'Worst deep-state conspiracy ever': James Comey details the opening of the Russia probe — and destroys Trump's 'treason' accusations

Former FBI Director James Comey published an op-ed Tuesday night explaining why — as I have argued — President Donald Trump's theory that the FBI conspired against him during 2016 is completely vacuous.

He began by pointing out, as others have — including Special Counsel Robert Mueller and GOP Rep. Devin Nunes — that the investigation of the Trump campaign's ties to Russia was sparked when a foreign ally alerted the FBI to suspicious activity:

In April 2016, that adviser talked to a Russian agent in London, learned that the Russians had obtained “dirt” on Hillary Clinton in the form of thousands of emails and that the Russians could assist the Trump campaign through the anonymous release of information damaging to Clinton. Of course, nobody from the Trump campaign told us this (or about later Russian approaches); we had to learn it, months after the fact, from an allied ambassador.

But when we finally learned of it in late July, what should the FBI have done? Let it go? Go tell the Trump campaign? Tell the press? No. Investigate, to see what the facts were. We didn’t know what was true. Maybe there was nothing to it, or maybe Americans were actively conspiring with the Russians. To find out, the FBI would live up to its name and investigate.

Despite Trump and Attorney General Bill Barr's claims that the "origins" of the investigation need to be investigated, it's never been clear what about this story raises suspicions.

Comey noted that the investigation was carried out secretly, which is how the FBI typically conducts its work.

"And there’s the first problem with Trump’s whole 'treason' narrative," he wrote. "If we were 'deep state' Clinton loyalists bent on stopping him, why would we keep it secret? Why wouldn’t the much-maligned FBI supervisor Peter Strzok — the alleged kingpin of the 'treasonous' plot to stop Trump — tell anyone? He was one of the very few people who knew what we were investigating."

It's worth noting, too, that Comey and FBI could have cooked up some reason to go public with the probe relatively easily if he had wanted to hurt Trump. And later on, Democratic lawmakers would call on him to come forward about the investigation — but he still refused.

He continued:

We investigated. We didn’t gather information about the campaign’s strategy. We didn’t “spy” on anyone’s campaign. We investigated to see whether it was true that Americans associated with the campaign had taken the Russians up on any offer of help. By late October, the investigators thought they had probable cause to get a federal court order to conduct electronic surveillance of a former Trump campaign adviser named Carter Page. Page was no longer with the campaign, but there was reason to believe he was acting as an agent of the Russian government. We asked a federal judge for permission to surveil him and then we did it, all without revealing our work, despite the fact that it was late October and a leak would have been very harmful to candidate Trump. Worst deep-state conspiracy ever.

He pointed out several other facts that are inconvenient for the conspiracy against Trump narrative:

• Comey went public about reopening the investigation of Hillary Clinton in late October, but not Trump
• Attorney General William Barr praised this decision (though Trump would later cite it as the reason he fired Comey)
• Peter Strzok, a major target in Trump's conspiracy, drafted the letter revealing the reopened investigation
• Then-Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, another target of Trump, publicly disclosed another Clinton investigation

The point about Barr, though an off-hand reference in Comey's piece, is particularly important, I think. It shows just how unprincipled and blatantly partisan Barr is. As outraged as he is that Trump investigated, Barr was thrilled when Comey went public with damaging information about Clinton. The legal community tends to agree with former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein that Comey made the wrong call here. But at least in Comey's defense, you can't really plausibly argue that he was acting as a hack for Trump. Barr has no such defense.

Overall, the piece provides a decisive takedown of the conspiracy nonsense flooding out from the president's Twitter feed, Fox News, the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, and elsewhere. But that certainly won't stop the deluge.

"There is a reason the non-fringe media doesn’t spend much time on this 'treason' and 'corruption' business," Comey said. "The conspiracy theory makes no sense."