RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/jim-comeys-higher-virtue-11567121926

Beware the righteous man with power. That’s the great lesson of James Comey, as the 79-page report released Thursday by the Justice Department Inspector General makes clear. The former FBI director willfully violated multiple rules as he sought revenge against Donald Trump while pursuing his own self-interest in the name of higher virtue.

The report focuses on how Mr. Comey handled seven memos he wrote in 2017 about his interactions with Mr. Trump. IG Michael Horowitz finds that in treating his memos as personal documents rather than official FBI records, improperly storing them at home, failing to inform the bureau he had them, or leaking them to the press, Mr. Comey ignored FBI and Justice protocols and broke his employment agreement.

“By not safeguarding sensitive information” and “by using it to create public pressure for official action,” Mr. Comey “set a dangerous example” for every FBI employee, the IG says. Mr. Comey admitted that he violated the rules to cause the appointment of a special counsel after Mr. Trump fired him in May 2017.

“Comey said he was compelled to take these actions ‘if I love this country . . . and I love the Department of Justice, and I love the FBI,’” the report says. But the IG concludes that if everyone violated the rules “to achieve a personally desired outcome” as Mr. Comey did, “the FBI would be unable to dispatch its law enforcement duties properly.”

Translated from the bureaucratic prose: Mr. Comey thought he was above the rules because he wanted to save the country from Mr. Trump. No doubt J. Edgar Hoover felt a similar afflatus as he wiretapped Martin Luther King.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/sneaky-leaky-james-comey-11567121062

Of all the tall tales James Comey has told, none compare to the line he fed President Trump at their infamous January 2017 dinner. As recounted in the former Federal Bureau of Investigation director’s memo about that evening, “I said I don’t do sneaky things, I don’t leak, I don’t do weasel moves.”

The Justice Department’s inspector general begs to differ. In a new report about Mr. Comey’s handling of those memos, Michael Horowitz demonstrates that Mr. Comey in 2017 was consistently leaky and sneaky. The report refutes any claim that the then-director was justified in taking these actions. He repeatedly, and knowingly, broke the rules.

For more than two years, we’ve heard Mr. Comey’s characterization of his actions, popularized by an adoring media: He felt compelled to memorialize his private discussions with the president, to protect the FBI. He had no choice but to use an intermediary to leak memo contents, to save the nation by forcing the appointment of a special counsel. He was entitled to do so because the memos were his personal papers, and by that time he was a “private citizen.”

The inspector general calmly and coolly dismantles these claims. There’s good reason to suspect Mr. Trump was the focus of the bureau’s counterintelligence probe from the start, since that is the only way to explain the FBI’s outrageous decision to hide the probe from the president. The inspector general reports that Mr. Comey’s first briefing of the president-elect, on Jan. 6, 2017, was partly done in the hope that “Trump might make statements about, or provide information of value to,” that probe. That may be the real reason everyone on the FBI leadership team agreed “ahead of time that Comey should memorialize” what happened.

Mr. Horowitz’s report methodically skewers Mr. Comey’s claim that his memos were “personal” and therefore his to keep and use.  CONTINUE AT SITE

Conference of Jewish Affairs 90 Washington Valley Road, Suite 1261 Bedminster, NJ 07921

(212) 252-6861   conferenceofjewishaffairs@gmail.com

For Immediate Release

Contact: Rabbi Aryeh Spero (212) 252-6861

ANTI-DEFAMATION LEAGUE IS, ONCE AGAIN, FAILING THE JEWISH PEOPLE.

AS ATTACKS AGAINT JEWS IN NY INCREASE IN VIOLENCE AND NUMBER, ADL FAILS TO NAME THOSE GROUPS BEHIND THE ANTI-SEMITIC ATTACKS.

AND TONIGHT… ADL WILL GIVE COVER TO ANTI-SEMITIC, ANTI-ISRAEL CONGRESSWOMAN RASHIDA TLAIB 

BY APPEARING WITH HER AT DEARBORN, MICHIGAN ADL-ENDORSED EVENT:

August 28, 2019 — This past weekend brought another series of dangerous assaults against Jews in Brooklyn, first in Crown Heights and later in Williamsburg. The attacks came on the heels of an already accelerated pace of violent attacks targeting Jews in the New York City area. Police reports indicate that anti-Semitic assaults are up 55% this year, which is atop an already increased rate from the previous years.

All evidence indicates that the bulk of the New York City attacks are coming from members of the Black, Hispanic, and Muslim community. Perhaps that is why the national ADL, under the new leadership of Jonathan Greenblatt, has been relatively silent in identifying and bringing to light these individuals, in contrast to its vociferous and specific condemnation when the perpetrators are labeled by the ADL “right-wing” or “white” individuals. Further, there have been attacks recently against rabbis and others in Berlin, severe physical attacks, by those speaking Arabic or those chanting Allahu Akhbar.

We understand that condemning perpetrators from minority groups that have expressed hostility to Jews is an uncomfortable endeavor for the ADL given its on-going political alliance with many of the leaders of these groups. Acknowledgment of anti-Semitism within these groups runs counter to the ADL template. Nevertheless, the national ADL must be honest by equally spotlighting and condemning perpetrators no matter what their background.

Public condemnation is a vital mechanism in focusing leaders of groups on ostracizing violent members and denouncing bigoted attitudes within their respective community. Ignoring realities and not holding people accountable allows the prejudice to remain.  Having a lower level regional ADL office express alarm or focus simply on hate and intolerance is woefully inadequate, especially now that anti-Semitism coming from prominent segments of those groups has reached a tipping point.

Now, the ADL in the Detroit metro area has signed-on to and endorsed an event against “hate” at the University of Michigan, Dearborn, knowing full well that many of the participants – including Rashida Tlaib — and groups are notoriously anti-Israel and have expressed anti-Jewish feelings. The ADL was willing to partner with these groups in behalf of what it considers a greater concern, namely condemning what it labels hateful to Islamic groups.

Conference of Jewish Affairs believes that the purpose of the ADL, with its budget of over $65 million* a year, should be, as was its historic mission, to prioritize the safety and security of Jews.  Indeed, many groups the ADL calls minorities are no longer minorities in relation to a shrinking Jewish community, which now, population-wise, is far smaller than those groups. Fighting general bigotry and intolerance is very worthwhile, but cannot supersede what should be the ADL’s foremost mission of defending Jews, no matter who their attackers. 

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/james-comey-hoist-upon-his-own-self-regard/

There will be a lot of damning sections in the new Department of Justice Inspector General report on former FBI director James Comey, but this section in the conclusion is perhaps the most important:

[FBI] employees may disagree with decisions by prosecutors, judges, or higher-ranking FBI and Department officials about the actions to take or not take in criminal and counterintelligence matters. They may even, in some situations, distrust the legitimacy of those supervisory, prosecutorial, or judicial decisions. But even when these employees believe that their most strongly-held personal convictions might be served by an unauthorized disclosure, the FBI depends on them not to disclose sensitive information.

Even when these employees believe that their most strongly-held personal convictions might be served by an unauthorized disclosure, the FBI depends on them not to disclose sensitive information. Former Director Comey failed to live up to this responsibility. By not safeguarding sensitive information obtained during the course of his FBI employment, and by using it to create public pressure for official action, Comey set a dangerous example for the over 35,000 current FBI employees—and the many thousands more former FBI employees—who similarly have access to or knowledge of non-public information. Comey said he was compelled to take these actions “if I love this country…and I love the Department of Justice, and I love the FBI.”

However, were current or former FBI employees to follow the former Director’s example and disclose sensitive information in service of their own strongly held personal convictions, the FBI would be unable to dispatch its law enforcement duties properly, as Comey himself noted in his March 20, 2017 congressional testimony… This is no doubt part of the reason why Comey’s closest advisors used the words “surprised,” “stunned,” “shocked,” and “disappointment” to describe their reactions to learning what Comey had done.