To say that James Comey is a strange character in the chronicles of the Trump presidency is something of an understatement.  Throughout this sad episode in our political history, Comey has lurked, first as Director of the FBI, then as the ever-present voice from the wilderness, pontificating on events, the final arbiter of good and evil.  This week, historian Victor Davis Hanson published The Fright of James Comey, which is an analysis of Comey’s recent conduct.  Hanson recounts what he calls Director Comey’s schizophrenic behavior as a prosecutor and investigator in the Hillary Clinton email matter.  Comey exempted Clinton aides Cheryl Mills and Huma Abedin from indictment.  Attorney General Loretta Lynch recused herself in the Clinton email investigation after she got caught meeting with Slick Willy in Arizona.  Lynch ordered Comey to call the Hillary investigation “a matter” and not an investigation.  That was an honest assessment, because Comey never really investigated Hillary.  He granted immunity to Clinton’s aides without getting any information in return, and overlooked their lying to the FBI.  Comey wrote his summation of the Clinton email investigation, exonerating Hillary before he had even interviewed her.  Comey then played a starring role in the efforts by the CIA and Justice Dept. to spy on the Trump campaign, to prevent his election, and to drive him from office after he won.  The effort to drive Trump from office was a necessity, to cover up the illegal spying and frame job that he and the others had done.  The efforts before the election, to stop Trump and elect Hillary, had a different motivation.  Comey had chosen sides in the election, and had put the full weight and all resources of the government’s intelligence and law enforcement agencies to work to ensure the result he wanted – Hillary had to win, and if not, then Trump still could not be President.  He was an outsider, who could not be trusted to permit the deep State to continue running the show, despite the will of the electorate.  But Comey was a straight arrow, perhaps the last honest man in Washington, or so we were led to believe.  How could he be party to such underhanded conduct?  Perhaps the answer lies in Comey’s past; in his education, and in his core beliefs.  It appears that, when Comey made anonymous comments online, he used the name “Reinhold Niebuhr” on his Twitter and Instagram accounts.  This is telling.  Comey earned undergraduate degrees in Chemistry and Religion at the College of William and Mary in 1982.  He wrote his senior thesis on liberal theologian Reinhold Niebuhr.  According to Niebuhr, a Christian has an obligation to seek justice, by entering the political sphere because that is where one can find the power necessary to establish whatever justice is possible in the world.  “The Christian is to seek justice.  Politics holds the power necessary for the establishment of justice.  Therefore the Christian must participate in the political process.”  Comey’s decision to work for the FBI can be understood as a way of fulfilling Niebuhr’s vision of Christianity as a defender of justice.  I always wondered, if Comey recognized it as his duty to stop Trump from being President, why he would have given the remarkable July 5, 2016 performance, when he laid out the damning evidence against Hillary, and then announced that she would not be charged with a crime.  For a student of Niebuhr, justice is about using your power to balance the power of those not predisposed to recognize any limits on their self-interest.  People like Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.  It appears that Comey the Good was compelled to expose the flaws in both candidates, and then to choose the one he believed was the lesser of two evils.  This religious fervor explains much of Comey’s conduct.  His reliance on the ridiculous Steele dossier to spy on the Trump campaign; his withholding from the Court the facts that the dossier was an unverified political document, and that Steele had been fired by the FBI; and his meeting with President Trump in January 2017, in which he told Trump a portion of the material in the dossier, so that he could then leak his report to the media.  These were sins, to be sure, but he was doing the work of the Lord.  Halleluah!  Victor Davis Hanson reminds us that Comey lied to the President to make him think that he was not under investigation and that the FBI did not leak confidential information to the press.  Comey’s deputy Andrew McCabe and Comey himself were chronic leakers.  Comey swore under oath that he had never authorized anyone in the FBI to leak to the press.  McCabe swore that Comey was well aware that his subordinates were talking to the press to leak information selectively.  One of them lied under oath, and the upcoming report of the Justice Depatrment’s Inspector General likely will include criminal referals for that.  Comey stole FBI documents, which he leaked to the media.  He faces criminal jeopardy for that.  Hanson sees Comey’s incessant efforts to denounce Trump as preparation for his defense against the charges likely to come from Attorney General Barr’s investigations of the pre and post election shenanigans of the Justice Department.  “Yes, I might have done those things, but Trump was a real and present threat to democracy, so I did it for my country.”  As James Boswell taught, “Patriotism is the last resort of a scoundrel.”  But Comey doesn’t see himself as a scoundrel.  In his mind, he must use his power to do justice, as the Christian arbiter of all that is just.  If he must fall, it is his Christian duty to do so.  Hence, Comey the martyr, and would-be saint.  Perhaps a latter day Saint James.  Let’s hope he fairs better than the first one.  King Herod beheaded him.  If all this sounds crazy, that too might be by design.  Maybe Comey is auditioning his insanity defense.  Who knows?  Whether it’s to be Comey the monk, the martyr or the madman, only time will tell.