Change the classic definition of chutzpah, we say. Classic chutzpah used to involve the lad who, convicted of murdering his parents, pleads for mercy because he’s an orphan. How, though, can that compete with the disgraced director of the FBI, James Comey, congratulating the Justice Department for its indictment of the way he handled the investigation of Hillary Clinton?

The lawless lawman extended his congratulations via an op-ed piece in the New York Times. That opus may yet win the Pulitzer Prize for Self-Righteousness. “This Report Says I Was Wrong. But That’s Good for the F.B.I.,” is the headline the Times stuck on Mr. Comey’s mind-boggling non culpa mea. Mr. Comey’s lack of self-awareness, his absence of contrition smack of a psychopath.

We say that not because The New York Sun was any fan of prosecuting Hillary Clinton. We endorsed Mr. Trump, but we were never in the lock-her-up camp. On the contrary, we were the first to call for President Obama to pardon Mrs. Clinton. The editor of the Sun wrote two columns to that effect, the second was issued in the New York Post, a day after the election.

Our hope was to heal the country and clear the deck for President Trump, so that his first term wouldn’t get consumed by litigation against his vanquished foe. Mr. Obama lacked the kishkes. He should have gone ahead with it, particularly in view of the support by the Inspector General of the Justice Department for the finding that Mrs. Clinton would not have been prosecuted under normal procedures.

Mr. Comey, of course, makes much of that in his piece in the Times. There’s no escaping, though, that the headline over Mr. Comey’s career will be that he was found to have been a dishonest director. This comes from the finding of the Inspector General that Mr. Comey concealed from the Justice Department his intentions regarding his press conference clearing Mrs. Clinton.

The reason Mr. Comey concealed his plan to make a statement on the Democratic candidate, he admitted to inspectors, is that he was “concerned that they would instruct him not to do it.” Any honest American, of course, would understand that such a concern would mean he had to address his plan with his superiors. Yet Mr. Comey concealed his intentions and instructed his staff to do so, too.

Remember, it was the attorney general of America who was being kept in the dark. No wonder the Inspector General called it “extraordinary and insubordinate.” It marked a deep character flaw, one that, we suspect, was precisely the flaw that led President Trump to fire Mr. Comey. It is the flaw that led him to scurry out of the president’s presence and craft self-serving memos.

And then, once he was fired, to purloin them and leak them to the Times in the hopes of igniting a special prosecutor. Mr. Comey has got his wish, in that the special prosecution has become a bonfire of justice that threatens to suborn a decision of the voters of 30 of the 50 states. No ordinary prosecutor would have let this get out of hand. It took one disgruntled director to do it by dishonesty.

We will see how the various authorities, from the ancien regime and the new, come out in what is reportedly a separate look by Justice’s Inspector General into the “Russia investigation,” as the Times calls it. Given the evidence that’s trickled out so far, it’s clear that we have an FBI and special prosecution team infected with fear (and loathing) of Mr. Trump. If the president fired the whole lot of them it wouldn’t be the epic’s greatest act of chutzpah.