FBI Director James Comey Thrust Into the Spotlight Over Clinton's Personal E-Mail Server Controversy

Clinton probe tests FBI chief

FBI Director James Comey is being thrust into the spotlight as the controversy surrounding Hillary Clinton’s personal email server intensifies.

The FBI is investigating the security of Clinton’s email setup, including if classified information was mishandled. The probe is putting the nation’s top law enforcement agency at the center of a political battle leading into the 2016 election.
Comey has long shown an independent streak that's gained him wide bipartisan praise and helped him sail to a 93-1 confirmation vote in the Senate. That independence will be tested with Republican lawmakers demanding answers and the Clinton team dismissive of a controversy they see as politically drummed up.

Comey has been in the middle of bruising fights before.

He's best known in Washington for a dramatic late-night standoff a decade ago with then-White House counsel Alberto Gonzalez over reauthorizing a domestic surveillance program.

Comey was acting attorney general in March 2004 when then-Attorney General John Ashcroft was hospitalized in intensive care. He raced to the hospital bed at George Washington University Hospital after learning that Gonzalez was trying to get a semi-conscious Ashcroft to sign off on reauthorizing the National Security Agency's programs, arriving only moments before the White House lawyer.

A nearly incapacitated Ashcroft refused to sign the papers, saying "I'm not the attorney general. There is the attorney general,’" and pointing to Comey, who recounted the incident before the Senate in 2007.

Comey said he was “concerned that this was an effort to do an end-run around the acting attorney general and to get a very sick man to approve something” the DOJ had raised legal concerns about.

Ultimately, the Bush administration reauthorized the program without the Justice Department signing off, something that nearly drove Comey to step down, with his unsent resignation letter later published in The Washington Post.

It wasn't the first time Comey took a high-profile stand. As a U.S. attorney, he prosecuted businesswoman Martha Stewart for obstruction of justice in a probe into stock sales.

"I had to... because if it was Jane Doe she would have been prosecuted," Comey said, looking back on the case in 2009. "I thought of my hesitation about the case due to someone being rich and famous, and how it shouldn't be that way."

And in the Bush administration, he appointed a special counsel in 2003 to investigate the CIA leak case that ultimately led to Scooter Libby, then-Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, being found guilty of perjury.

As FBI director, Comey has gone after other big names, including then-CIA Director David Petraeus for mishandling classified information. Petraeus resigned and later pleaded guilty, a stunning fall for an official who once garnered presidential buzz. And Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) is now facing federal corruption charges, the first sitting senator indicted since 2008.

Comey’s also seen his share of controversy as FBI chief, including a speech where he said all law enforcement officials are “a little bit racist.” And the U.S. ambassador to Poland apologized to that country after Comey suggested many Poles aided in the Holocaust, calling them “murderers and accomplices” who believed they “didn’t do something evil.”

Comey is now under pressure from both Republican lawmakers and the Clinton campaign as the FBI investigates the Democratic front-runner's emails.

Clinton has handed over her private email server and a backup drive to the FBI. The agency has been tight-lipped about its probe and signaled it intends to move at its own deliberate pace, even in the face of an impatient Congress.

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