Comey Reasserts His Independence

And that -- here I become slightly queasy about Comey's self-appointed truth-teller role -- he engaged in extensive editorializing: Clinton and her colleagues "were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information." Seven of the email chains concerned such top-secret, sensitive information that "any reasonable person in Secretary Clinton's position, or in the position of those government employees with whom she was corresponding about these matters, should have known that an unclassified system was no place for that conversation."

There's more. Comey took a barely disguised slap at President Obama, noting that "there were many opinions expressed by people who were not part of the investigation -- including people in government -- but none of that mattered to us."

Gee, what people could Comey be referring to? Maybe the one who asserted in April that "I continue to believe that she has not jeopardized America's national security"? (Note that Comey said "it is possible that hostile actors gained access to Secretary Clinton's personal email account" and in fact penetrated "the private commercial email accounts of people with whom Secretary Clinton was in regular contact from her personal account.")

He undercut Clinton's self-congratulatory assertion that her team had provided all work-related emails from her private server, observing that the FBI unearthed "several thousand" additional such emails.

And Comey suggested, rather pointedly, that the decision not to prosecute might not be the end of the matter, raising the prospect of yanked security clearances or other "administrative sanctions."

Comey proved his independence during the George W. Bush administration when, as deputy attorney general, he headed off White House officials' hospital room efforts to convince then-Attorney General John Ashcroft to reauthorize a domestic surveillance program. On Tuesday morning, Comey proved the point again. He is no team player, which in this setting is no criticism -- it is a high compliment.

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Ruth Marcus' email address is ruthmarcus@washpost.com.