The Very Tall James Comey Is On The Warpath

This has been a remarkable week for former FBI Director James Comey, who is six feet eight inches tall.

Comey, who is the same height as star athlete LeBron James (whose last name is, coincidentally, the same as his (Comey’s) first name), is best known, of course, for his letter to Congress in October 2016 advising that new emails had surfaced of potential importance to the FBI’s Clinton investigation, a revelation that likely tipped the presidential election in Donald Trump’s favor. 

A year and a half later, however, Comey, who is also the same height as less famous athletes like unfulfilled Ivorian soccer talent Lacina Traoré, and probably some others too, but I’m having trouble finding a list of athletes sorted by height, is on the warpath against the president he helped put in office. His new book, A Higher Loyalty, which is normally sized in every dimension despite the unusually large stature of its author, is full of juicy quotes, such as calling Trump “morally unfit to be president” and pointing out that Trump’s hands were “smaller than [Comey’s, which, come to think of it, really isn’t a surprise when you consider how very tall Comey is and that every part of his body is probably larger than the equivalent part on someone who is shorter than him]”.

Here is a video of James Comey stooping to greet President Trump, who himself is listed at a quite tall 6’3″.

What does this all mean for the 203cm Comey? Well, that’s hard to say. Comey, whose height is twice made the subject of an epic simile in my ambitious epic poem Priebus Lost—speaking of which, here’s one of them:

…th’enormous Head
Of th’F.B.I., the six-foot-eight Comey,
To equal which the tallest N.B.A.
Contestants, though to normal men Titans
Forc’d constantly to stoop as not to scrape
Against the Clouds themselves, would seem not more
Than normal height…

 

—has been excoriated in some circles for stooping to Trump’s level, in others for using his book to distract from his errors in the 2016 election, and in still others for whatever David French is on about here, I dunno, it’s not worth the time and effort to try and understand it. His scathing statements about Trump have made him a prominent figure in the #Resistance, of course—”prominent” in the geographic sense, seeing as he’s over two meters tall—and have even seen him praised as “the hero America needs”, which, well, unbelievably tall or not, he did kind of get us into our current mess.

Here’s the other epic simile I wrote about James Comey’s height.

 

…begun with th’unprovoked
Expulsion o’th’ FBI’s Overlord,
Tow’ring Comey, to whom that brass Relief
Which long o’erlooked the Harbor blue of Rhodes
Seems as the spread-arm’d Christ, which far above
The coves of Rio resides, appears to men
Of normal height…

 

The former FBI director, whose height puts him in the 99.986th percentile among American men, has been making the talk-show rounds all week, making dramatic statements like these:

Meanwhile, somebody in Congress leaked redacted memos Comey wrote about his meetings with Donald Trump, a man who is almost half a foot shorter than him.

In one of the juiciest revelations from these memos, Donald Trump confided to the towering FBI director that Russian president Vladimir Putin—who is only 5’6″; wow, I didn’t know that—told him that Russia “[has] some of the most beautiful hookers in the world”. I don’t know about you, but that seems like Putin, who’s a whole fourteen inches shorter than James Comey, was trying to lure Trump into some sort of trap. Might explain the pee tape, if not the genetic freak of nature that made James Comey one of the tallest people in Washington, D.C.

At press time, James Comey continues to be very tall.

 

 

Images: public domain and fair use