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Thursday, August 29, 2019

UPDATED: The Bottom Line Of The OIG Comey Report (Part 1)

This is the bottom line, at least for me. David Harsanyi gets it perfectly this morning in the NYPost: James Comey is proof the ‘deep state’ is something to fear. This is the importance of what Comey did, even if it wasn't prosecutable. Not per se prosecutable, but it's powerful evidence of the big picture crime:

Comey, the report found, had leaked “investigative information, obtained during the course of FBI employment, in order to achieve a personally desired outcome.” 
That outcome, as Comey had admitted to Congress, was to “prompt the appointment of a special counsel” to investigate the president’s alleged conspiracy with the Russian government to win the 2016 election. By doing this, the DOJ inspector general, who is widely considered both meticulous and unbiased, found that Comey had “set a dangerous example” and “releas[ed] sensitive information” to “create public pressure for official action.” 
It worked. And by manufacturing an investigation into the president — one that he didn’t have enough evidence to pursue in an official capacity — Comey had not only abused his power but plunged the nation into two years of hysterics about Russian interference.

Abusing the trust of one's office--and remember, the FBI Director is nominated by the President of the United States and confirmed with the advice and consent of the US Senate--to knowingly plunge the nation into two years of hysterics based on a hoax may not be an actual crime. In my book, it's worse than most crimes. If John Durham and Bill Barr do their job, they'll expose this whole conspiracy to the American public and those who were complicit will pay the penalty for their perfidy.

UPDATE 1: Gregg Jarrett gets a lot right. Prescinding from the upcoming issue of FISA abuse, he focuses on the abuse of trust that Comey engaged in almost programatically as Director of the lead Law Enforcement and Counterintelligence agency in the United States, who had to be nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate:

Only the audaciously arrogant fired FBI Director James Comey would demand the equivalent of an apology in the wake of a blistering denunciation of his actions by the Justice Department’s inspector general Thursday. 
As usual, Comey has it backwards. Comey is the one who owes the American public a sincere apology for abusing his position as FBI director, violating government rules, concealing information from his former agency, leaking sensitive documents without authorization, mismarking memos without classification banners, improperly retaining records in an unsecured location, failing to surrender those records to the FBI, and assuming “carte blanche authority” he did not have. 
All of this is contained in the IG’s report disparaging Comey’s behavior. Yet, the fired director has chosen to play the victim by tweeting, “I don’t need a public apology from those who defamed me, but a quick message with a ‘sorry we lied about you’ would be nice.”

I forget who it was, but someone recently said that the world isn't big enough to contain James Comey's ego. If we ever doubted that assessment, doubt is no longer possible.

UPDATE 2: James Freeman at the WSJ hits on an important point:

Adopting the public-relations strategy that earned Bill Clinton the admiration of communications executives worldwide, former FBI Director James Comey is treating as vindication a government report which details his misconduct but doesn’t yield a criminal indictment.

This is now part of Liberal America's civic culture. The only bar for misconduct--unless you happen to be a non-liberal of any sort--is the criminal law. If it's not a violation of the criminal law, it's no-harm-no-foul. Unless you're a non-liberal. That in itself seems to rise to the level of a criminal act.

Freeman concludes:

Now who wants to bet that the Comey FBI followed the rules when it came to spying on the political campaign of the party out of power?

With an example like that at the top, all bets are very obviously off.

15 comments:

  1. Seems Comey perceived his assigned part in the Russia Hoax to be relatively small compared to Obama/Brennan/Clapper/Rice/Yates/Holder/Lynch, so, wanting more stage time, he improvised this stupid "memos" scene, which the OIG has now cut.

    I think the final movie will contain much more drama, and Comey will appear in scenes he will regret. (That wasn't me! That was a stunt double! I never agreed to do that!)

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    1. He was right there in the middle of that pack.

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  2. I am hoping, probably pointlessly, that Barr issues a press release like this: "We at the DoJ have read and considered the OIG work in this matter carefully, and have decided to not proceed with prosecution, but equally so, we have not been able to exonerate Mr. Comey."

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    1. That would be good, but hopefully they'll have a lot more to say about Comey down the road. And not too far--they say the FISA report isn't far behind.

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  3. Comey set the ball rolling--with the narrative outlined by Harsanyi above. So long as Comey is prosecuted for various crimes associated with the FISC deception (fraud), I imagine I'll survive the fact that steamrolling the Deep State into appointing a special counsel is not an indictable crime.

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    1. Right. If you attempt to cover every bit of bad behavior with a criminal statute pretty soon you have a tyranny.

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  4. If, I say if, there are no prosecutions down the line, can these cretins be sued for there personal malfeasance.

    We must have justice!!!

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  5. This was all foreseeable, and the public reaction is yet to be fully realized by the media and DC swamp creatures.

    In the bubble, this outrage will blow over in a few days and the high-paid public relations minions will do their magic and everyone will calm down and forgetaboutit soon enough. That is one theory.

    God help the DOJ/FBI next time they need the assistance of the ordinary citizen in order to solve a crime. Wray might want to issue ballistic vests to field agents before sending them out to conduct interviews in the future.

    Epidemic corruption comes at a price, and total loss of public faith is a pretty steep price to pay for the honor of wiping Comey's ass clean.

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    1. They've used up a lot of capital. Crazy. Out of touch.

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  6. I guess that I owe Comey an apology. I stated in a past comments section that Comey had a conscience and he knew he was violating it.

    I was wrong. He is every bit as evil as Brennan. He's a megalomaniac.

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    1. Forgive me if this is a silly question, but I keep coming back to something that bothers me. How, exactly, did Comey know that his actions in releasing, indirectly, selected content of the memos would necessarily, automatically, result in the appointment of a special prosecutor?

      What was the trigger here?

      Secondarily, I can accept the idea that Comey skates for his sins here, but only, only if he is subsequently indicted for his lying to the FISA Court. Absent that, Deep State wins the Super Bowl.

      I've got to admit, on that front, that the change in tone on the part of Joe DiGenova has me counting my change. Seems to me he's gone from lock them up to exposure, which won't change anything in the Swamp. They'll laugh it off.

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    2. What Comey leaked was Trump's expressed hope that Comey could "let this [the Flynn investigation] go." The claim was that this was somehow obstruction. It didn't actually trigger the Special Counsel but it enflamed opinion, especially among squishy GOPers.

      I agree. The idea of submitting knowingly false FISA applications should have no consequences is intolerable.

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  7. "This is now part of Liberal America's civic culture. The only bar for misconduct--unless you happen to be a non-liberal of any sort--is the criminal law. If it's not a violation of the criminal law, it's no-harm-no-foul."

    Regrettably, don't we play the same game, as in: "No collusion. No obstruction."

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    1. Sorry, I don't see that at all. Barr's conclusion was not that there was no obstruction because there had been no collusion, but that Trump did nothing that fit accepted definitions of obstruction--the elements of the crime were not present.

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