Commenter “TommyJay” asks an interesting question:

I may have this wrong, but didn’t both Comey and Mueller rise to power in the FBI as card carrying members of the Republican party? Didn’t we hear this from Democrats when they felt the need to support these two guys over the last couple years?

Can we call them Double Agent Democrats now?

Well, that’s several interesting questions. But I’ll stick to trying to answer the first one.

Actually, neither man rose to power within the FBI; both men’s careers up to the point of being named FBI director had been spent entirely outside that organization.

James Comey was with the Department of Justice under Bush II (2003-2005, US Attorney in Southern NY, and then Deputy AG). But in 2005 Comey left, and for the next eight years held a variety of non-governmental positions in business as general counsel and also in academia at Columbia University. Then in 2013 he came back into the federal government on his appointment by Obama to head the FBI.

So Comey had no direct FBI experience prior to his heading the agency, and had been out of government work in general for quite a few years. It turns out it’s not uncommon for FBI directors to have worked only for the DOJ prior to their directorship of the FBI, although some have done some prior work with the FBI (see this).

I have no idea whether the repeated assertions that Comey was a Republican are based on anything other than his own reports. I had little success in getting to the bottom of it—that is, I’ve only found articles such as this one, in which Comey states that for most of his life he was a registered Republican. It’s apparently based on this from his testimony before the House on July 7th of 2016:

REP. GERALD CONNOLLY (D), VIRGINIA: Thank you.

And welcome, Director Comey and although our politics are different, I gather you’re a Republican. Is that correct?

COMEY: I have been registered Republican for most of my adult life. Not registered any longer.

This was, of course, before the election of Donald Trump and before his nomination, but after he had clinched the nomination. However, unless Comey had just changed his registration, my guess is that it had happened some time before the Trump phenomenon began, although I have no way to know.

It is claimed that Comey contributed money to both the McCain and the Romney campaigns, which indicates Republican affiliation but not conservatism. It’s also curious that I could not find the information by a search at the site where the writers of the previous link said they found it. Maybe it’s been removed, or maybe I did the search improperly.

My best guess is this: that Comey was indeed a moderate, country-club type Republican for many years. At some point, probably between 2012 and 2016, he left the party (he was appointed to head the FBI by Obama in 2013, but I don’t know how that figures into his ideological timeline). One thing of which I am virtually certain is that, by the time Trump secured the nomination of the Republican Party, Comey was a NeverTrumper who hated Trump and wanted to make sure he did not become president. His subsequent increasing revulsion towards and virulent animus for the GOP stems almost entirely from that, IMHO. It’s not an unheard-of trajectory.

At this point, Comey is indistinguishable in his actions from a liberal or leftist Democrat, whatever his general political leanings may be now or may have been in the past. He’s not shy about his activism, either.

As far as that statement about being a registered Republican for most of his life goes, however—for most of my life I’ve been a registered Democrat, but that statement would give you a very poor idea of the nature of my politics for the last fifteen or so years. The fact that Obama appointed Comey could mean he’d secretly converted to being a Democrat by then, or it could mean nothing at all.

Here’s an article from 2013 explaining why Obama chose Comey despite his supposedly being a Republican.

As for Mueller, here’s an interesting article written in July of 2001 when he was tapped by President Bush to become head of the FBI. Previously, much like Comey (who succeeded him as head of the FBI) he was from the DOJ and had been a US Attorney (in San Francisco in Mueller’s case):

Some suggested that Mueller’s lack of experience within the FBI could hurt him. Freeh, in contrast, had served as an FBI agent before becoming a federal prosecutor and judge. But others argue that change can best be implemented by an outsider. “There is a delicate balance they were trying to strike between someone who could restore confidence as an outsider, which Mueller is, and someone who knows enough about the FBI so that he could start off running when he takes over,” said Ronald Kessler, author of “The FBI: Inside the World’s Most Powerful Law Enforcement Agency.

Again, it’s not clear on what basis Mueller is sometimes called a “conservative Republican.” He doesn’t sound all that conservative to me:

Mueller is a conservative Republican, but one with unusual bipartisan credentials. He was appointed to his current prosecutor’s post in San Francisco by President Bill Clinton with the strong support of Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif.

He headed the Justice Department’s criminal division under Bush’s father, and he temporarily served as Attorney General John Ashcroft’s deputy in the first few weeks of the current administration.

That’s about all I was able to come up with. I will add that being in a position of power often seduces people into abusing that power.

[NOTE: This post was originally on my older blog and had comments, but unfortunately the comments didn’t transfer over here.]