Saving Justice summary

It was a typical early morning in New York City’s bustling Garment District. Then police received an urgent call from the owner of a wholesale fur dealership on West Twenty-ninth Street. He had a spectacular story to tell: five masked robbers had shown up in broad daylight, wielding guns and pushing large laundry baskets. They’d tied up the owner and his foreman, taped their mouths shut, and made off with 8,180 fur pelts and 121 fur coats. And then – just like that – they’d vanished without a trace.

When the case arrived at the FBI Major Theft Squad, something immediately seemed fishy. For starters, the fur dealership was on the third floor of a busy building, and none of the neighbors had noticed anything unusual that day. This is especially important since the robbers would have needed to use one of the two service elevators to move all those heavy laundry baskets. These elevators were shared by all the neighboring businesses, and at least one of those businesses had had its doors wide open that day, affording workers a clear view of the hallway where the elevators were. Again, no one had heard or seen anything. 

Members of the Mafia, or “Cosa Nostra,” as they prefer to call it, are also pretty adept at lying. To break into their extremely insular world is a notoriously difficult thing to do. The members take blood oaths to remain silent about what goes on – be it murder, drug trafficking, or extortion.

One of the most effective federal means of obtaining inside information is the Witness Protection Program, which is officially called the Witness Security Program, or WitSec, for short. Operated by the US Marshal Service, this secretive, highly organized, and elaborately run program also relies on trust.

New York City was always meant to be a temporary home for the Comeys. James Comey’s wife, Patrice, was never particularly fond of the city. She put up with it because she knew how much James enjoyed his job. But once the family began growing, Comey felt more compelled to find a new job. They’d always wanted to return to Virginia, where they’d first met and fallen in love while in college.

It was Comey’s intention to transfer to another federal-prosecutor job in Richmond, but, unfortunately, in 1993, they weren’t hiring. So Comey took a job in the private sector, joining a firm that specialized in defending corporations in lawsuits. It was known as a “product liability” practice.

Immediately following the events of 9/11, New York City would once again come calling and present Comey with an offer he couldn’t refuse. Around eight years after he’d left the city, the Bush administration wanted Comey to step in and lead the Manhattan office as the US attorney for the Southern District of New York. It was an unexpected offer, and one that Patrice knew was extremely important. Comey couldn’t pass it up. So the family headed back to the Big Apple.

Leading the Southern District office at this time came with unique responsibilities, which speak to the heart of the ongoing efforts to keep the offices of the DOJ apart from DC politics.

In a matter of two years, Comey was once again leaving New York City, much to the relief of Patrice. Comey was moving up to US deputy attorney general, which meant he was officially becoming part of Main Justice. In fact, the position gave him the number-two ranking at the DOJ.

Immediately, a big case landed on his plate. Sandy Berger, the former national security advisor for the Clinton administration, had been caught stealing top-secret, highly classified documents from the national archives. Not only that, but he also lied about it when confronted by investigators.

One of the best ways of adding to the reservoir of trust is through transparency. This is something Comey pushed for in his role as US deputy attorney general and, starting in 2013, as the director of the FBI. If there was an issue of significant public interest, Comey often wanted to get out in front of it with a press conference so there’d be no misunderstanding.

In 2015, when Dylan Roof killed nine people in a Charleston church, in a fit of white-supremacist rage, it soon became apparent that a mistake had been made by the FBI.

As we all know, Donald Trump won the 2016 election and many people believed that Comey’s statements about the Clinton investigation played a role in the outcome. Ironically enough, however, Comey was fired by Donald Trump on the grounds that he’d mishandled that investigation.

Comey’s termination was merely the last in a series of distressing interactions with the new president. There was the private dinner meeting, where Trump asked Comey for a pledge of loyalty. There was the meeting in the Oval Office where Trump asked Comey to drop the case against Michael Flynn, the retired army general who’d been serving as Trump’s national security advisor. Trump had already fired Flynn for lying to the vice president about his conversations with the Russian ambassador, and there was an ongoing investigation into the false statements he’d given federal investigators.

How can we save the Department of Justice, which was turned into a tool for Donald Trump’s personal political agenda? How can we restore trust in an organization that has been used to peddle lies to the public?

These were the same concerns that America faced following the Watergate scandal and Richard Nixon’s resignation. The public found out that Nixon had been using the Department of Justice as his personal tool for going after his enemies and achieving his own corrupt goals. On top of that, there was the revelation that under J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI had been abusing its powers for decades – even going so far as to try to blackmail Martin Luther King Jr. into committing suicide.