The swift federal grand jury indictment of ex-FBI director James Comey on charges of making a false statement and obstruction was met with equal parts schadenfreude and cautious optimism by some agents who have long been fed up with his modus operandi.

The knocks on Mr. Comey are myriad: that he likes to play “the knight in shining armor” but was “manipulative” and, in the estimation of a former FBI assistant director, James Kallstrom, “one of the worst, most politicized directors I’ve ever seen.” There were the book deals, appearances on late-night talk shows, and his “8647” seashell gaffe — in which he would later plead ignorance over the multi-dimensional, and sometimes threatening, meanings of the term “86” — that struck some former G-men as the clumsiness of a token narcissist who continues to discredit the bureau, even in retirement.

“I met and spoke with him about five times during my career,” a former FBI supervisor, Chris Hinkle, tells the Sun.  “Each time I spoke with him, I came away with the same impression:  He was not suited for the position.”  

Personal objections aside, some ex-agents see the case against the one-time director, who served from 2013 until President Trump dismissed him in 2017, not as the Trump administration’s retributive punishment but as a moment of “holding power to account.”

“The Department of Justice has its work cut out for it. But for many of us inside the FBI and within the retired FBI ranks who have long been nauseated by ‘The Comey Show’ and feel his pious sanctimony in regard to playing ‘fast and loose’ with the justice system — as applied to a president he viewed as an ‘existential threat to democracy’ — this is a just and righteous reckoning,” former FBI agent James Gagliano tells the Sun.

The two-page indictment, unsealed on Thursday night, accused Mr. Comey of obstruction and making false statements when he testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee that he did not authorize  an FBI employee to “be an anonymous source in news reports” about the FBI’s investigations into both Mr. Trump and Hillary Clinton.

Getting the grand jury indictment was the easy part. The challenge now, Mr. Gagliano believes, is for prosecutors from the Eastern District of Virginia and its newly-appointed U.S attorney, Lindsey Halligan, to secure a guilty verdict “without a reasonable doubt.”

“If it’s proven at trial that he lied under oath and obstructed justice, he deserves the same fate with which he smugly condemned LTG (Ret.) Michael Flynn and so many others in the Trump orbit,” Mr. Gagliano says.

In 2017, Mr. Comey eschewed standard protocol when he dispatched two FBI agents to interview Mr. Flynn, at the time the national security advisor under Mr. Trump,  without first consulting the White House counsel’s office. Mr. Comey was making a case that Mr. Flynn had illegal contacts with Russia during the transition.

In a 2018 interview with MSNBC, Mr. Comey admitted to sending the agents on his order, adding that it was something he “wouldn’t have gotten away with in a more organized administration.”

“I thought, it’s early enough, let’s just send a couple guys over,” Mr. Comey told MSNBC at the time. 

Mr. Hinkle believes this was Comey’s attempt to get Mr. Flynn on the record “making an inaccurate statement from memory in violation of 18 USC 1001.”

“Interesting that Comey is now the subject of the same violation according to the indictment,” Mr. Hinkle tells the Sun.

Mr. Flynn, who argued he was entrapped, was forced to resign after only a month on the job and plead guilty to lying to the FBI. President Trump pardoned him in 2020.

In a video posted on Instagram, Mr. Comey denied the charges, characterizing them as “the costs to standing up to Donald Trump” and vowed that he and his family “will not live on our knees, and you shouldn’t either.”

Mr. Comey faces a maximum of five years in prison if convicted. His arraignment is set for October 9th.