don't start making public disclosures. You don't issue subpoenas, you don't issue indictments on the eve of election,” he added.
He concluded that he didn’t “see what possible justification James Comey had to violate that principle” and hence why so many (read: most Clinton supporters) are outraged at the decision by a man “who was very well respected in that world” (and especially considering his refusal to recommend charges in July).
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Moments after those comments, he claimed that Comey could have come forward as long as he had “something meaningful” to reveal:
[T]he problem is when — when Comey has an announcement to make, he should announce something meaningful to the public. Instead, he made this announcement that well, there's something out there and it may or may not be important. You know, if he had evidence that Hillary Clinton had committed a crime, that was worth announcing on the eve of the election.
Upon further review, it’s worth a peek at what Toobin thought of Comey making such an announcement about Clinton the month of the Democratic Party’s nominating convention.
Appearing on CNN’s Wolf on July 5, he commended Comey for speaking as much as he did because “as someone who was interested in transparency in government, people should be pleased that Director Comey, for better or worse, explained why he did.”
Toobin appeared just over an hour and a half later on CNN and hailed Comey as having “experience both on the lawyer side, the U.S. attorney side, and at the head of the FBI” to be trusted to have made such a decision and brought “an enormous amount of credibility to this decision and I think you can say this was a very even-handed decision.”
While there’s ways to pick apart these two sets of statements, it’s nonetheless intriguing to publicize Toobin and many others who held up Comey as a neutral arbiter of investigating Clinton in July but now are lashing out at his choice to reopen the case.
The relevant portions of the transcript from October 31's CNN Newsroom with Brooke Baldwin can be found below.
CNN Newsroom with Brooke Baldwin
October 31, 2016
3:20 p.m. EasternBROOKE BALDWIN: Jeff Toobin, just to you, first, I remember — I think we talked Friday when all of this was breaking. You are saying that James Comey did the right thing. Tell me why.
JEFFREY TOOBIN: No, actually I wouldn't say that. I actually am with the 100 —
BALDWIN: You're with the other camp?
TOOBIN: Yeah. No. I certainly understand what Comey was doing but you know, even I as a lowly assistant U.S. Attorney in the 1990s, knew there was a bedrock principle at the Justice Department. I investigated political corruption at a much lower level than we're talking about here, but is that you don't interfere in elections. Two months before, you go dark. You don't start making public disclosures. You don't issue subpoenas, you don't issue indictments on the eve of election and I don't see what possible justification James Comey had to violate that principle and I think that's why you're seeing so many Justice Department officials, Republicans as well as Democrats, really disappointed in someone, James Comey, who was very well respected in that world.
(....)
3:24 p.m. Eastern
TOOBIN: And I think that's exactly right, but the problem is when — when Comey has an announcement to make, he should announce something meaningful to the public. Instead, he made this announcement that well, there's something out there and —
BALDWIN: Ambiguous.
TOOBIN: — it may or may not be important. You know, if he had evidence that Hillary Clinton had committed a crime, that was worth announcing on the eve of the election. If you just have an announcement, we're continuing our investigation, why throw that stink bomb at the very end of the campaign? I think that's — that's a real big problem.
