RUTHFULLY YOURS

Now we know, thanks to former FBI Director James Comey’s testimony last week, that President Trump was not a target of the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

That’s by far the most important thing Mr. Comey said. For a year, the FBI has been looking into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, and apparently there was not enough evidence to make Mr. Trump a target. That news should put to rest—as the president had hoped—an allegation that, if true, would undoubtedly have caused even Republicans in Congress to consider impeachment.

But Mr. Comey’s testimony has put another question on the table: whether the president attempted to obstruct justice. According to Mr. Comey, he met with Mr. Trump privately in the Oval Office while the FBI was investigating former national security adviser Mike Flynn. “I hope you can see your way clear to letting this thing go,” Mr. Comey says the president told him. The former FBI chief testified that the president also asked him for “loyalty.” Mr. Trump later fired Mr. Comey, possibly because he had not shown it.

As this national obsession continues, there will be heated discussions about whether Mr. Trump’s statements and actions, and the surrounding circumstances, were an effort to obstruct justice. The answer: Given what we know, there is very little chance Special Counsel Robert Mueller will bring an obstruction charge.

For one thing, the facts are ambiguous. Yes, Mr. Trump asked Mr. Comey to abandon the investigation of Mr. Flynn, but he didn’t order it—something that, as president, he had the authority to do. As Mr. Comey remembered the president’s request, it was couched as a wish: “I hope you can see your way clear . . .” Similarly, the president’s desire for loyalty is not unusual. All presidents expect loyalty from those in their administrations. The executive branch cannot function if subordinates are not loyal to the president. Leaks are evidence of this.

In addition, Mr. Comey reported Mr. Trump said several things that are inconsistent with an intent to disrupt the investigation generally. The most serious part of the inquiry relates to the Trump campaign’s possible collusion with the Russians—clearly an impeachable offense if it occurred with Mr. Trump’s knowledge or direction. Mr. Comey reports Mr. Trump as saying “if there were some ‘satellite’ associates of his who did something wrong, it would be good to find that out.” That clearly indicates Mr. Trump was not trying to keep the FBI from investigating the Russia collusion issue.

These factual ambiguities alone make the case for obstruction of justice far less than clear-cut. Legal and political considerations militate in the same direction.

There is a strong argument that, as a matter of law, the president cannot be criminally guilty of obstructing justice if he simply orders the FBI director not to investigate someone. All appointed officials are the president’s subordinates, and he is responsible for, and has authority over, their actions. CONTINUE AT SITE

A new allegation has surfaced that there is more to the connection between former Attorney General Loretta Lynch and former FBI Director James Comey than has so far surfaced.http://www.westernjournalism.com/new-report-claims-comey-lynch-meetings-will-revealed/

John Solomon, a reporter with Circa, appeared on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show Friday night and offered a prediction of more revelations to come concerning Comey and Lynch.

“I think there is probably more interest that should be focused on what happened between James Comey and Attorney General Loretta Lynch after what we heard (in Comey’s testimony),” Solomon said.“And I am hearing tonight that Comey may have had other meetings with Lynch that are going to come to light in the next few weeks,” he added.

During his testimony Thursday before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Comey said Lynch gave him a “queasy feeling” when she instructed him which words to use in discussing the FBI investigation of Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of state.

“At one point, the attorney general had directed me not to call it an investigation, but instead to call it amatter, which confused me and concerned me,” he said.

Lynch’s request “concerned me because that language tracked with how the campaign was talking about how the FBI was doing its work,” Comey said.

“I don’t know whether it was intentional or not, but it gave the impression that the attorney general was trying to align how we describe our work with the Clinton campaign,” he added. “That was one of the bricks in the load that led me to conclude, ‘I have to step away from the department if we’re to close this case credibly.’”

The final blow came when former President Bill Clinton had a surreptitious meeting with Lynch on the tarmac of the Phoenix airport, Comey said.

One analyst said Lynch’s actions represented a “huge mistake” and “a partisan intrusion that must be investigated.”

A former attorney general under President George W. Bush said Friday that ex-Attorney General Loretta Lynch made the Department of Justice “an arm of the Clinton campaign” in her directives to then-FBI Director James Comey about how to characterize the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email server while was secretary of state.http://www.westernjournalism.com/bush-era-ag-lynch-made-fbi-arm-clinton-campaign/

During his testimony Thursday to the Senate Intelligence Committee, Comey said Lynch ordered him to call the probe a “matter” instead of an investigation.

Michael Mukasey, who was attorney general form 2007-2009, said that action amounted to collusion between the Obama-era Justice Department and the Clinton campaign.“What makes it egregious is the fact — and I think it’s obvious that it is a fact — that the attorney general of the United States was adjusting the way the department talked about its business so as to coincide with the way the Clinton campaign talked about that business,” Mukasey said in an interview with Newsmax.“In other words, it made the Department of Justice essentially an arm of the Clinton campaign,” he said.

“That is a betrayal of the department and of its independence to illustrate that clearly that the attorney general was essentially in the tank for Secretary Clinton.”

During his testimony, Comey he got a “queasy feeling” when told how he should refer to the probe.

“The Clinton campaign, at the time, was using all kind of euphemisms — security review, matters, things like that — for what was going on. We were getting to a place where the attorney general and I were both going to have to testify and talk publicly about. And I wanted to know, was she going to authorize us to confirm we had an investigation?” he said.

“And she said, ‘Yes, but don’t call it that, call it a matter.’ And I said, ‘Why would I do that?’”

“And she said, just call it a matter,” Comey said. “And so that concerned me because that language tracked the way the campaign was talking about the FBI’s work and that’s concerning.”

Other analysts agreed with Mukasey that the collusion between the FBI and the Clinton campaign is troubling.

“In Comey’s testimony Thursday, he basically admitted to colluding with Obama’s justice department to ensure that justice was obstructed in the Hillary Clinton email investigation,” wrote Robert Carbery on InvestmentWatch Blog.

“We all know justice was not served. Comey essentially laid out the case for why she should be indicted during that July presser, only to finish by saying no prosecutor in their right mind would seek an indictment. It pays to be the Clintons,” he wrote.

Joe Borelli, writing for The Washington Times, said the revelations about Lynch were significant.

“The most significant takeaways from the entire hearing did not, in fact, involve alleged inappropriate conduct by the Trump administration, but rather by the Obama Justice Department,” he wrote.

Former FBI Director James Comey earnestly lectures about the inaccuracy of leaks and laments that it is not the purview of disinterested federal agencies to correct such erroneous information that the press such as the New York Times recklessly publishes. https://amgreatness.com/2017/06/10/will-police-police-comey-testimonies/

Fine. Yet for the last six months, information in the hands of the FBI, such as the infamous Steele fake-news dossier, a hit piece of opposition research, was leaked by intelligence agencies to the press for political advantage. Comey mirabile dictu himself confesses to planting leaked information to the press of a privileged conversation with the President, via a third-party friend—information that he composed while the Director of the FBI on government time in connection with his job and on a government computer.

In the age of Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning, why would a Director of the FBI himself leak a key government document to the press in deliberate fashion to undermine the president (and in the process mislead about the chronological sequencing of events that prompted him to leak) rather than provide the memo to the Senate Intelligence Committee? Why would he use a third-party to go to the press?

Non-investigations

Comey corroborates his earlier thrice-stated admissions that Donald Trump was never under investigation for collusion with the Russians to subvert the 2016 election, but suggests now that he could not release such exonerating information to the press because he might later have had to go back to amend it should Trump at some such future time become under investigation.

This is an Orwellian argument—given:

(1) that it is becoming clear that almost all scurrilous rumors about Donald Trump were leaked to the press by the FBI and other federal agencies—while exculpatory facts, such as that Comey was not investigating Donald Trump, were not leaked;

(2) that Comey had in fact previously repeatedly done just the opposite of what he said he could not do in the Trump case—namely that he had first disclosed publicly that Hillary Clinton was no longer the subject of a “matter” (in obedience to Loretta Lynch’s mandatory euphemism aimed at helping the Clinton campaign), then later amended that public admission by saying that she was, in fact, again under renewed investigation, and then amending again that amendment by stating that she was no longer a subject of an investigation. In other words, there was no such FBI policy of prudently keeping silent on the progress of an investigation;

3) that any American citizen in theory could be a future target of any theoretical investigation; but, of course, that fact is no reason for a federal agency to fail to concede that it is not conducting an ongoing federal investigation of said citizen being battered by press leaks and unfounded allegations—unless the aim of a federal agency was to spread doubt about its intentions and thereby cast a prejudicial cloud of suspicion over an individual not under investigation. In Comey’s world, we can all live under a cloud of future investigations, should a mum FBI wink and nod, bob and weave to the press and public about whether we are currently under an investigation—as we are libeled and smeared.

He Said/He Said

Comey states that he was so concerned about a private conversation with Donald Trump (whom he admits once again was not pressuring him to stop a federal investigation of purported Russian collusion) that he immediately went to his government car to write a memo based on his interpretation of the conversation (again, subsequently to be leaked to pet journalists through a third-party friend and as yet strangely not made public). But was this standard Comey practice after meeting with administration officials whom he suspected might be inordinately pressuring him on investigations?

Jay Sekulow, the chief counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice, said Friday that former FBI director James Comey admitted under oath that he committed a crime when he testified before the Senate Thursday.

In an op-ed at Fox News, Sekulow called Comey the “leaker-in-chief.”

Not only did Comey’s testimony clear President Trump – admitting under oath that the President was not under any investigation – his testimony unmasked Comey’s real motivation in all of this.

It was a stunning revelation. Comey – the nation’s top intelligence official – admitted under oath that he leaked privileged documents to a friend to give to reporters at the New York Times. Memos that he had written in the course of his official government duties about privileged conversations with the President. The reason: Comey testified that he did so to manipulate the situation and force the appointment of a Special Counsel. (And, as we know – that’s ultimately what occurred.)

That’s right – the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigations admits to being the leaker-in-chief – taking it upon himself to do what others are being prosecuted for – leaking information in order to damage the President and the Trump Administration.

[…]

Comey’s admission that he is a leaker also raises serious legal questions. In my view, Comey broke the law: 18 U.S.C. § 641 provides that it is a federal crime to, without authority, convey a record of the United States, in this case an FBI record he admits under oath he leaked after being fired.

“Let’s look at what took place here,” Sekulow told Fox host Sean Hannity Friday evening. “The director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation has a meeting with the president of the United States. He takes notes from those meetings. He does not release them to anyone purportedly at that time. He puts them in the drawer of his office, I guess. He does this, by the way, according to his testimony, in his FBI vehicle, on an FBI computer, and he just saves it — just puts in a drawer — I’m gonna save it for later. Later, [it] comes out because he gets terminated.”