Former FBI Director James Comey launched his book sales tour this week, and it’s a case study of what happens to once-right minded citizens who don’t properly maintain their political immunity against Potomac swamp fever. As Mark Alexander has framed it, “They turn into bureaucratic political hacks, and when they lead an agency as powerful as the FBI, they are a formidable threat to Liberty.”

As part of his pre-release promotions for his book, A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership, mainstream media outlets are providing Comey millions in free advertising. Predictably, most of the commentary disparaged President Donald Trump as a dangerous liar, while defending Comey’s exoneration of Hillary Clinton, even though he claimed she was “grossly negligent.” As NBC News headlined it, “Comey … paints Trump as a liar divorced from reality.”

Clearly, Comey was and remains a “Trump hater,” much as his fired FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and investigators Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, who attempted to ensure Clinton would win. He aims to defame Trump and exonerate himself after he was fired last year. To that end, Comey notes a tearful Oval Office meeting with Barack Obama after the 2016 election, when Obama affirmed his confidence in Comey. “Boy, were those words I needed to hear,” Comey told Obama, adding, “I dread the next four years.”

As for his selfserving disapproval of Trump, he writes: “This President is unethical, and untethered to truth and institutional values. His leadership is transactional, ego driven and about personal loyalty.”

Regarding his disingenuous motive for his book: “It is also wrong to stand idly by, or worse, to stay silent when you know better, while a president brazenly seeks to undermine public confidence in law enforcement institutions that were established to keep our leaders in check.”

There are plenty of rebuttals to Comey’s disapproval of Trump, and his axe-grinding motivation, however, the book is devoid of any “bombshell” revelations.

In a telling excerpt, Comey defends his investigation into Clinton’s email abuse from accusations of bias by Hillary supporters who insist that former Secretary of State Colin Powell also used private emails. Comey writes, “In fact, it entirely misses the point. I have never seen any indication that Powell discussed on his AOL account information that was classified at the time, but there were numerous examples of Secretary Clinton having done so.” So once again the question is raised: Why did Comey decide to let Clinton off the hook — twice?

The answer may be inferred from another revealing excerpt. Comey explains why he decided 11 days before the election to reopen the Clinton email investigation, a decision that Hillary has blamed (along with a litany of others) for her election loss. In a particularly damning passage, Comey basically admits the political nature of his decision: “It is entirely possible that, because I was making decisions in an environment where Hillary Clinton was sure to be the next president, my concern about making her an illegitimate president by concealing the restarted investigation bore greater weight than it would have if the election appeared closer or if Donald Trump were ahead in all polls.” How exactly does this admission by the nation’s former chief law man give Americans any confidence that those running the FBI aren’t making decisions politically and capriciously rather than by the Rule of Law?

This is the deep state at its worst, where individuals are so caught up in their own self-importance and views of how things “should” be that they are willing to ignore and bend the rules in order to bring about the “good.” In essence, it is the manifestation of that Machiavellian standard of the ends justifying the means. And that is anything but just.

(Edited.)