Did FBI Director James Comey act appropriately in sending a letter to Congress 11 days before a hotly contested national election stating that the F.B.I. had discovered e-mails that were potentially relevant to the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s private server? And is this scandal worse than Watergate, as Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump proclaimed? According to a former Watergate prosecutor the answers to these questions are no and no.
Nick Akerman is a partner at the international law firm Dorsey & Whiney had this press release sent out. Here it is in full:
Nick Akerman is a partner at the international law firm Dorsey & Whiney. Prior to private practice Nick served as a federal prosecutor. He was an Assistant United States Attorney in the Southern District of New York, where he prosecuted a wide array of white collar criminal matters, including bank frauds, bankruptcy frauds, stock frauds, complex financial frauds, environmental and tax crimes. Nick was also an Assistant Special Watergate Prosecutor with the Watergate Special Prosecution Force under Archibald Cox and Leon Jaworski. Nick has over 30 years of experience in helping clients respond to government investigations and prosecutions and assisting corporate clients prevent and respond to internal thefts and outside hackers. He has been following this closely and of it says:
“First, Director Comey acted totally inappropriately. He 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. The job of the FBI is simply to investigate and to provide the results of its investigation to the prosecutorial arm of the US Department of Justice. His job is not to give a running commentary about any investigation or his opinion about any investigation. This is particularly egregious since Secretary Clinton has no way to respond to what amounts to nebulous and speculative innuendo,” Akerman says
“Second, Donald Trump’s statement that this is bigger than Watergate is totally absurd. There is no evidence of any violation of law. For Trump to reach that conclusion based on a total lack of evidence is reminiscent of the innuendo spread by Joseph McCarthy in the early 1950s,” Akerman says.
Carl Bernestein, one half of the Washington Post’s legendary Watergate reporting team, also tweeted this:
No way HRC emails 'bigger than watergate' -or close. Watergate was about a criminal Potus & 48 aides/co-conspirators found guilty.
— Carl Bernstein (@carlbernstein) October 29, 2016
photo credit: Lws & Clrk Winning Temperament 1 via photopin (license)
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.