to your point as him not being thoughtful:
in part:
Justice officials warned FBI that Comey’s decision to update Congress was not consistent with department policy
...
Comey’s decision to ignore the advice of Justice leadership is “stunning,” said Matt Miller, who served as Justice Department spokesman under then-Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. “Jim Comey forgets that he works for the attorney general.”
“I think he has a lot of regard for his own integrity. And he lets that regard cross lines into self-righteousness,” Miller said. “He has come to believe that his own ethics are so superior to anyone else’s that his judgment can replace existing rules and regulations. That is a dangerous belief for an FBI director to have.”
......
Michael Vatis, a former senior Justice Department official who is now a partner at Steptoe & Johnson, said Comey was probably trying to be transparent. But “transparency is not the foremost value in investigations. Fairness is,” he said.
“His statement has, quite predictably, been blown out of proportion and twisted into a signifier of some momentous discovery, when in fact, the new emails may turn out to reveal nothing new at all,” he said. “That’s not fair to Clinton.”
A 2012 Justice Department memo sent by Holder during the last presidential race said employees “must be particularly sensitive to safeguarding the Department’s reputation for fairness, neutrality, and nonpartisanship.”
The memo advised that if an employee was “faced with a question regarding the timing of charges or overt investigative steps near the time of a primary or general election,” the employee should contact the department’s public integrity section “for further guidance.”
An expert on legal ethics, Stephen Gillers of New York University School of Law said he was disturbed by Comey’s conduct during this election season.
“Comey’s July press conference was wrong, and now he has doubled down,” Gillers said. “The FBI’s job is to gather information for and make a recommendation to DOJ lawyers, not to hold press conferences and characterize the evidence. Tolerating that conduct from an FBI director sets a terrible precedent."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/justice-officials-warned-fbi-that-comeys-decision-to-update-congress-was-not-consistent-with-department-policy/2016/10/29/cb179254-9de7-11e6-b3c9-f662adaa0048_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_clintonfbi1030-1142am%3Ahomepage%2Fstory
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