A tremendous education

Apr 16th, 2018 | By Ophelia Benson
Category: Notes and Comment Blog
Tags: Comey

Funny thing: I did a search of the Comey interview and the word “truth” appears 48 times. “Truth matters” appears 3 times.

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Right at the beginning of your career, you’re involved in prosecution of major mafia figures. How does that form you?

JAMES COMEY: Well, it’s a tremendous education to get– a view inside La Cosa Nostra, the mafia, both in the United States and in Sicily. And to realize that the mafia is an organization like any other organization. Has a leader, has underlings, has values, has principles. They’re entirely corrupt. And it is the antithesis of ethical leadership.

But I didn’t know it at the time. But it was forming my view that the truth has to be central to our lives and that leadership has to be focused on important and ethical values. And not what’s good for the boss, how do I accomplish what’s good for the boss and get the boss what he wants.

And, I would imagine, his awareness of the tension between the two, and the importance of that tension. The mafia attitude to The Boss is a particular kind of attitude; it must have been deeply disconcerting to him to find it again in the new president of the US.

He talks about the Martha Stewart case, and his determination not to let it slide because she’s rich and famous.

“Why would I treat Martha Stewart differently than that guy?” And the reason would only be because she’s rich and famous and because I’ll be criticized for it. The truth matters in the criminal justice system. And if it’s going to matter, we must prosecute people who lie in the middle of an investigation.

Imagine what it’s like for people who work in the criminal justice system watching Trump in action.

4 Responses to “A tremendous education”

#1
iknklast
April 16, 2018 at 11:30 am

Of course, you knew truth mattered long before Comey told you… ;-)
#2
Ophelia Benson
April 16, 2018 at 11:46 am

Exactly!

Hahaha just kidding. I didn’t even come up with the title. (I forget who did but I think it may have been the publisher.) But I still feel a weird little proprietary thing about it – shared but also Thpecial.
#3
Pliny the in Between
April 16, 2018 at 11:56 am

I don’t buy the Martha Stewart excuse. It will take a lot of convincing for me to imagine that in the pantheon of dudes who traded on inside information, she was the best poster child for law and order.
#4
Lady Mondegreen
April 16, 2018 at 12:10 pm

Re prosecuting Martha Stewart:

JAMES COMEY: Yes. The Martha Stewart case was a case that I initially hated.

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Why?

JAMES COMEY: And didn’t want any part of. We had a lot of big cases going on at that point in time. WorldCom, Adelphia. Enron was going on. We were trying to investigate corporate fraud, massive corporate fraud, and send a message to the American people that the system isn’t rigged, the rich aren’t going to get away with frauds, and that’s really hard and important work.

And in the middle of this, walks on this case involving a famous person who appears to have lied during an investigation of insider trading. And my initial reaction was, “You know, that’s kind of a small thing. That’ll be a big distraction. People will throw rocks at me. But more than that, it’ll take away from this other work we’re doing.”

And folks don’t realize this, but I almost hesitated and almost didn’t bring the case against Martha Stewart, in hindsight, because she was rich and famous. And decided that if she were anybody else, any other ordinary person, she would be prosecuted. And what helped me come to that conclusion was I remembered a case I’d been involved in against an African American minister in Richmond when I was a federal prosecutor there, who had lied to us during an investigation.

And I begged this minister, “Please don’t lie to us because if you do, we’re going to have to prosecute you.” He lied. And at the end of the day, we had to prosecute him. And he went to jail for over a year. And as I stood in my office in Manhattan, I’m looking out at the Brooklyn Bridge, I remember this moment. And I’m thinking, “You know, nobody in New York knows that guy’s name except me.

“Why would I treat Martha Stewart differently than that guy?” And the reason would only be because she’s rich and famous and because I’ll be criticized for it. The truth matters in the criminal justice system. And if it’s going to matter, we must prosecute people who lie in the middle of an investigation.