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Criticized by candidates, FBI director faces tense days ahead after election

 
Published Nov. 6, 2016

WASHINGTON — Depending on who wins the election, FBI director James B. Comey will either work for a man who accused him of being part of a rigged criminal justice system or a woman who has criticized his decisions as "deeply troubling" and whose surrogates accused him of committing a stunning violation of long-standing principles of fairness.

Friends and colleagues say that, despite a controversy that has entangled the FBI in presidential politics, Comey feels no pressure to leave office and has no plans to do so. But, as one colleague recalled Comey saying recently, "It's going to be awkward."

Things will be particularly awkward if Hillary Clinton wins, those close to her and to Comey acknowledge. His decision, in the campaign's final days, to make public an FBI inquiry into emails belonging to one of Clinton's aides renewed a controversy she thought she had put behind her.

Clinton has sidestepped questions about whether, if she is elected, she intends to keep Comey in his job. Her surrogates and supporters say firing him would be politically impossible.

"The political cost of firing him is greater than the political cost of keeping him," said James M. Cole, who recently served as deputy attorney general and who signed a Clinton campaign letter criticizing Comey.

That sets the stage for a Clinton presidency that opens with tension in one of the president's most important relationships. The strain would not be a new one. J. Edgar Hoover, the bureau's first director, was almost fired by more than a few of the six presidents he served under. More recently, President Bill Clinton and his director, Louis Freeh, were barely on speaking terms.

But such a relationship would be untenable in today's FBI, which since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks has become essential to counterterrorism efforts. That is why people close to Comey say the next president will move quickly past the rancor of the past few weeks.

"The national security area is one where they will be bound," said Daniel C. Richman, a close adviser to Comey who worked with him as a federal prosecutor in New York in the 1980s. "It will be something that will enable them to bond."