In June of 2013, President Barack Obama reached outside the spectrum of political logic to select a former Bush appointed Republican as Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. At 6’8”, FBI Director James Comey stands tall amongst his fellow members of the Obama administration not only due to his height, but also his consistent financial support of Republicans John McCain and Mitt Romney in their bids for President.

Why would Obama select a Republican, with nearly four decades of successfully prosecuting high-profile individuals for obstruction of justice and lying to the FBI, to a ten-year appointment as its Director? To preserve his legacy through the pursuit of justice against Hillary Clinton.

On January 22, 2009, a day after assuming office as Secretary of State, Clinton signed a “Sensitive Compartmented Information Nondisclosure Agreement” outlining criminal penalties and blocking any future government positions for “any unauthorized disclosure” of classified information.

On September 11, 2012, just weeks before the presidential election, a series of coordinated, terrorist attacks took place at the American Embassy compound in Benghazi, Libya, killing U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, Foreign Service Officer Sean Smith, and two CIA contractors.

Within hours, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sent a note from her personal, unclassified email server to her daughter Chelsea stating, “two of our officers were killed in Benghazi by an al-Qaeda like group.” Simultaneously, the Secretary of State’s office began developing her narrative that the Benghazi attack was a spontaneous reaction to a recent film and was not a planned terrorist attack.  

Clinton worked to drive her “spontaneous narrative” about the Benghazi tragedy all the way through President Obama’s re-election, and the private communications between Clinton and her daughter on her personal, unclassified email server remained hidden for years.

Just a few months after the Benghazi attacks, Republican James Comey was appointed Director of the FBI.

Not only would Comey sail through confirmation by the Republican-held Senate, but having served as the second-highest ranking official in the Department of Justice, Comey’s credentials were unique due to his track-record of prosecuting high profile defendants regardless of family name or notoriety. Early in his career, as Deputy Chief of the Criminal Division of the U.S. Attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York, Comey had helped prosecute the infamous Gambino Crime Family. In 2003, Comey had lead the Department of Justice’s efforts to convict Martha Stewart for obstruction of justice and was quoted in the New York Times as saying, ”This criminal case is about lying — lying to the F.B.I., lying to the S.E.C., lying to investors.” Comey went on to say, “Martha Stewart is being prosecuted not for who she is, but because of what she did.”

In October 2015, Vice President Joe Biden stood next to President Obama in the White House Rose Garden, and announced he would not run for President. In his carefully crafted remarks he said, “I don’t think we should look at Republicans as our enemies. They are our opposition — not our enemies,” an overt response to a previous Clinton statement that, “Republicans are the enemy she was most proud of having.”

Biden believes that Obama has led the nation from crisis to recovery and now to the cusp of resurgence, “Democrats should not only defend and protect this record, they should run on this record,” he said. Noticeably absent were words of encouragement or an endorsement for Clinton, the President’s former Secretary of State and Vice President’s colleague in both the United States Senate and Obama Cabinet.

Consider the facts. Joe Biden has demonstrated with two failed presidential runs that, while he is an affable and popular elected, he is a poor candidate for President. A late candidacy, against a liberal Bernie Sanders and a rough-and-tumble Clinton, would be messy and destructive to an already fractured Democratic party. Yet, even after Biden’s remarks, President Barack Obama has failed to give any indication of support for the campaign of Clinton.

And here we sit. Less than one year from the 2016 presidential elections, polling shows any of the major Republican primary candidates would be victorious in a head-to-head race against the voice for the Democratic Party, former First Lady, U.S. Senator, and Secretary of State. Clinton is battling a progressive Senator on her left, and ironically, an inability to understand what’s legal or “right.” Shockingly, she remains a strong favorite to win every Democratic primary.

Patiently waiting on the sidelines is Biden. A man who, for the benefit of the party will not seek the nomination, but would be proud to serve if called upon by delegates at the Democratic Convention, once they determine that their nominee cannot be someone under indictment for violating federal law by releasing top secret information, jeopardizing national security, and lying to the FBI. A Biden candidacy would improve the Democrat’s chance of winning the presidency, and help preserve the Obama legacy.

In a nation with over 300 million people, there is no American more qualified to serve in the position of dismantling Hillary Clinton than James Comey as Director of the FBI. The Obama subterfuge will proceed to November 2016 under the watchful eye and careful hand of a conservative, lifelong Republican, who, once he has indicted the presumptive Democratic nominee, the Obama Administration can disavow.

Rodney Glassman is Of Counsel at Ryley Carlock & Applewhite, Phoenix’s 5th largest law firm and lives in Phoenix, Arizona with his wife and two daughters. Prior to re-registering as a Republican, Rodney was elected and served on the Tucson City Council, and as the 2010 Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate against John McCain.