The damaging case against James Comey
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James Comey set to receive eye-popping, 8-figure book deal for inside scoop on Trump & Clinton
http://www.theblaze.com/news/2017/0...-book-deal-for-inside-scoop-on-trump-clinton/
http://www.theblaze.com/news/2017/0...-book-deal-for-inside-scoop-on-trump-clinton/
James Comey’s Lackluster Civil Liberties Record Shows Washington’s Failure to Police Itself
Comey stood up to the Bush administration over illegal snooping, but as FBI director he defended surveillance.
C.J. Ciaramella
As all of Washington braces for James Comey's incendiary testimony before Congress Thursday, it's worth a trip down memory lane to reflect on his tenure as FBI director.
When Comey was appointed by Barack Obama to lead the FBI in 2013, he was seen as a hero in many circles for dramatically pushing back against the Bush administration's illegal surveillance programs.
"Jim understands that in time of crisis, we aren't judged solely by how many plots we disrupt or how many criminals we bring to justice," Obama said as he nominated Comey in 2013. "We're also judged by our commitment to the Constitution that we've sworn to defend, and to the values and civil liberties that we've pledged to protect."
Yet as Reason's Nick Gillespie wrote shortly after Comey's nomination, "Comey has been applauded for standing up to some of Bush's more-expansive surveillance policies, but he also defended indefinite detention without a trial, waterboarding, and—once a new legal rationale had been hammered out—those more-expansive surveillance policies."
During his confirmation hearing to replace then-FBI Director Robert Mueller—who, because time is a flat circle, is now the special counsel leading the investigation into the Trump campaign's ties to Russia—Comey assured senators and the public that there were plenty of checks and safeguards against FBI overreach, such as the FISA court, investigative guidelines from the attorney general, and oversight from Congress and the inspector general. "I think folks don't understand that the FBI operates under a wide variety of constraints," Comey argued.
But as all good civil libertarians know, the FBI has always been an intensely political agency that is almost never restrained from using its vast powers to address the anxieties and paranoias of the people in power. (See: the redbaiting of the '50s, the efforts to blackmail and discredit civil rights leaders in the '60s, and the infiltration of dissident political groups both before and after 9/11.) Congress, meanwhile, is deferential to the point of uselessness when it comes to delegating power to the intelligence community.
It was about six months after Comey's appointment that Edward Snowden leaked evidence that the National Security Agency was vacuuming up massive amounts of U.S. citizens' phone data. Comey said he was "confused" by the public perception of Snowden as a whistleblower—hero, even—since all three branches of government had approved the surveillance dragnet.
"I see the government operating the way the founders intended," Comey declared. "So I have trouble applying the whistleblower label to someone who basically disagrees with the way our government is structured and operates."
As Reason's Scott Shackford wrote in 2014:
Even before Edward Snowden began leaking classified documents showing exactly how humongous federal data collection had become, there were already a number of previous examples of government snooping out of control.
In particular, the FBI's system of using National Security Letters (NSLs) to obtain personal records without a court order was found by the Department of Justice's inspector general to have been terribly abused, gathering records with little oversight or reason, not following processes and resorting to "exigent letters" to even bypass the NSL rules entirely by claiming emergencies.
Similarly, when Apple and Google announced in 2014 they were making encryption easier for consumers, Comey knew who the real victim was: the government. "What concerns me about this is companies marketing something expressly to allow people to hold themselves beyond the law," Comey told reporters. Over his tenure, Comey would repeatedly testify about the dangers of allowing U.S. citizens to keep their communications hidden from the government's prying eyes.
Comey put muscle behind that rhetoric in 2016 when the FBI attempted to force Apple to create a backdoor into the locked iPhone of the San Bernardino terrorist Syed Farook.
Then there was Project Exile, one of Comey's favorite ideas. Under the banner of reducing gun violence, Project Exile encouraged local police to refer firearm cases to federal prosecutors, who could pursue five-year mandatory minimum sentences. The program, which was embraced by law enforcement groups, essentially federalized local gun crime and resulted in convicted defendants being shipped hundreds of miles away to federal prisons. Exiled, in other words. The program is now being enthusiastically embraced by Attorney General Jeff Sessions and President Trump.
Yet Congress didn't have have serious credibility concerns with Comey until the 2016 presidential election, when the FBI had to juggle investigations into Hillary Clinton's private email server, Donald Trump's alleged links to Russia, and the Kremlin's thinly disguised efforts to undermine U.S. elections.
When Comey came into the FBI director's office, we were told he'd leave the unconstitutional excesses of the Bush years behind. Now he has been unceremoniously ousted, and the Senate is once again talking about the crucial need to appoint an independent and trustworthy FBI chief, free from political influence. The next director will no doubt tell senators what they want to hear. Whether they actually attempt to hold him to those words is up to them.
Comey stood up to the Bush administration over illegal snooping, but as FBI director he defended surveillance.
C.J. Ciaramella
As all of Washington braces for James Comey's incendiary testimony before Congress Thursday, it's worth a trip down memory lane to reflect on his tenure as FBI director.
When Comey was appointed by Barack Obama to lead the FBI in 2013, he was seen as a hero in many circles for dramatically pushing back against the Bush administration's illegal surveillance programs.
"Jim understands that in time of crisis, we aren't judged solely by how many plots we disrupt or how many criminals we bring to justice," Obama said as he nominated Comey in 2013. "We're also judged by our commitment to the Constitution that we've sworn to defend, and to the values and civil liberties that we've pledged to protect."
Yet as Reason's Nick Gillespie wrote shortly after Comey's nomination, "Comey has been applauded for standing up to some of Bush's more-expansive surveillance policies, but he also defended indefinite detention without a trial, waterboarding, and—once a new legal rationale had been hammered out—those more-expansive surveillance policies."
During his confirmation hearing to replace then-FBI Director Robert Mueller—who, because time is a flat circle, is now the special counsel leading the investigation into the Trump campaign's ties to Russia—Comey assured senators and the public that there were plenty of checks and safeguards against FBI overreach, such as the FISA court, investigative guidelines from the attorney general, and oversight from Congress and the inspector general. "I think folks don't understand that the FBI operates under a wide variety of constraints," Comey argued.
But as all good civil libertarians know, the FBI has always been an intensely political agency that is almost never restrained from using its vast powers to address the anxieties and paranoias of the people in power. (See: the redbaiting of the '50s, the efforts to blackmail and discredit civil rights leaders in the '60s, and the infiltration of dissident political groups both before and after 9/11.) Congress, meanwhile, is deferential to the point of uselessness when it comes to delegating power to the intelligence community.
It was about six months after Comey's appointment that Edward Snowden leaked evidence that the National Security Agency was vacuuming up massive amounts of U.S. citizens' phone data. Comey said he was "confused" by the public perception of Snowden as a whistleblower—hero, even—since all three branches of government had approved the surveillance dragnet.
"I see the government operating the way the founders intended," Comey declared. "So I have trouble applying the whistleblower label to someone who basically disagrees with the way our government is structured and operates."
As Reason's Scott Shackford wrote in 2014:
Even before Edward Snowden began leaking classified documents showing exactly how humongous federal data collection had become, there were already a number of previous examples of government snooping out of control.
In particular, the FBI's system of using National Security Letters (NSLs) to obtain personal records without a court order was found by the Department of Justice's inspector general to have been terribly abused, gathering records with little oversight or reason, not following processes and resorting to "exigent letters" to even bypass the NSL rules entirely by claiming emergencies.
Similarly, when Apple and Google announced in 2014 they were making encryption easier for consumers, Comey knew who the real victim was: the government. "What concerns me about this is companies marketing something expressly to allow people to hold themselves beyond the law," Comey told reporters. Over his tenure, Comey would repeatedly testify about the dangers of allowing U.S. citizens to keep their communications hidden from the government's prying eyes.
Comey put muscle behind that rhetoric in 2016 when the FBI attempted to force Apple to create a backdoor into the locked iPhone of the San Bernardino terrorist Syed Farook.
Then there was Project Exile, one of Comey's favorite ideas. Under the banner of reducing gun violence, Project Exile encouraged local police to refer firearm cases to federal prosecutors, who could pursue five-year mandatory minimum sentences. The program, which was embraced by law enforcement groups, essentially federalized local gun crime and resulted in convicted defendants being shipped hundreds of miles away to federal prisons. Exiled, in other words. The program is now being enthusiastically embraced by Attorney General Jeff Sessions and President Trump.
Yet Congress didn't have have serious credibility concerns with Comey until the 2016 presidential election, when the FBI had to juggle investigations into Hillary Clinton's private email server, Donald Trump's alleged links to Russia, and the Kremlin's thinly disguised efforts to undermine U.S. elections.
When Comey came into the FBI director's office, we were told he'd leave the unconstitutional excesses of the Bush years behind. Now he has been unceremoniously ousted, and the Senate is once again talking about the crucial need to appoint an independent and trustworthy FBI chief, free from political influence. The next director will no doubt tell senators what they want to hear. Whether they actually attempt to hold him to those words is up to them.
Chris Cuomo, Rachel Madcow, Stephy Stephanopoulus, Thomas Friedman to name a few.
June 11, 2017
Comey Unmasked
By Clarice Feldman
If your head is swimming with the accounts of “Russian Collusion” with the Trump campaign, a cock and bull story confected by Hillary Clinton to explain her loss and to undermine the President, allow me to simplify it now that James Comey has testified and revealed with a load of bunk it is.
First of all, don’t forget that as the head of the FBI, James Comey had the power to request the appointment of a Special Counsel anytime he felt it was warranted. In fact, despite countless leaks to the press that there was evidence of collusion between members of the Trump campaign and Russia, he had informed the relevant Congressional leaders that the FBI had no such evidence after months of investigation, a concession which, unsurprisingly enough, was never, leaked. The four Democrat leaders of the Gang of 8, which oversees the operation and knew this themselves, kept promulgating the lie that there was some such evidence.
After he was fired, in an act of venomous revenge -- not atypical of the Swamp – Comey had a friend, a Columbia Law School professor, leak his version of a conversation with the president. In this version, Trump was trying to hide the collusion by cutting off an investigation.
Why did he not simply release the memo to the press in a less cowardly fashion? Because he clearly hoped it would not be traced to him, and the motive thus made clear. Moreover, he confessed that he wanted to force the appointment of a special counsel. This follows to a striking degree the path in the Plame case -- where the attorney general, John Ashcroft, recused himself, and Comey was made acting attorney general, whereupon he appointed his friend Patrick Fitzgerald. I trust that many readers already are familiar with the manner in which Fitzpatrick’s investigation into a leak by Cheney-hater Richard Armitage, which tied up the administration and resulted in a confected process crime against a Cheney aide, Lewis Libby. In case you want to refresh your recollection of those events, here is the article I wrote about it eleven years ago.
This time, another leak about an inconsequential meeting with the Russian Ambassador caused Attorney General Jeff Sessions to recuse himself. As a correspondent notes about that recusal:
James Comey justified in his statements that on February 14th he did not inform his recently confirmed boss Attorney General Jeff Sessions, of the content of the oval office meeting with President Trump – or his suddenly overwhelming feelings of impropriety, because he anticipated Jeff Sessions would be forced to recuse himself from anything to do with the Russian investigation.. There was nothing known on February 14th which would establish a need for Sessions recusal. There’s no reasonable basis for such an assumption on February 14th, unless it was Comey’s intention to leak FISA-granted surveillance of Russian Ambassador Kislyak, having an innocuous meeting with Senator Jeff Sessions, to the Washington Post. A disingenuous, albeit politically framed, leak did factually surface on March 1st.
After Sessions’ recusal, the acting Attorney General Ron Rosenstein appointedComey’s “good friend” Robert Mueller as special counsel:
“Any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump and matters that arise or may arise directly from the investigation and other matters within the scope of 28 C.F.R. sec. 600.4 c [process crimes like destruction of evidence and perjury which occur during the investigation]”
In sum, knowing that the underlying case was garbage, Comey forced the hand of the attorney general and then the acting attorney general to recuse themselves and let his good friend go after the administration -- tying it up with criminal investigations and hoping to find some process crimes (perjury, obstruction, destruction of evidence) to prosecute. In other words, hoping for another witch-hunt.
In fact, with a better understanding of the man heading the FBI, the President should have fired him immediately. As the Wall Street Journal warned in January:
If experience is a guide, Mr. Comey is the sort of man to be embraced with extreme political caution. Democrats cheered last summer when he invented a legal distinction between extreme carelessness and gross negligence to give Hillary Clinton a legal pass for mishandling classified information. Now they blame him for throwing the election to Mr. Trump for informing Congress, 11 days before the election, that he was reopening the investigation.
Republicans have also been burned by Mr. Comey, not just over his Clinton gymnastics but also his efforts to undermine the Bush Administration’s antiterror efforts during a prior stint as Deputy Attorney General. Now he will be responsible for current investigations into suspected links between the Russian government and some of Mr. Trump’s close associates.
We believe as much as anyone that FBI directors should be willing to go after criminality irrespective of politics. The trouble with Mr. Comey is that he is nothing if not political, especially when it comes to opportunities to burnish his personal reputation by going after the objects of liberal wrath.
Ask Frank Quattrone, the investment banker wrongly targeted by Mr. Comey in the post-Enron prosecution frenzy; or Scooter Libby, victim of the Javert-like exertions of Mr. Comey’s close friend Patrick Fitzgerald during the Plamegate hysteria.
At this point, Robert Mueller has several choices. With his appointment now revealed as a ruse designed by a vengeful partisan, he can resign, or he can wrap it up quickly -- after all, he now has all of Comey’s files on the already months-long investigation, which has produced nothing.
Judicial Watch’s Tom Fitton argues that the Comey leak to the New York Timesthrough his cut out invalidates the Special Counsel appointment,
Follow
Tom Fitton
✔@TomFitton
The appointment of Special Counsel was made under suspect circumstances. Comey's illicit actions turned it into a public corruption issue.
6:31 AM - 9 Jun 2017
Newt Gingrich argues much the same:
Comey Invalidates Special Counsel
The most startling revelation from fired FBI Director James Comey’s testimony this week was his barefaced admission that he intentionally leaked details of his private conversations with the President to the press in an effort to prompt the appointment a special counsel.
When asked Thursday by Senator Susan Collins of Maine whether he shared the memos he wrote about his conversations with President Trump with anyone outside the Department of Justice, Comey answered:
“I asked a friend of mine to share the content of the memo with a reporter – didn’t do it myself for a variety of reasons – but I asked him to, because I thought that might prompt the appointment of a special counsel.”
This statement is tremendously important because it completely delegitimizes Robert Mueller’s so-called independent investigation and reveals it as poisoned fruit.
Interestingly enough, Comey’s testimony this week took place after he consulted with Mueller.
“Collusion” in any event is not a crime. The only evidence of "collusion with Russia" is that of Ted Kennedy, who in 1983 did try unsuccessfully to enlist the Russians to help him defeat Ronald Reagan’s re-election bid.
Should Mueller not quit or Rosenstein not end his appointment, anyone questioned by the special counsel or his staff ought to demand what crime is under investigation. No one should speak to any agent investigating this non-crime without counsel present and demanding that the interrogation be videotaped. The FBI refuses to allow such documentation, and as we know from the case of agent John Eckenrode in the Libby case, their notes are often in error or conveniently lost and the agent involved resigned so he cannot, as a practical matter, be cross examined about them because of the limited discovery options to defendants.
In other words, do not fall into gentleman G.W. Bush’s trap of acting like this Mueller team is honorable or seeking to find the truth about a real crime. Chances are they are not.
At the same time that the Comey show was playing, we learned that the improbably named Reality Winner, a young linguist working for an NSA contractor, leaked classified information to which, as the holder of a top secret classification, she had access. This follows leaks by Manning and Snowden. Her online communications would suggest to any reasonable person that she wassympathetic to the enemy.
A diary found in her home indicated she planned to burn down the White House and run off to join the Taliban, among other things. We are giving the government more and more access to all our communications and these classified intercepts are being handled by partisans like Susan Rice to unmask and widely distribute, and to young, clearly disturbed, and poorly vetted people. Maybe it’s time to re-evaluate whether we really need to gather up all this stuff and put it in such hands.
Perhaps instead of chasing chimeras, Congress ought to consider whether the massive spying by the Obama Administration, in violation of established law, is a better use of its resources. Or the Obama Administration’s systemic disbanding of those units investigating Iran’s terrorism networks because it feared that might interfere with the Iran “deal.”
Maybe Congress ought to consider whether dismantling intelligence that has a better chance of scotching terrorism is more significant than listening in on the private communications of the Democrats’ opponents by the many people in the national security apparatus whose “patriotism and professionalism” are, in the words of Glenn Reynolds, “overestimated.”
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2017/06/comey_unmasked.html
Comey Unmasked
By Clarice Feldman
If your head is swimming with the accounts of “Russian Collusion” with the Trump campaign, a cock and bull story confected by Hillary Clinton to explain her loss and to undermine the President, allow me to simplify it now that James Comey has testified and revealed with a load of bunk it is.
First of all, don’t forget that as the head of the FBI, James Comey had the power to request the appointment of a Special Counsel anytime he felt it was warranted. In fact, despite countless leaks to the press that there was evidence of collusion between members of the Trump campaign and Russia, he had informed the relevant Congressional leaders that the FBI had no such evidence after months of investigation, a concession which, unsurprisingly enough, was never, leaked. The four Democrat leaders of the Gang of 8, which oversees the operation and knew this themselves, kept promulgating the lie that there was some such evidence.
After he was fired, in an act of venomous revenge -- not atypical of the Swamp – Comey had a friend, a Columbia Law School professor, leak his version of a conversation with the president. In this version, Trump was trying to hide the collusion by cutting off an investigation.
Why did he not simply release the memo to the press in a less cowardly fashion? Because he clearly hoped it would not be traced to him, and the motive thus made clear. Moreover, he confessed that he wanted to force the appointment of a special counsel. This follows to a striking degree the path in the Plame case -- where the attorney general, John Ashcroft, recused himself, and Comey was made acting attorney general, whereupon he appointed his friend Patrick Fitzgerald. I trust that many readers already are familiar with the manner in which Fitzpatrick’s investigation into a leak by Cheney-hater Richard Armitage, which tied up the administration and resulted in a confected process crime against a Cheney aide, Lewis Libby. In case you want to refresh your recollection of those events, here is the article I wrote about it eleven years ago.
This time, another leak about an inconsequential meeting with the Russian Ambassador caused Attorney General Jeff Sessions to recuse himself. As a correspondent notes about that recusal:
James Comey justified in his statements that on February 14th he did not inform his recently confirmed boss Attorney General Jeff Sessions, of the content of the oval office meeting with President Trump – or his suddenly overwhelming feelings of impropriety, because he anticipated Jeff Sessions would be forced to recuse himself from anything to do with the Russian investigation.. There was nothing known on February 14th which would establish a need for Sessions recusal. There’s no reasonable basis for such an assumption on February 14th, unless it was Comey’s intention to leak FISA-granted surveillance of Russian Ambassador Kislyak, having an innocuous meeting with Senator Jeff Sessions, to the Washington Post. A disingenuous, albeit politically framed, leak did factually surface on March 1st.
After Sessions’ recusal, the acting Attorney General Ron Rosenstein appointedComey’s “good friend” Robert Mueller as special counsel:
“Any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump and matters that arise or may arise directly from the investigation and other matters within the scope of 28 C.F.R. sec. 600.4 c [process crimes like destruction of evidence and perjury which occur during the investigation]”
In sum, knowing that the underlying case was garbage, Comey forced the hand of the attorney general and then the acting attorney general to recuse themselves and let his good friend go after the administration -- tying it up with criminal investigations and hoping to find some process crimes (perjury, obstruction, destruction of evidence) to prosecute. In other words, hoping for another witch-hunt.
In fact, with a better understanding of the man heading the FBI, the President should have fired him immediately. As the Wall Street Journal warned in January:
If experience is a guide, Mr. Comey is the sort of man to be embraced with extreme political caution. Democrats cheered last summer when he invented a legal distinction between extreme carelessness and gross negligence to give Hillary Clinton a legal pass for mishandling classified information. Now they blame him for throwing the election to Mr. Trump for informing Congress, 11 days before the election, that he was reopening the investigation.
Republicans have also been burned by Mr. Comey, not just over his Clinton gymnastics but also his efforts to undermine the Bush Administration’s antiterror efforts during a prior stint as Deputy Attorney General. Now he will be responsible for current investigations into suspected links between the Russian government and some of Mr. Trump’s close associates.
We believe as much as anyone that FBI directors should be willing to go after criminality irrespective of politics. The trouble with Mr. Comey is that he is nothing if not political, especially when it comes to opportunities to burnish his personal reputation by going after the objects of liberal wrath.
Ask Frank Quattrone, the investment banker wrongly targeted by Mr. Comey in the post-Enron prosecution frenzy; or Scooter Libby, victim of the Javert-like exertions of Mr. Comey’s close friend Patrick Fitzgerald during the Plamegate hysteria.
At this point, Robert Mueller has several choices. With his appointment now revealed as a ruse designed by a vengeful partisan, he can resign, or he can wrap it up quickly -- after all, he now has all of Comey’s files on the already months-long investigation, which has produced nothing.
Judicial Watch’s Tom Fitton argues that the Comey leak to the New York Timesthrough his cut out invalidates the Special Counsel appointment,
Follow
Tom Fitton ✔@TomFitton
The appointment of Special Counsel was made under suspect circumstances. Comey's illicit actions turned it into a public corruption issue.
6:31 AM - 9 Jun 2017
Newt Gingrich argues much the same:
Comey Invalidates Special Counsel
The most startling revelation from fired FBI Director James Comey’s testimony this week was his barefaced admission that he intentionally leaked details of his private conversations with the President to the press in an effort to prompt the appointment a special counsel.
When asked Thursday by Senator Susan Collins of Maine whether he shared the memos he wrote about his conversations with President Trump with anyone outside the Department of Justice, Comey answered:
“I asked a friend of mine to share the content of the memo with a reporter – didn’t do it myself for a variety of reasons – but I asked him to, because I thought that might prompt the appointment of a special counsel.”
This statement is tremendously important because it completely delegitimizes Robert Mueller’s so-called independent investigation and reveals it as poisoned fruit.
Interestingly enough, Comey’s testimony this week took place after he consulted with Mueller.
“Collusion” in any event is not a crime. The only evidence of "collusion with Russia" is that of Ted Kennedy, who in 1983 did try unsuccessfully to enlist the Russians to help him defeat Ronald Reagan’s re-election bid.
Should Mueller not quit or Rosenstein not end his appointment, anyone questioned by the special counsel or his staff ought to demand what crime is under investigation. No one should speak to any agent investigating this non-crime without counsel present and demanding that the interrogation be videotaped. The FBI refuses to allow such documentation, and as we know from the case of agent John Eckenrode in the Libby case, their notes are often in error or conveniently lost and the agent involved resigned so he cannot, as a practical matter, be cross examined about them because of the limited discovery options to defendants.
In other words, do not fall into gentleman G.W. Bush’s trap of acting like this Mueller team is honorable or seeking to find the truth about a real crime. Chances are they are not.
At the same time that the Comey show was playing, we learned that the improbably named Reality Winner, a young linguist working for an NSA contractor, leaked classified information to which, as the holder of a top secret classification, she had access. This follows leaks by Manning and Snowden. Her online communications would suggest to any reasonable person that she wassympathetic to the enemy.
A diary found in her home indicated she planned to burn down the White House and run off to join the Taliban, among other things. We are giving the government more and more access to all our communications and these classified intercepts are being handled by partisans like Susan Rice to unmask and widely distribute, and to young, clearly disturbed, and poorly vetted people. Maybe it’s time to re-evaluate whether we really need to gather up all this stuff and put it in such hands.
Perhaps instead of chasing chimeras, Congress ought to consider whether the massive spying by the Obama Administration, in violation of established law, is a better use of its resources. Or the Obama Administration’s systemic disbanding of those units investigating Iran’s terrorism networks because it feared that might interfere with the Iran “deal.”
Maybe Congress ought to consider whether dismantling intelligence that has a better chance of scotching terrorism is more significant than listening in on the private communications of the Democrats’ opponents by the many people in the national security apparatus whose “patriotism and professionalism” are, in the words of Glenn Reynolds, “overestimated.”
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2017/06/comey_unmasked.html
PROOF THAT JAMES COMEY MISLED THE SENATE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE
In his written testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, James Comey made a point of saying that he wrote memoranda documenting all of his conversations with Donald Trump, something he didn’t feel compelled to do regarding his (very few) conversations with Barack Obama. In his appearance before the committee, Comey broadened this claim to include President George W. Bush, under whom he served as Deputy Attorney General. The reason, he explained, was that Trump was the only one of the three presidents whom he considered untrustworthy. This was his exchange with Senator Warner:
WARNER: And so, in all your experience, this was the only president that you felt like, in every meeting, you needed to document, because at some point, using your words, he might put out a non-truthful representation of that meeting?
Now…
(CROSSTALK)
COMEY: That’s right, Senator.
And I — I — as I said in my written testimony, as FBI director, I interacted with President Obama. I spoke only twice in three years, and didn’t document it. When I was deputy attorney general, I had one one-on-one meeting with President Bush about a very important and difficult national security matter.
I didn’t write a memo documenting that conversation either — sent a quick e-mail to my staff to let them know there was something going on, but I didn’t feel, with President Bush, the need to document it in that way, again (ph), because of — the combination of those factors just wasn’t present with either President Bush or President Obama.
WARNER: I — I think that is very significant.
The one-on-one meeting with President Bush concerned the reauthorization of the Bush administration’s warrantless surveillance program, a drama in which Comey played a key role. As Deputy Attorney General, he refused to sign the reauthorization order on behalf of DOJ, and he was one of those who rushed to John Ashcroft’s hospital bedside.
A sharp-eyed reader pointed out that, as it happens, Comey has left behind an account of that meeting with President Bush. It is recounted in Angler, a book-length attack on Dick Cheney by Barton Gellman. Comey was one of Gellman’s chief sources.
Angler includes a description of Comey’s meeting with Bush that obviously came from Comey. It is strikingly similar to Comey’s description of his critical meeting with Donald Trump in his written Intelligence Committee testimony.
From Comey’s written testimony:
The President signaled the end of the briefing by thanking the group and telling them all that he wanted to speak to me alone. I stayed in my chair. As the participants started to leave the Oval Office, the Attorney General lingered by my chair, but the President thanked him and said he wanted to speak only with me. …When the door by the grandfather clock closed, and we were alone, the President began by saying, “I want to talk about Mike Flynn.”
From Angler:
Bush stood as the meeting ended, crossing behind Cheney’s chair. Comey moved in the opposite direction, on his way out. He had nearly reached the grandfather clock at the door when the president said, “Jim, can I talk to you for a minute?” … This time the vice president was not invited.
In Comey’s account, as transmitted by Gellman, he was a hero, telling the president something that other aides had kept from him: that the Department of Justice was in revolt over the surveillance program, and mass resignations, including his, were imminent. Comey claims to have quoted Martin Luther before the Diet of Worms, as he explained that as a man of principle he would have no choice but to resign rather than execute an order he believed to be illegal. One of Comey’s colleagues, who also was about to resign, was Comey’s good friend Bob Mueller, who waited for Comey downstairs at the White House while Comey had his dramatic conversation with President Bush.
Comey brought this episode up last week in order to paint himself, not as a sneak who dictated a memo to cover himself every time he had a conversation with a president, but rather as an honest man who was uniquely concerned about Donald Trump’s trustworthiness.
But Comey’s Senate testimony was untruthful. He told the committee that he didn’t document his important meeting with President Bush, but only “sent a quick email to my staff to let them know there was something going on.” Gellman reproduces that email in Angler. He got it from one of the recipients. Written immediately after the meeting, this is what it said:
The president just took me into his private office for a 15 minute one on one talk. Told him he was being misled and poorly served. We had a very full and frank exchange. Don’t know that either of us can see a way out. He promised he would shut down 5/6 if Congress didn’t fix FISA. Told him Mueller was about to resign. He just pulled Bob into his office.
Comey’s assertion that this “quick email” just told his staff “there was something going on” was false. The email was substantive: it documented Comey’s account of the conversation he had with the president. Comey didn’t wait five minutes to create a record of what he said to the president, and what the president said to him.
More important, he also made an extensive report on the conversation. Gellman’s book is footnoted. This is where Gellman says he got his account of Comey’s meeting with Bush:
317 “You don’t look well”: Quotations from the Bush-Comey conversation are taken verbatim from unclassified notes describing Comey’s report of the meeting shortly afterward.
Gellman’s account of the conversation is two pages long and includes the following quotes attributed to Comey or Bush:
“You don’t look well.”
“Well, I feel okay.”
“I’m worried about you. You look burdened.”
“I am, Mr. President. I feel like there’s a tremendous burden on me.”
“Let me lift that burden from your shoulders. Let me take that from you. Let me be the one who makes the decision here.”
“Mr. President, I would love to be able to do that.”
***
“I decide what the law is for the executive branch.”
“That’s absolutely true, sir, you do. But I decide what the Department of Justice can certify to and can’t certify to, and despite my absolute best efforts I simply cannot in the circumstances.”
***
“As Martin Luther said, ‘Here I stand; I can do no other.’ I’ve got to tell you, Mr. President, that’s where I am.”
***
“I just wish that you weren’t raising this at the last minute.”
“Oh, Mr. President, if you’ve been told that, you have been very poorly served by your advisers. We have been telling them for months that we have a huge problem here that we can’t get past. We’ve been working this, and here I am, and there’s no place else for me to go.”
“I just need you to certify it. Give me six weeks. If we don’t have it fixed in six weeks, we’ll shut it down.”
“I can’t do that. You do say what the law is in the executive branch, I believe that. And people’s job, if they’re going to stay in the executive branch, is to follow that. But I can’t agree, and I’m just sorry.”
***
“I think you should know that Director Mueller is going to resign today.”
“Thank you very much for telling me that. I really appreciate it, Jim. I’ll talk to him. I’m going to talk to him.”
All of that dialogue comes verbatim from “unclassified notes describing Comey’s report of the meeting shortly afterward.” Gellman’s phrasing is clumsy; it isn’t clear whether the notes were Comey’s or someone else’s. But it is crystal clear that Comey rendered a “report” on his meeting that included these extensive, self-serving quotes, and that Comey’s side of the story was preserved in notes–unclassified notes, that sounds familiar!–against any possible future contingency.
In short, Comey’s statement to the Senate Intelligence Committee that “I didn’t feel, with President Bush, the need to document it in that way” was false. He did document his story about his meeting with President Bush, in great detail, in a “report” that was turned into “unclassified notes.”
James Comey says there is a pattern to his dealings with presidents: he is an honest man who only needed to create memos to document his conversations with Donald Trump, because Trump is untruthful. But that isn’t the real pattern. The real pattern is that Comey is a snake in the grass who creates tendentious, self-serving memos that can later be used to cover his own rear end or to discredit presidents, but only if they are Republicans.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archiv...-misled-the-senate-intelligence-committee.php
In his written testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, James Comey made a point of saying that he wrote memoranda documenting all of his conversations with Donald Trump, something he didn’t feel compelled to do regarding his (very few) conversations with Barack Obama. In his appearance before the committee, Comey broadened this claim to include President George W. Bush, under whom he served as Deputy Attorney General. The reason, he explained, was that Trump was the only one of the three presidents whom he considered untrustworthy. This was his exchange with Senator Warner:
WARNER: And so, in all your experience, this was the only president that you felt like, in every meeting, you needed to document, because at some point, using your words, he might put out a non-truthful representation of that meeting?
Now…
(CROSSTALK)
COMEY: That’s right, Senator.
And I — I — as I said in my written testimony, as FBI director, I interacted with President Obama. I spoke only twice in three years, and didn’t document it. When I was deputy attorney general, I had one one-on-one meeting with President Bush about a very important and difficult national security matter.
I didn’t write a memo documenting that conversation either — sent a quick e-mail to my staff to let them know there was something going on, but I didn’t feel, with President Bush, the need to document it in that way, again (ph), because of — the combination of those factors just wasn’t present with either President Bush or President Obama.
WARNER: I — I think that is very significant.
The one-on-one meeting with President Bush concerned the reauthorization of the Bush administration’s warrantless surveillance program, a drama in which Comey played a key role. As Deputy Attorney General, he refused to sign the reauthorization order on behalf of DOJ, and he was one of those who rushed to John Ashcroft’s hospital bedside.
A sharp-eyed reader pointed out that, as it happens, Comey has left behind an account of that meeting with President Bush. It is recounted in Angler, a book-length attack on Dick Cheney by Barton Gellman. Comey was one of Gellman’s chief sources.
Angler includes a description of Comey’s meeting with Bush that obviously came from Comey. It is strikingly similar to Comey’s description of his critical meeting with Donald Trump in his written Intelligence Committee testimony.
From Comey’s written testimony:
The President signaled the end of the briefing by thanking the group and telling them all that he wanted to speak to me alone. I stayed in my chair. As the participants started to leave the Oval Office, the Attorney General lingered by my chair, but the President thanked him and said he wanted to speak only with me. …When the door by the grandfather clock closed, and we were alone, the President began by saying, “I want to talk about Mike Flynn.”
From Angler:
Bush stood as the meeting ended, crossing behind Cheney’s chair. Comey moved in the opposite direction, on his way out. He had nearly reached the grandfather clock at the door when the president said, “Jim, can I talk to you for a minute?” … This time the vice president was not invited.
In Comey’s account, as transmitted by Gellman, he was a hero, telling the president something that other aides had kept from him: that the Department of Justice was in revolt over the surveillance program, and mass resignations, including his, were imminent. Comey claims to have quoted Martin Luther before the Diet of Worms, as he explained that as a man of principle he would have no choice but to resign rather than execute an order he believed to be illegal. One of Comey’s colleagues, who also was about to resign, was Comey’s good friend Bob Mueller, who waited for Comey downstairs at the White House while Comey had his dramatic conversation with President Bush.
Comey brought this episode up last week in order to paint himself, not as a sneak who dictated a memo to cover himself every time he had a conversation with a president, but rather as an honest man who was uniquely concerned about Donald Trump’s trustworthiness.
But Comey’s Senate testimony was untruthful. He told the committee that he didn’t document his important meeting with President Bush, but only “sent a quick email to my staff to let them know there was something going on.” Gellman reproduces that email in Angler. He got it from one of the recipients. Written immediately after the meeting, this is what it said:
The president just took me into his private office for a 15 minute one on one talk. Told him he was being misled and poorly served. We had a very full and frank exchange. Don’t know that either of us can see a way out. He promised he would shut down 5/6 if Congress didn’t fix FISA. Told him Mueller was about to resign. He just pulled Bob into his office.
Comey’s assertion that this “quick email” just told his staff “there was something going on” was false. The email was substantive: it documented Comey’s account of the conversation he had with the president. Comey didn’t wait five minutes to create a record of what he said to the president, and what the president said to him.
More important, he also made an extensive report on the conversation. Gellman’s book is footnoted. This is where Gellman says he got his account of Comey’s meeting with Bush:
317 “You don’t look well”: Quotations from the Bush-Comey conversation are taken verbatim from unclassified notes describing Comey’s report of the meeting shortly afterward.
Gellman’s account of the conversation is two pages long and includes the following quotes attributed to Comey or Bush:
“You don’t look well.”
“Well, I feel okay.”
“I’m worried about you. You look burdened.”
“I am, Mr. President. I feel like there’s a tremendous burden on me.”
“Let me lift that burden from your shoulders. Let me take that from you. Let me be the one who makes the decision here.”
“Mr. President, I would love to be able to do that.”
***
“I decide what the law is for the executive branch.”
“That’s absolutely true, sir, you do. But I decide what the Department of Justice can certify to and can’t certify to, and despite my absolute best efforts I simply cannot in the circumstances.”
***
“As Martin Luther said, ‘Here I stand; I can do no other.’ I’ve got to tell you, Mr. President, that’s where I am.”
***
“I just wish that you weren’t raising this at the last minute.”
“Oh, Mr. President, if you’ve been told that, you have been very poorly served by your advisers. We have been telling them for months that we have a huge problem here that we can’t get past. We’ve been working this, and here I am, and there’s no place else for me to go.”
“I just need you to certify it. Give me six weeks. If we don’t have it fixed in six weeks, we’ll shut it down.”
“I can’t do that. You do say what the law is in the executive branch, I believe that. And people’s job, if they’re going to stay in the executive branch, is to follow that. But I can’t agree, and I’m just sorry.”
***
“I think you should know that Director Mueller is going to resign today.”
“Thank you very much for telling me that. I really appreciate it, Jim. I’ll talk to him. I’m going to talk to him.”
All of that dialogue comes verbatim from “unclassified notes describing Comey’s report of the meeting shortly afterward.” Gellman’s phrasing is clumsy; it isn’t clear whether the notes were Comey’s or someone else’s. But it is crystal clear that Comey rendered a “report” on his meeting that included these extensive, self-serving quotes, and that Comey’s side of the story was preserved in notes–unclassified notes, that sounds familiar!–against any possible future contingency.
In short, Comey’s statement to the Senate Intelligence Committee that “I didn’t feel, with President Bush, the need to document it in that way” was false. He did document his story about his meeting with President Bush, in great detail, in a “report” that was turned into “unclassified notes.”
James Comey says there is a pattern to his dealings with presidents: he is an honest man who only needed to create memos to document his conversations with Donald Trump, because Trump is untruthful. But that isn’t the real pattern. The real pattern is that Comey is a snake in the grass who creates tendentious, self-serving memos that can later be used to cover his own rear end or to discredit presidents, but only if they are Republicans.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archiv...-misled-the-senate-intelligence-committee.php
Newt is right, once again. The Special Counsel was appointed because of Comey's lies. After hearing him testify, it is obvious there is no need for a Special Counsel. He should be relieved of his appointment.
If the democrats want to make an issue of it, let them. No one cares.
If the democrats want to make an issue of it, let them. No one cares.