How Comey’s Useful Idiot Became Nicolle Wallace’s Husband

The story of Nicolle Wallace’s hostility toward Donald Trump cannot be told without recounting her long habit of following her husbands into politics and media, and her second husband Michael S. Schmidt’s unwitting role as a megaphone for James Comey’s leaks. To put it plainly, Wallace’s animus toward Trump is not merely ideological, it is deeply personal, tied to her marital entanglement with a reporter who became central to laundering the FBI’s narrative of Trump-Russia “collusion” into mainstream press coverage. If Wallace sounds like a woman scorned whenever Trump’s name arises, it is because the man she married was professionally and personally invested in discrediting him.

Wallace’s career trajectory tracks closely with the men in her life. She began as a local reporter at San Francisco’s Channel Seven, then followed her first husband, Mark Wallace, into Jeb Bush’s Florida administration. That attachment led her to identify as a Republican. When Mark entered the Bush administration, she landed as a special assistant to the president and later communications director. As Mark rose through the DOJ, ATF, and eventually the Interior Department, Nicolle’s posts advanced in tandem. Their partnership culminated in her role as communications director for the Bush-Cheney reelection campaign while Mark served as Deputy Campaign Manager. Mark’s appointment as US Ambassador to the UN was followed by Nicolle’s high-profile role managing Sarah Palin during the McCain campaign. Their shared disdain for Palin after the 2008 loss coincided with Nicolle’s gradual drift leftward, a drift that brought her to daytime talk television and eventually MSNBC, where she became openly hostile to the GOP.

By 2017, Wallace had secured her flagship MSNBC program, Deadline: White House. Her early and frequent guest was New York Times reporter Michael S. Schmidt. Schmidt was not just another journalist. He had been handpicked by FBI Director James Comey’s confidant, Columbia Law professor Daniel Richman, as the recipient of Comey’s carefully leaked memos. In May 2017, only days after Trump fired Comey, Schmidt broke the “bombshell” story that Comey had documented Trump demanding loyalty and urging him to drop the Michael Flynn investigation. These supposed memos became the cornerstone of the obstruction-of-justice narrative and were cited by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in appointing Robert Mueller. Schmidt was Comey’s chosen vessel, and Wallace’s program was the echo chamber.

In retrospect, nearly all of it was false. Inspector General reports, the Durham probe, and congressional investigations have since revealed that Trump never demanded a loyalty oath and never ordered Comey to drop the Flynn matter. What the record shows instead is an FBI hierarchy that had targeted Flynn, that misused FISA warrants, and that relied on Clinton campaign-funded opposition research. Schmidt, far from digging independently, functioned as Comey’s conduit. He was the journalist equivalent of what Lenin once called a “useful idiot.”

Wallace’s bias against Trump hardened in this crucible. Night after night, Schmidt appeared on her show, repeating leaks that he himself had not fully vetted. He was amplifying Comey’s narrative, and Wallace was amplifying Schmidt. It was the perfect disinformation loop: FBI officials leaked to Richman, Richman fed Schmidt, Schmidt fed Wallace, and Wallace’s MSNBC megaphone delivered the “news” to millions of viewers. Each step laundered the origin of the information until what began as Comey’s personal vendetta against Trump appeared as established fact. For Wallace, her deepening personal relationship with Schmidt reinforced her professional conviction: Trump was dangerous, because the man she would soon marry had built his Pulitzer on portraying him that way.

Schmidt’s 2020 book, Donald Trump v. The United States, is the codification of this worldview. He depicts FBI and DOJ officials as reluctant guardians of democracy holding the line against a reckless president. Trump is cast as the villain, the institutions as heroes. But the later revelations of corruption inside those very institutions reveal the book as stenography for the FBI, not journalism. The man who would become Wallace’s husband had memorialized, and thereby legitimized, the FBI’s perspective. No wonder Wallace treats Trump with such personal vitriol. To admit error now would be to admit that her husband’s Pulitzer was the product of manipulation.

This dynamic is not unique to Wallace and Schmidt. Washington is thick with examples of reporters married to political operatives, blurring the line between journalism and power. Christiane Amanpour, CNN’s chief international correspondent, was married to James Rubin, who headed the State Department’s Global Engagement Center and frequently appeared on her program. Ian Cameron, ABC News producer for This Week, was married to Susan Rice, national security advisor and UN ambassador, a frequent guest on his show. Virginia Moseley, a CNN executive editor, is married to Tom Nides, former Deputy Secretary of State and later vice chairman at Blackstone, also a regular on CNN. Bianna Golodryga, CNN anchor, is married to Peter Orszag, Obama’s OMB director. Todd Purdum of Vanity Fair married Dee Dee Myers, Clinton’s press secretary and later an advisor to Gavin Newsom. Chuck Todd of Meet the Press is married to Democrat strategist Kristian Denny Todd, who advised Bernie Sanders and DC mayor Muriel Bowser. Claire Shipman of ABC married Jay Carney, Obama’s press secretary. Andrea Mitchell of NBC is married to Alan Greenspan, former Fed chair. Ronald Brownstein of CNN is married to Eileen McMenamin, John McCain’s former communications director.

In each case, a journalist is entangled with a partisan actor. The result is not objectivity but a feedback loop of bias. The Wallace-Schmidt relationship simply represents the most flagrant case, because the leaks Schmidt laundered were used to trigger a special counsel probe against a sitting president, and Wallace’s program served as the amplifier. It is a textbook case of institutional power aligning with media bias to shape public perception against an elected leader.

What, then, are we to conclude? That Wallace’s hatred of Trump is entirely personal? No. Ideology plays a role. But the personal and professional are inseparable. Her husband’s career was built on Comey’s leaks, and her own program was built on amplifying them. To retreat now would be to unravel both.

The lesson is not confined to Wallace. It is a cautionary tale about the marriage of media and power, about how personal relationships and professional incentives combine to distort public life. It shows how the very institutions that claimed to defend democracy in 2017 were in fact undermining it, using friendly reporters and their partners in broadcast to launder disinformation. Schmidt thought he was holding Trump accountable. Wallace thought she was anchoring truth. Both, in fact, were advancing a deception designed by the FBI itself.

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