Saving Justice: Truth, Transparency, and Trust

Description

'The Capitol riot was our Chernobyl' - James Comey, Guardian interview, 19 January 2021 'An absolutely fascinating read' - newsreader Emily Maitlis James Comey, former FBI Director and Sunday Times number one bestselling author of A Higher Loyalty, uses his long career in federal law enforcement to explore issues of justice and fairness in the US justice system. James Comey might best be known as the FBI director who Donald Trump fired in 2017, but he's had a long, varied career in the law and justice system. He knows better than most just what a force for good the US justice system can be, and how far afield it strayed during the Trump presidency. In his much-anticipated follow-up to A Higher Loyalty, Comey uses anecdotes and lessons from his career to show how the federal justice system works. From prosecuting mobsters as an assistant US attorney in the Southern District of New York in the 1980s to grappling with the legalities of anti-terrorism work as the deputy attorney general in the early 2000s to, of course, his tumultuous stint as FBI director beginning in 2013, Comey shows just how essential it is to pursue the primacy of truth for federal law enforcement. Saving Justice is gracefully written and honestly told, a clarion call for a return to fairness and equity in the law.

On September 4 2013, James Comey was sworn in as the seventh director of the FBI. A native of Yonkers, New York, Comey attended the College of William and Mary and the University of Chicago Law School. Afterwards, Comey returned to New York and joined the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York as an assistant US attorney. There, he took on numerous crimes, most notably organized crime in the case of the United States v. John Gambino, et al. Comey then became an assistant US attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia, where he prosecuted the high-profile case that followed the 1996 terrorist attack on the US military's Khobar Towers in Khobar, Saudi Arabia. Comey returned to New York after 9/11 to become the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. At the end of 2003, he was tapped to be the deputy attorney general at the Department of Justice (DOJ) under then-US attorney general John Ashcroft and moved to the Washington, D.C. area. Comey left the DOJ in 2005 to serve as general counsel and senior vice-president at defence contractor Lockheed Martin. Five years later, he joined Bridgewater Associates, a Connecticut-based investment fund, as its general counsel. In early 2013, Comey became a lecturer in law, a senior research scholar and Hertog Fellow in national security law at Columbia Law School. After he was fired as FBI director, Comey held the King Lecture Chair in Public Policy at Howard University for 2017-18 and served as a Distinguished Lecturer in Public Policy at William and Mary for 2018-19. In September 2020, his first book, A Higher Loyalty, was made into a Showtime limited series, The Comey Rule.

An absolutely fascinating read for anyone who wants to understand the workings of the US justice system and American politics more broadly -- Emily Maitlis The Capitol riot was our Chernobyl . . . I was sickened to watch an attack on the literal and symbolic heart of our democracy, and, as a law enforcement person, I was angered. I am mystified and angry that Capitol Hill wasn't defended. It's a hill! If you wanted to defend it, you could defend it, and for some reason it was not defended. I think that's a 9/11-size failure and we're going to need a 9/11-type commission to understand it so that we don't repeat it -- James Comey, Guardian interview, 19 January 2021