James Comey is currently the director of the FBI, but prior to holding that office, he was a lawyer. One of the positions he held was deputy AG under John Ashcroft during the Bush administration. When Comey first took that office in 2003, there was tremendous pressure to Do Something about all the evil people who allegedly caused the Bill Clinton financial bubble by allegedly cooking the books.

Most of the readers of this website will recall that in addition to some of the legitimately bad actors at Enron, a lot of innocent (or at least not criminal) people were swept up in the politically motivated witch hunts that were designed to find some rich scalps to display to the public. They were prosecuted (and many times convicted) of activity that appellate courts later determined was not even criminal.

One of the people who was involved in that was Frank Quattrone, Internet pioneer and investment banker. Quattrone found himself in Comey’s crosshairs and was subject to one of the most frivolous criminal prosecutions in the last twenty years. Comey presided over the decision to indict Quattrone for what was, essentially, an email directing people in his company to comply with a subpoena request.

As you might have guessed, Quattrone was not amused at Comey’s song and dance during his press conference yesterday:

Says the man who once indicted me over a 23-word email that encouraged my team to save subpoenaed documents https://t.co/GYRzWDOhk0

— Frank Quattrone (@FrankQuattrone) July 5, 2016

Ouch. There’s really no other way to spin what happened yesterday. By confirming that the essential facts that Republicans have been alleging were true, Comey convicted the FBI as an agency that has a different set of rules for people who are in positions of power and/or who are running for President. That’s not what the “rule of law” means and any attorney should be ashamed to have participated in this sham.