Who Is James Comey?

by
Ben Geier

@FortuneMagazine

July 7, 2016, 9:23 AM EDT

FBI Director James Comey is being called to the principal’s office to answer for his behavior.

Less than a week after holding a press conference to announce that the agency would not recommend that the Justice Department file charges against Hillary Clinton in relation to her use of a private e-mail server to send classified information, Comey has been summoned to the Hill. He will testify on Thursday morning before a House Oversight Committee filled with Republican Congress members who are champing at the bit to rake Comey over the coals.

Comey may be raising the ire of Republicans now, but he was actually appointed to his first two government jobs by George W. Bush. He was named U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York in 2002 and then named Deputy Attorney General in 2003. He left government service for the private sector, including some time at hedge fund Bridgewater before returning to DC when President Obama named him FBI director in 2013.

During his first tour of duty in Washington, Comey was intimately involved in another case involving confidential information — he chose his former colleague in the US Attorney’s office Patrick Fitzgerald to be the special prosecutor in the Valerie Plame CIA leak investigation. He was also involved in a bizarre incident in 2004 where Bush administration officials tried to get a sick John Ashcroft to reauthorize a domestic surveillance program, despite the fact that the powers of the Attorney General has been temporarily transferred to Comey.

Comey may be best known today for his involvement in the FBI‘s fight to get Apple to unlock the iPhone of the perpetrators of the San Bernadino terrorist attack. That became a major issue in the presidential race as candidates on both sides had to weigh in on issues of privacy and national security.

Comey was listed on Fortune‘s list of Worlds Greatest Leaders in 2015.

House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz has said that while he has questions for Comey, he does not question his integrity.

The testimony is set to begin at 10 a.m. EDT on Thursday.

Amazon’s newest delivery service: office e-mail

by
Ben Geier

@FortuneMagazine

January 28, 2015, 1:53 PM EDT

Amazon.com has got another delivery service in mind: helping shuffle your office e-mail messages.

The e-commerce giant is expected to announce an e-mail and electronic calendar service called WorkMail, according to The Wall Street Journal, which claims the service would directly compete with a corporate e-mail market largely controlled by Microsoft MSFT and to a lesser extent, Google GOOG .

The Journal reports that Amazon’s pitch to clients will focus on simplicity of use and security. It will offer WorkMail to companies at a monthly cost of $4 for each email inbox on WorkMail, a price range similar to what is offered by Microsoft’s 365 service and Google Apps for Business, WSJ reported.

Amazon AMZN wasn’t immediately available to comment on the initiative. It is the company’s latest effort to move beyond the traditional e-commerce business and become a more expansive Web behemoth. Amazon’s hardware initiatives include tablets, e-readers and smartphones, while the company also has a cloud storage service and streaming platforms, among other tech offerings.

Corporate e-mails generate a majority of e-mail traffic, and in 2014 they accounted for over 108.7 billion e-mails sent and received each day, according to technology research firm Radicati Group. Meanwhile, the firm projected the number of worldwide e-mail accounts will climb from over 4.1 billion accounts last year to 5.2 billion by the end of 2018.

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