WASHINGTON,
-- FBI
Director James Comey's has been pressured to resign
over this agency's investigation of Hillary Clinton's email server.
Former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, who served under President George W. Bush, said the investigation was
"was mismanaged from the get-go" and called for Comey to resign and
for President-elect Donald Trump to
pardon Clinton in an interview with CNN.
"He crossed several lines. I think it was not his function
to call to question whether she should or should not be prosecuted. That was
for the attorney general or her designee, and I think he went way out of his
lane," Mukasey said.
He also questioned Comey's decision to notify Congress 11 days
before the election of newly discovered emails which he believed pertained to
Clinton's private server.
"When he held the press conference -- and remember that
Secretary Clinton's campaign billed that as a clean bill of health -- he was
exonerating her. Then he then felt he had to correct the record, there might be
more. Then he had to re-correct the record. It was like watching a car
gradually go out of control," he said.
Mukasey's comments came after congressional Democrats vented their frustrations to Comey during a briefing about allegations of
electoral interference by the Russian government.
Comey was described as unflinching and defiant as Democrats
expressed that he had let them down and shaken their trust in his
decision-making.
Wall Street Journal columnist Bill McGurn said the lack of trust in Comey would make
it difficult for him to maintain his position.
"I don't see how he can continue on, when no one believes
he's an honest broker," he said.
The Wall Street Journal also published an editorial claiming that "the best service
Mr. Comey can render his country now is to resign," and Trump should fire
him if he were to decline.
"There may be a temptation among some in the Trump
Administration to want Mr. Comey to remain in office, on the theory that they
benefited politically from his October letter," the editorial read.
"But if the FBI director has demonstrated anything in the last year, it's
that he has lost the trust of nearly everyone in Washington, along with every
American who believes the FBI must maintain its reputation as a politically
impartial federal agency."
Trump took to Twitter on Friday to comment on the reaction to
the FBI's investigation, which he believed was lenient on Clinton.
"What are Hillary Clinton's people complaining about with
respect to the F.B.I. Based on the information they had she should never have
been allowed to run - guilty as hell," he wrote. "They were VERY nice
to her. She lost because she campaigned in the wrong states - no
enthusiasm!"
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