The chickens are coming home to roost for James Comey. The former FBI director, who spent years posturing as the last honest man in Washington while orchestrating one of the most politically weaponized investigations in American history, has been subpoenaed by the Justice Department over his role in the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment on Russian election interference.
According to sources briefed on the matter, the subpoena was served last week from the Southern District of Florida and connects to the ongoing criminal investigation into both Comey and former CIA Director John Brennan. This is not some routine document request. This is a grand jury subpoena in what prosecutors are calling a “grand conspiracy” case targeting the very officials who spent years investigating and prosecuting President Trump.
Remember the 2017 ICA? That was the assessment that concluded Russia sought to influence the 2016 election, the document that launched a thousand conspiracy theories and gave the media its favorite narrative for three solid years. But a later review found the process was rushed and riddled with “procedural anomalies.” Now we know why. CIA Director John Ratcliffe had already referred Brennan for prosecution after declassifying records showing Brennan pushed to include the discredited Christopher Steele dossier in that assessment despite the CIA’s consensus that it was filled with “internet rumor.”
The investigation has already produced more than 130 subpoenas since cranking up last year, targeting top officials from the Obama and Biden administrations. These are the same people who treated the FBI and CIA as personal weapons against a political opponent, who lied to courts to get FISA warrants, who leaked classified information to friendly reporters, who spent years claiming they had evidence of Russian collusion that somehow never materialized.
And now they want to cry about political persecution? After what they put this country through? After the Mueller investigation, the impeachment circus, the endless media hysteria that divided families and poisoned our politics? These people spent years weaponizing the justice system against a duly elected president, and now that same system is asking them some very uncomfortable questions about their own conduct.
Comey and his allies have decried the investigation as lawfare, which is rich coming from the man who signed off on FISA applications he knew contained false information. The irony would be delicious if the damage they caused wasn’t so severe. They didn’t just undermine a presidency; they undermined faith in our institutions, in our elections, in the very idea that justice in America is blind rather than partisan.
The subpoena specifically relates to Comey’s alleged role in drafting that January 2017 assessment, the document that became the foundation for everything that followed. If prosecutors can prove he knowingly included false or misleading information, or if they can show he coordinated with others to create a narrative that didn’t match the actual intelligence, this could be the beginning of something much bigger than a perjury charge.
This is what accountability looks like. Not revenge, not persecution, but a straightforward examination of whether powerful people abused their power. The American people deserve to know whether the investigation that consumed our politics for years was based on legitimate intelligence or manufactured opposition research paid for by political operatives. They deserve to know whether the same people who lectured us about protecting our democracy were actually the ones undermining it.
Comey built his reputation on a foundation of self-righteousness and carefully staged moral authority. That foundation is cracking. And if the evidence supports it, he should face the same justice system he was so eager to deploy against others.
Providence watches over the bold.
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