The enigma that is James Comey - today's edition

Jeff Sessions says he still sees the former FBI director's behavior over the course of 2016 as a mystery:

Sessions justified the firing of Director Comey during his testimony in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and asserted that the errors Comey made in the Clinton case were far more devastating than people realize.

“Sen. [Dianne] Feinstein, I don’t think it’s been fully understood the significance of the error that Mr. Comey made on the Clinton matter,” Sessions said. “I don’t think I’ve heard of a situation in which a major case in which Department of Justice prosecutors were involved in an investigation that the investigative agency announces the closure of the investigation.”

“And then a few weeks before this happened, he was testifying before the Congress … and he said he thought he did the right thing and would do it again,” Sessions recalled. “So the Deputy Attorney General [Rod] Rosenstein … said that was a usurpation of the position of the Department of Justice.”

“Particularly, we were concerned that he had reaffirmed that he would do it again,” he declared. “I think that was a basis call that we needed a fresh start at the FBI.”

I think in particular about the July 2016 presser, at which he spent the better part of fifteen minutes laying out the case for her indictment, and then concluded by tersely declining to do so.

I don't get the guy. There's nothing cocky about his demeanor. He's actually kind of mild-mannered. No less a paragon of principle and legal erudition than Andrew McCarthy considers him a friend.

I still think the likeliest explanation is that he was leaned on.

I actually think that's true of Loretta Lynch as well.