Anonymous ID: 04dfdc April 15, 2020, 7:32 p.m. No.8808612   🗄️.is đź”—kun

>>8808524

Wish that was as easy as it sounds in Virginia. Guess where Corney got his start?

 

FBI director has strong Richmond ties

 

By FRANK GREEN Richmond Times-Dispatch

 

https://www.richmond.com/news/virginia/fbi-director-has-strong-richmond-ties/article_b545b5c6-4484-5c9e-9317-c473c0dd4745.html

 

Three days after James Comey took over as head of the FBI, he visited Richmond to meet with federal agents, prosecutors and police in a town where he and his family spent many years.

 

“It is wonderful to be back here in this amazing community as I begin my 10-year term,” Comey said on Sept. 9, 2013, during his first visit to any of the more than 50 FBI field offices across the country.

 

Comey, 55, is no stranger to Richmond and, as seen Tuesday, he is no stranger to tough calls with serious political and legal ramifications.

 

At least two former area prosecutors who know him well believe his decision in the investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s emails was reached for the right reasons.

 

In a live, nationally televised address, Comey strongly rebuked the “extremely careless” handling of classified material by Clinton and her former colleagues at the State Department — but he concluded that no reasonable prosecutor would bring charges and that the FBI would not recommend prosecution.

 

John C. Douglass, a professor at the University of Richmond School of Law and, like Comey, a former federal prosecutor in Richmond, knows the FBI chief and said he has a record of not bowing to pressure.

 

Douglass referred to the 2004 episode when Comey, then the second-ranking official in the Department of Justice, resisted White House pressure to resume a warrantless eavesdropping program.

 

“Jim Comey has the toughest job in Washington, D.C., and he’s the best person for it,” Douglass said. “You could tell from his announcement it’s been a thorough, painstaking inquiry by professionals, and he went through it in more detail than is typical because, as he said, it’s a case that warrants that kind of transparency.”

 

“He’s strong-willed and a man of tremendous integrity, and he’s also a person without a political connection that would suggest he had a bias,” Douglass said.

 

U.S. District Judge Henry E. Hudson, a former Arlington County commonwealth’s attorney and U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, said he believes Comey acted properly.

 

“There is a difference, obviously, in the amount of evidence that you need and the criteria for indictment than what a prosecutor would look to see whether or not a conviction is possible,” Hudson said in an interview.

 

“I think that Jim Comey — who I’ve got a great deal of confidence in — determined that based upon his evaluation of the evidence after years of serving as a federal prosecutor, determined that it was extremely unlikely that any jury would convict her based upon the evidence that he had before him,” Hudson said.

 

Comey is a native of Yonkers, N.Y. His grandfather was a police officer who later became police commissioner.

 

He grew up and attended public schools in Allendale, N.J., and went on to graduate from the College of William & Mary, where he met his future wife, Patrice.

 

After he graduated from law school at the University of Chicago, he clerked for a federal judge in Manhattan.

 

In 1987, he became an assistant U.S. attorney in Manhattan, in an office then headed by Rudy Giuliani and where his caseload ranged from the routine to trials involving major Mafia figures.

 

Continued…

Anonymous ID: 04dfdc April 15, 2020, 7:32 p.m. No.8808618   🗄️.is đź”—kun

>>8808524

 

The Comeys moved to Richmond in 1993. Comey told the Richmond Times-Dispatch in 2001 that he initially looked into serving as an assistant U.S. attorney again, but a federal hiring freeze was in place.

 

Instead, he went into private practice with the McGuireWoods law firm and taught at the University of Richmond School of Law.

 

In 1995, he and his wife suffered a personal tragedy when their 9-day-old son, Collin, died from a Group B strep infection. Patrice Comey later wrote about their child’s death and lobbied in support of screening for the bacteria during pregnancy.

 

Comey said he was approached that year about serving as a federal prosecutor in Richmond. He initially was not interested, but later changed his mind and was hired in September 1996.

 

“I came to the view that in a way it might be more challenging and more rewarding to be in a U.S. attorney’s office the (smaller) size of Richmond’s, that maybe the feds could have an impact in Richmond that was disproportionate to their numbers,” he said in 2002.

 

He was the lead federal prosecutor in the Richmond division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia from 1996 to 2001 and helped develop Project Exile. The initiative was credited with helping to reduce gun violence in the Richmond area by winning tougher sentences for armed felons.

 

He took over as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York in 2002, handling terrorism, organized and corporate crime, and drug cases. In 2003, Comey went to Washington to serve as deputy attorney general during President George W. Bush’s administration and stayed until August 2005.

 

In 2004, Comey refused to reauthorize a warrantless eavesdropping program after being pressured by White House officials.

 

Then-Attorney General John Ashcroft was in the hospital, and Bush’s White House advisers were attempting to persuade him to reauthorize the program.

 

Comey and then-FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III went to Ashcroft’s hospital room to intercept the White House aides seeking the attorney general’s approval. Ashcroft said he had concerns about the legality of the plan and deferred the decision to Comey, who refused the request.

 

When testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2007, Comey called the experience “the most difficult time in my professional life,” according to The Associated Press.

 

The program was revised after Comey, Mueller and other top Justice Department officials threatened to resign if it was reauthorized without their blessing.

 

Comey left government work in 2005. In 2013, he was approached and then agreed to succeed Mueller.

 

In June 2013, President Barack Obama cited Comey’s “fierce independence and deep integrity” when nominating him for the director’s job to follow Mueller.g