# Saving Justice by James Comey - Blinkist

What’s in it for me? Learn how James Comey would fix America’s troubled justice system.

It was a case James Comey would never forget.

An Iranian man had been caught impersonating a federal officer and stashing weapons and explosives in his apartment.

Arresting him was easy enough, but then he almost escaped – twice.

First, he broke out of his high-security cell with the help of a makeshift rope, which he’d fashioned from a massive amount of dental floss.

This escape attempt probably would have been successful had he not forgotten a crucial accoutrement: his gloves.

The dental floss rope cut into his hands and he fell hard, hurting one of his ankles.

After the authorities took him to a hospital, he almost escaped again.

After creeping past two sleeping guards and successfully exiting the building, he found himself alone, at night, roaming the streets of New York City.

He was accosted twice, by two different men, both of whom beat him up when they realized he didn’t have any money.

When the police found him, he seemed almost relieved to be back in custody.

This remarkable escape artist ended up with a long sentence in a federal prison, where they began handing out floss in precut strips.

This is just one of the many stories from James Comey’s long career as a lawyer, both in and out of the Department of Justice.

Some of them are simply unforgettable; others have profoundly shaped the way he sees federal law enforcement, and the responsibility the Department of Justice has to the American people.

In these blinks, you’ll find out  why presidents must value the truth; how to build a reservoir of trust; and that justice can be saved.

The Reservoir of Trust

When James Comey was 25 years old and fresh out of law school, he got lucky: he landed a clerkship with a newly appointed federal judge in New York City, John M.

Walker Jr.

, the cousin of Vice President George Herbert Walker Bush.

This job gave him a perfect opportunity to observe a wide variety of lawyers.

Comey soon noticed something: federal prosecutors were different than other lawyers.

For starters, they were well dressed, had strong postures, and seemed to exude confidence while also being humble and respectful.

But there was something else, too – something Comey couldn’t immediately explain.

The men and women from the US Attorney’s Office seemed to be more widely respected.

It was as though, even before they set foot in the courtroom, they’d already been granted a high level of trust.

The words they spoke were more readily accepted as truth.

Even opposing lawyers were deferential and less willing to question the statements of attorneys working on behalf of the Department of Justice (DOJ).

A year later, Comey joined the DOJ himself, as a junior federal prosecutor in New York.

And that’s where he began to truly understand what differentiated federal attorneys from other lawyers: they weren’t motivated by politics or money.

Neither Democrat nor Republican, they stood apart from the political world, only taking on cases that they believed in.

Simple as that.

Actually, it’s not always as simple as that.

[slight pause] The trust that people have in the DOJ must be continually earned.

Comey calls it a reservoir of trust, and this reservoir gets added to when the prosecutors, FBI agents, and leadership within the DOJ uphold their commitment to the truth.

But human beings aren’t perfect, and there have been times when DOJ actions have depleted rather than replenished that reservoir.

Consider the case of Henry Flete.

Henry was caught in the middle of a drug bust involving a kilo of cocaine and a big-time dealer from Columbia.

But Henry was not big-time.

His crime was giving a friend, who had become an informant for the Drug Enforcement Agency, the name of a drug dealer he knew – a name that led the DEA to the big-time Columbian.

According to the law, Henry’s involvement, though minor, made him part of an illegal conspiracy.

It didn’t matter that he wasn’t really benefiting from this involvement.

As a young prosecutor, Comey didn’t feel right going after Henry.

But when he told his superiors this, they didn’t want to hear it.

At the time, their boss, Rudy Giuliani, was in the middle of a mayoral campaign that included a tough-on-crime platform.

This meant every drug case had to be prosecuted to the fullest extent.

Comey followed orders that time.

But the jurors may have sensed that his heart wasn’t fully in it because they decided to acquit Henry.

Afterward, Comey told himself that he’d never again prosecute a case he didn’t believe in.

An Impossible Theft

It was a typical early morning in New York City’s bustling Garment District.

Then police received an urgent call from the owner of a wholesale fur dealership on West Twenty-ninth Street.

He had a spectacular story to tell: five masked robbers had shown up in broad daylight, wielding guns and pushing large laundry baskets.

They’d tied up the owner and his foreman, taped their mouths shut, and made off with 8,180 fur pelts and 121 fur coats.

And then – just like that – they’d vanished without a trace.

When the case arrived at the FBI Major Theft Squad, something immediately seemed fishy.

For starters, the fur dealership was on the third floor of a busy building, and none of the neighbors had noticed anything unusual that day.

This is especially important since the robbers would have needed to use one of the two service elevators to move all those heavy laundry baskets.

These elevators were shared by all the neighboring businesses, and at least one of those businesses had had its doors wide open that day, affording workers a clear view of the hallway where the elevators were.

Again, no one had heard or seen anything.

There was also the fact that the owner of the furrier was in dire financial straits.

A deal with a major national retail chain had recently fallen through, and he was in debt, unable to pay rent.

He’d even admitted that his business would likely go bust in a matter of months.

Also suspicious was the sheer volume of the furs.

To make a point of it, the prosecutors had the courtroom stacked with 8,180 pelts – the number that had reportedly been stolen.

Once they were all piled up, there was no room for spectators.

The defense lawyer attempted, valiantly but unsuccessfully, to carry over a thousand pelts on his back, and he could barely move under the weight.

According to the owner’s statement, three men would have had to move all the fur up and out of the building in less than 20 minutes without attracting any attention.

The jury decided that the owner had indeed been lying to federal agents, and he was held accountable with a three-year prison sentence.

[long pause] People lie.

Certainly, politicians lie.

Or at the very least, they’re less than truthful.

Even Abraham Lincoln told certain voters that he’d abolish slavery, while telling others that he only wanted to prevent new states from allowing slavery.

We’ve come to accept a certain amount of dishonesty from our politicians.

But dishonesty was taken to a whole new level by Donald Trump, a man who, as president, suggested that the truth was whatever he said it was.

The DOJ can’t function properly when a president issues attacks on truth.

The FBI, federal prosecutors, civil lawyers, and US marshals all work under the belief that, through investigation and deliberation, the truth can be determined to a reasonable degree.

Liars and criminals who seek to evade the truth must be held accountable.

If this weren’t the case, the whole justice system would fall apart.

Vinnie the Witness

Members of the Mafia, or “Cosa Nostra,” as they prefer to call it, are also pretty adept at lying.

To break into their extremely insular world is a notoriously difficult thing to do.

The members take blood oaths to remain silent about what goes on – be it murder, drug trafficking, or extortion.

One of the most effective federal means of obtaining inside information is the Witness Protection Program, which is officially called the Witness Security Program, or WitSec, for short.

Operated by the US Marshal Service, this secretive, highly organized, and elaborately run program also relies on trust.

Essentially, if the government gains a cooperating witness whose life is in danger, that witness can be relocated to another part of the country and given a new identity.

Fortunately, given how big the United States is, there are lots of places to hide someone.

And once admitted to the program, even federal prosecutors don’t know where the witness has been placed.

Whenever Comey had to talk to such a witness, they’d have to meet in a third location, in a completely different part of the country from where the witness had been placed.

One such witness was Vincent DiMarco – a sympathetic guy whose life took an unfortunate turn.

Vinnie had two sons and was supporting his family by working as a caterer.

But, unfortunately, his oldest son, Vincent Junior, got involved in dealing drugs for the Mob.

This led to a big fight between Vincent Junior and his younger brother, Bennie.

During the fight, Vincent Junior’s gun accidentally went off.

The bullet hit Bennie, who fell to the floor.

Thinking he’d killed his own brother, Vincent Junior fatally shot himself.

But Bennie wasn’t dead; he later recovered in the hospital.

A few years later, Bennie, too, started dealing drugs for the Mob.

And, after a botched deal in Florida, he ended up owing his bosses a lot of money.

That’s when Vinnie stepped in.

With his only remaining son’s life hanging in the balance, Vinnie agreed to become a drug dealer.

But with the family’s luck being what it was, Vinnie’s first customer turned out to be an undercover DEA agent.

Now, while Vinnie wasn’t a very good drug dealer, he did become a good DEA informant.

He helped bring down John and Joe Gambino, as well as members of their sizable drug-dealing operation.

But then Vinnie made another misstep.

After joining WitSec, he got married.

When the author reminded him that he was already married to a woman in New York, he tried to wave this fact away.

“That was Vincent DiMarco,” he explained.

“I’m another person now.

” Nevertheless, Vinnie was still Vinnie and polygamy was still illegal.

So, when it came time for him to testify in another case involving the Gambino crime family, Comey had to inform the court, and the Gambinos’ lawyers, that Vinnie had broken the law while in the program.

It wasn’t a big deal and it didn’t interfere with the case, but this was the kind of transparency that federal prosecutors had to have in order to maintain that reservoir of trust.

A Private Sector Detour

New York City was always meant to be a temporary home for the Comeys.

James Comey’s wife, Patrice, was never particularly fond of the city.

She put up with it because she knew how much James enjoyed his job.

But once the family began growing, Comey felt more compelled to find a new job.

They’d always wanted to return to Virginia, where they’d first met and fallen in love while in college.

It was Comey’s intention to transfer to another federal-prosecutor job in Richmond, but, unfortunately, in 1993, they weren’t hiring.

So Comey took a job in the private sector, joining a firm that specialized in defending corporations in lawsuits.

It was known as a “product liability” practice.

Comey was a long way from prosecuting the Gambino crime family, but it was nevertheless a humbling and educational experience for him.

Once, he stood in a courtroom with a linoleum floor; on the wall behind the judge, spelled out in large iron letters, were the words “IN OD WE TRUST.

” The G had fallen off and no one had bothered to replace it.

During the proceedings, a phone in the room would ring loudly until the clerk found a moment to answer it.

The shabby appearance, the inconsiderate and distracting noises – Comey hadn’t experienced these courtroom conditions before.

He was also unaccustomed to feeling so despondent about his client.

That day, he was representing an industrial company being sued for asbestos poisoning.

The company had never manufactured asbestos but it had used the insulation in some of the industrial equipment it had made back in the 1940s and ’50s.

It didn’t feel good, standing there in the sad courtroom, siding against a man who was dying of an asbestos-related illness.

But it got worse once the judge took his seat and recognized Comey’s name.

He asked if he was the same man who used to work at the US Attorney’s Office.

When Comey confirmed it, the judge replied, “How the mighty have fallen.

”  It took three years, but Comey did finally return to the DOJ, working in the Richmond offices.

There, new and strange cases awaited him.

One particularly memorable case involved a sex scandal perpetrated by a prominent man and his wife, who was an heiress to a retail-foods fortune.

The man had been offering people drugs in return for their joining him and his wife in group sex parties.

Some of the witnesses who’d been drawn into this scheme were too ashamed to testify in person, but it turned out there was another way to close the case.

An investigator discovered that the wife wasn’t an heiress at all; in truth, she came from a poor family in Tennessee.

The couple had lied to banks, brokers, and investors, and it was enough to bring up federal charges – and, in the end, the man agreed to plead guilty.

This was just one of the new cases that made Comey happy to be back at the DOJ, where justice was being served.

Stimson’s Legacy

Immediately following the events of 9/11, New York City would once again come calling and present Comey with an offer he couldn’t refuse.

Around eight years after he’d left the city, the Bush administration wanted Comey to step in and lead the Manhattan office as the US attorney for the Southern District of New York.

It was an unexpected offer, and one that Patrice knew was extremely important.

Comey couldn’t pass it up.

So the family headed back to the Big Apple.

Leading the Southern District office at this time came with unique responsibilities, which speak to the heart of the ongoing efforts to keep the offices of the DOJ apart from DC politics.

The Southern District office dates back to 1789 – predating the founding of the Department of Justice.

But by 1906, it had become corrupt.

It was a place where the wealthy knew they could avoid prosecution.

So, President Theodore Roosevelt tapped Harvard-educated lawyer Henry Stimson to be the new Southern District US attorney.

Immediately, Stimson changed the culture of the office.

He fired the careerists and replaced them with idealists.

Money and politics were shunned in favor of intelligence, hard work, and principles.

Stimson’s tenure at the Southern District was transformative, but his legacy has also led to conflict with Main Justice, the office in DC.

Since Stimson’s era of reform, the Southern District has had a reputation for being snobbish in a holier-than-thou kind of way.

Main Justice couldn’t understand why this one office had to see itself as so above the political fray.

But this was Stimson’s legacy and it’s something that’s been passed down to new recruits at the Southern District for generations now: We must remain vigilant and keep our independence.

We must work harder, and always ask what is true rather than worry how a decision will look.

When Comey was tapped to lead the Southern District office, he didn’t have much political capital.

He didn’t have family connections or money.

He was a career lawyer from Virginia.

This fact may have played a role in why he was chosen for the job.

Maybe the folks at Main Justice thought he’d be easier to influence.

It didn’t go unnoticed that right from the start, they began sending lawyers in from DC to argue cases.

Comey could hear Stimson groaning in his grave.

So, he knew that he needed to raise his profile in order to be able to protect the office.

This is why Comey began arguing cases himself and showing up on TV, talking to people like Katie Couric on the Today show and sitting for magazine profiles.

It wasn’t for personal gain or to feed his ego.

He knew that he needed the clout to make it more difficult for DC to push him around.

Plural, Never Singular

In a matter of two years, Comey was once again leaving New York City, much to the relief of Patrice.

Comey was moving up to US deputy attorney general, which meant he was officially becoming part of Main Justice.

In fact, the position gave him the number-two ranking at the DOJ.

Immediately, a big case landed on his plate.

Sandy Berger, the former national security advisor for the Clinton administration, had been caught stealing top-secret, highly classified documents from the national archives.

Not only that, but he also lied about it when confronted by investigators.

Berger eventually admitted to stealing five classified documents and destroying three others – criminal acts that, in the end, proved pointless, since all of these documents were backed up.

The case against Berger was strong, but the process of negotiations between the DOJ and Berger dragged on for years.

At one point, Comey pushed for the case to wrap up, but he was quickly reminded that this wasn’t the right thing to do.

In Comey’s new position of leadership, he couldn’t aggressively pursue one case over another, especially when that case involved a former member of the Clinton administration and Comey had been appointed to his job by George W.

Bush.

Even though Comey had no political agenda in wanting to wrap up the Berger case, he realized that the American public might suspect that the DOJ was paying special attention to Berger for political reasons.

This would deplete that reservoir of trust, so Comey never mentioned the case again.

This same approach should apply to presidents as well.

Simply put, presidents can talk about cases (plural), but they should never talk about a case (singular).

The Department of Justice does fall under the purview of the president, who should feel free to set a policy – like paying special attention to cases involving gun homicides or environmental crimes.

Since the president is elected by the public, this can be seen as the DOJ carrying out the public’s interest.

But the president should never state personal views on individual cases.

As the saying goes, Lady Justice is blind; once a president states a desire to see a particular outcome in a particular case, the blindfold has been removed.

George W.

Bush was well aware of this.

Every day, he was briefed on the ongoing investigations and prosecutions, but he never tried to push a point of view on a specific case, even when the case was of immediate interest to his administration.

This was certainly the case when Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, and President Bush’s advisor Karl Rove, were being investigated for possibly revealing the name of an undercover CIA agent to the press.

The unique characteristics of the case prompted Comey to announce that a special prosecutor had been assigned to the case, to let the public know that the case was being treated with impartiality and sensitivity.

Cheney let it be known that he wasn’t happy with the decision.

But, for his part, Bush never once mentioned the case during his regular meetings with Comey.

The Limits of Transparency

One of the best ways of adding to the reservoir of trust is through transparency.

This is something Comey pushed for in his role as US deputy attorney general and, starting in 2013, as the director of the FBI.

If there was an issue of significant public interest, Comey often wanted to get out in front of it with a press conference so there’d be no misunderstanding.

In 2015, when Dylan Roof killed nine people in a Charleston church, in a fit of white-supremacist rage, it soon became apparent that a mistake had been made by the FBI.

Dylan Roof should never have been allowed to buy the .

45-caliber Glock pistol that he used as a murder weapon.

Roof had been arrested for drug possession, and he admitted to the arresting officer that he was a drug user.

This should have shown up on his background check when he tried to purchase that gun.

But due to South Carolina’s unique geography and a gap in the FBI’s protocols, the hard-working man who ran the check contacted the wrong police department.

Because of this, Roof got his weapon.

And there was little doubt in Comey’s mind that this was an occasion that required a public apology.

It’s important to own mistakes when they occur, as minimizing or ignoring them will only diminish public trust.

A similar urge to apologize happened when the FBI began looking into previous testimony from its lab technicians.

For decades, it was common for hair comparison to be used as evidence in criminal cases.

But in many of those cases, the FBI technicians who testified were found to be overstating the significance of their findings.

This was first noticed around 2012 when new DNA analysis exonerated several defendants who’d been convicted in part based on hair evidence presented by the FBI.

The lab technicians weren’t lying; rather, they were overconfident, making misleading claims about how the hair found at the scene probably, or even almost definitely, belonged to the defendant.

This was scientifically inaccurate, to say the least.

The FBI spent three years going over 3,000 cases.

They found that 96 percent of them had bad testimony.

It was another mistake that deserved a press conference, with a promise to the public that the FBI can and would do better.

Of course, Comey’s most famous press conference came in 2016, when the FBI learned that presidential candidate Hillary Clinton had used an unapproved private email server to discuss confidential matters while serving as secretary of state.

The FBI’s investigation showed there was no evidence of bad intent, which meant there was no prosecutable case.

The problem was that it was impossible for this finding not to be politicized in the middle of a contentious election.

Comey still believes he did the right thing by holding a press conference and explaining everything that went into the FBI’s determination.

It was an attempt at transparency, and to not lose the public’s trust, which is what he believed would have happened if they’d tried to quietly close the case.

Draining the Reservoir

As we all know, Donald Trump won the 2016 election and many people believed that Comey’s statements about the Clinton investigation played a role in the outcome.

Ironically enough, however, Comey was fired by Donald Trump on the grounds that he’d mishandled that investigation.

Comey’s termination was merely the last in a series of distressing interactions with the new president.

There was the private dinner meeting, where Trump asked Comey for a pledge of loyalty.

There was the meeting in the Oval Office where Trump asked Comey to drop the case against Michael Flynn, the retired army general who’d been serving as Trump’s national security advisor.

Trump had already fired Flynn for lying to the vice president about his conversations with the Russian ambassador, and there was an ongoing investigation into the false statements he’d given federal investigators.

Then there was the time, just 17 days into his term, that Trump sat at his desk in the Oval Office and told Comey that Vladimir Putin believed Russia had “some of the most beautiful hookers in the world.

” Which leads us to the other issue: the fact that, since 2016, the FBI’s had an ongoing investigation into Russian election interference.

Trump wanted Comey to release a statement saying that the president wasn’t under investigation.

Comey refused, knowing that Trump could be investigated – which, in the end, he was.

In fact, once Comey was fired, the DOJ appointed Special Counsel Robert Mueller to investigate connections between the Russian government and anyone associated with Donald Trump’s campaign.

And only a day after Comey’s firing, Trump spoke to Russian leaders in the Oval Office and confirmed that the Clinton investigation was just an excuse.

The real reason Comey was fired was the Russian investigation.

Despite repeated claims by the Trump administration saying otherwise, a separate review by the inspector general showed that the investigation was opened and conducted without bias.

But this administration had little concern for the truth.

For Trump, the truth took a backseat to how he wanted things to appear, and doing whatever it took to achieve his own personal agenda.

Still more damage was done to the Department of Justice by William Barr, the Trump administration’s attorney general.

Barr further drained the DOJ’s reservoir of trust by blatantly misrepresenting the ultimate findings in Robert Mueller’s report.

Before the report was officially released to the public, Barr claimed that it offered no evidence that Russians were working with people in the Trump administration.

Yet the report highlights many such links.

And despite Barr’s assertions otherwise, the report does not exonerate Trump from obstruction-of-justice charges.

For the head of the Department of Justice to so willingly mislead the public and go along with the president’s bidding is indeed damaging for an institution that needs to stand apart from politics.

But such actions are not without precedent.

And we can look to the past for a way to repair the damage that’s been done.

Levi’s Legacy

How can we save the Department of Justice, which was turned into a tool for Donald Trump’s personal political agenda?

How can we restore trust in an organization that has been used to peddle lies to the public?

These were the same concerns that America faced following the Watergate scandal and Richard Nixon’s resignation.

The public found out that Nixon had been using the Department of Justice as his personal tool for going after his enemies and achieving his own corrupt goals.

On top of that, there was the revelation that under J.

Edgar Hoover, the FBI had been abusing its powers for decades – even going so far as to try to blackmail Martin Luther King Jr.

into committing suicide.

Public trust in these institutions was low, to say the least.

Nixon’s successor, Gerald Ford, knew something drastic had to be done.

So he tapped Edward Levi to be the new US attorney general and clean house at the Department of Justice.

The 63-year-old Levi was a storied law professor; when he was brought on board, he was still serving as the president of the University of Chicago.

The press scratched their heads over the decision.

What were Levi’s politics?

No one was sure.

And that was exactly the point.

As Levi put it, he wanted to “make clear by words and deed that our law is not an instrument of partisan purpose, and it is not to be used in ways which are careless of the higher values which are within all of us.

” And that’s precisely what he did.

He got rid of Hoover’s counter-intelligence program, COINTELPRO, which targeted alleged subversive agents like Martin Luther King Jr.

He pushed for transparency instead of Hoover’s brand of cloak-and-dagger methods.

He reined in the FBI’s power, especially when it came to justifying the use of electronic surveillance.

In short, Levi changed the culture of the Department of Justice.

And he did it through a top-down approach.

Levi himself knew that culture was something that emanated from leadership.

As he put it, “A great leader radiates the values of the institution.

” He also knew that maintaining the right culture is an ongoing process.

You can’t make a few changes and rest assured that things will continue to go according to plan.

The values of transparency, truth, and independence must be fought for, day in and day out.

Lately, the leadership at the DOJ has let those values slip away.

Yet there are plenty of people within the DOJ who’ve not forgotten their importance.

Hopefully, the next attorney general will be the beacon that Levi was 50 years ago and show that justice can indeed be saved.

Final summary

Is it always important to hold people accountable after they’ve left office?

Comey doesn’t offer a clear-cut answer, but he does provide some food for thought.

Part of the difficulty in making sense of Robert Mueller’s report is that it was hampered by the fact that you can’t indict a sitting president.

But with Donald Trump out of office, the question now becomes, should the Justice Department open a new criminal investigation against Trump?

On the one hand, this might be a bad idea.

It could easily come across as a new administration trying to settle a political score.

And rather than healing a divided nation, it could just serve to strengthen the divide.

On the other hand, Comey observes that there can be consequences for a nation that doesn’t hold a president accountable for his crimes.

It’s not an easy problem to solve, but one solution could be if local prosecutors outside the DOJ step up.

New York prosecutors would have a long history of financial fraud crimes to choose from.

No matter what happens, the new attorney general will need to be transparent when making decisions.

That’s the best way to refill that reservoir of trust.

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What to read next: A Higher Loyalty, by James Comey If you’re looking for more details about what James Comey was thinking during the 2016 election and during his brief time as the FBI director for the Trump administration, we recommend our blinks to Comey’s first book, A Higher Loyalty.

You’ll get a more thorough rundown of what was going on during the Clinton email investigation, and what it was like for Comey to try and run the FBI with Trump as president.