Comey’s past head-to-head encounters with presidential
administrations perhaps made him uniquely qualified to oversee the
investigation into Clinton’s controversial email practices, and it was not the
first time he weighed in on matters relating to the Clinton’s. In 1996, Comey
served as deputy special counsel to the Senate special committee on the
Whitewater investigation, chaired by Republicans at the time, which linked
Hillary Clinton to the mishandling and destruction of documents.
Comey was also involved at both ends of the case of Marc Rich, a
billionaire oil trader indicted for tax fraud and trading with Iran during the
hostage crisis, who was later pardoned by President Bill Clinton during
his final day in office in 2001. In a letter to the U.S. Senate, Comey
describes working as both the lead prosecutor in New York on the original case
against Rich in 1983 and then later, in 2002, overseeing criminal
investigations into Clinton’s last-minute pardons.
The investigations concluded there was no wrongdoing on the
president’s part, despite public outcry over evidence that Rich’s ex-wife had
donated to Hillary Clinton’s Senate campaign.
FBI Director’s High-Profile
Case Load as a Prosecutor
Over the course of his career, Comey,
55, has been involved in a number of blockbuster cases. He prosecuted
businesswoman Martha Stewart (who went to jail)
mobster John Gambino, and handled the
investigation and indictments of the suspects in the Khobar Towers bombing in
Saudi Arabia.
He was appointed the special
investigator to lead the probe into the leaking of CIA officer Valerie Plame’s
name, a politically charged inquiry that resulted in the conviction of Vice
President Dick Cheney’s adviser Scooter Libby. In October 2005, Libby was indicted by a federal grand jury concerning the investigation of the leak of the covert
identity of Central Intelligence Agency officer Valerie Plame Wilson. Libby fined $250,000 and jail time.
