The flashpoint was the Justice Department’s failure to turn over seized communications from a confidant of Mr. Comey’s, Daniel C. Richman, a law professor at Columbia University.

© Doug Mills/The New York Times

The filing appeared to be an effort to construct a narrative that James B. Comey had leaked information to the news media without actually tying such assertions to the claims made in the indictment against him.

© Doug Mills/The New York Times

It was right to decry factional strife. Its remedy was a grave mistake.

The cumulative damage done to the agency is so profound that it may not regain any semblance of its former self in our lifetimes.