UPDATED: The Bottom Line Of The OIG Comey Report (Part 1)

This is the bottom line, at least for me. David Harsanyi gets it perfectly this morning in the NYPost: James Comey is proof the ‘deep state’ is something to fear. This is the importance of what Comey did, even if it wasn't prosecutable. Not per se prosecutable, but it's powerful evidence of the big picture crime:

Comey, the report found, had leaked “investigative information, obtained during the course of FBI employment, in order to achieve a personally desired outcome.” 

That outcome, as Comey had admitted to Congress, was to “prompt the appointment of a special counsel” to investigate the president’s alleged conspiracy with the Russian government to win the 2016 election. By doing this, the DOJ inspector general, who is widely considered both meticulous and unbiased, found that Comey had “set a dangerous example” and “releas[ed] sensitive information” to “create public pressure for official action.” 

It worked. And by manufacturing an investigation into the president — one that he didn’t have enough evidence to pursue in an official capacity — Comey had not only abused his power but plunged the nation into two years of hysterics about Russian interference.

Abusing the trust of one's office--and remember, the FBI Director is nominated by the President of the United States and confirmed with the advice and consent of the US Senate--to knowingly plunge the nation into two years of hysterics based on a hoax may not be an actual crime. In my book, it's worse than most crimes. If John Durham and Bill Barr do their job, they'll expose this whole conspiracy to the American public and those who were complicit will pay the penalty for their perfidy.

UPDATE 1: Gregg Jarrett gets a lot right. Prescinding from the upcoming issue of FISA abuse, he focuses on the abuse of trust that Comey engaged in almost programatically as Director of the lead Law Enforcement and Counterintelligence agency in the United States, who had to be nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate:

Only the audaciously arrogant fired FBI Director James Comey would demand the equivalent of an apology in the wake of a blistering denunciation of his actions by the Justice Department’s inspector general Thursday. 

As usual, Comey has it backwards. Comey is the one who owes the American public a sincere apology for abusing his position as FBI director, violating government rules, concealing information from his former agency, leaking sensitive documents without authorization, mismarking memos without classification banners, improperly retaining records in an unsecured location, failing to surrender those records to the FBI, and assuming “carte blanche authority” he did not have. 

All of this is contained in the IG’s report disparaging Comey’s behavior. Yet, the fired director has chosen to play the victim by tweeting, “I don’t need a public apology from those who defamed me, but a quick message with a ‘sorry we lied about you’ would be nice.”

I forget who it was, but someone recently said that the world isn't big enough to contain James Comey's ego. If we ever doubted that assessment, doubt is no longer possible.

UPDATE 2: James Freeman at the WSJ hits on an important point:

Adopting the public-relations strategy that earned Bill Clinton the admiration of communications executives worldwide, former FBI Director James Comey is treating as vindication a government report which details his misconduct but doesn’t yield a criminal indictment.

This is now part of Liberal America's civic culture. The only bar for misconduct--unless you happen to be a non-liberal of any sort--is the criminal law. If it's not a violation of the criminal law, it's no-harm-no-foul. Unless you're a non-liberal. That in itself seems to rise to the level of a criminal act.

Freeman concludes:

Now who wants to bet that the Comey FBI followed the rules when it came to spying on the political campaign of the party out of power?

With an example like that at the top, all bets are very obviously off.