RUTHFULLY YOURS

It’s obvious he deserved to be fired. All there is to quibble about is the precise reason why.

For months, the media and President Trump’s loudest opponents convinced themselves that James Comey’s much-anticipated book was the ticking bomb that would blow up the Trump administration. Instead: No boom.

Comey hoped to guide the spotlight to his self-image as ultimate G-Man — a stalwart, sober, nonpartisan public servant whose courage and rectitude guided him through a moral, legal, and political thicket. Instead, the book reveals Comey to be a hack. A blunderer. A blowhard. He took a mighty swing at Trump and managed to punch himself in the eye.

Not only does the book offer zilch in the way of damaging new evidence against the president in the Russia matter or anything else, but its most revealing and most noticed passage pulverizes Comey’s own reputation. The former FBI director is being pilloried from left, right, and center. Perhaps even worse for him, he is being mocked as a pompous ass from left, right, and center. This is quite an achievement when you consider that it isn’t a Fire and Fury–style exposé but Comey’s own memoir that is making a fool of him.

“Donald Trump is contagious: He turned James Comey into Donald Trump” runs the headline of Karen Tumulty’s column in the Washington Post. Tumulty highlights Comey’s “pettiness, insecurity and need for affirmation,” plus an “ego” that “stays in high gear.” Fellow WaPo columnist Alexandra Petri relentlessly spoofs Comey’s gassy references to Reinhold Niebuhr and his sanctimonious self-regard: “In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God, and then, on Dec. 14, 1960, I, James Comey, was born. The initials, as Reinhold Niebuhr would tell us, are no coincidence.” The paper’s nonfiction-book critic, Carlos Lozada, compares Comey’s lack of self-awareness to Trump’s, questions Comey’s ethics, and says his “self-criticism — and self-regard — is almost comical,” scorning Comey both for lying about playing basketball for William & Mary and for ostentatiously flogging himself for the fib later. The very D.C. collision of the trifling and the sanctimonious in Comey’s personality is irresistibly funny: He’s James Comedy.

Before there was Andrew McCabe, there was Mark Felt. Or, as he is better known, “Deep Throat.”

Both Mr. McCabe and Felt were FBI deputy directors. Both leaked information about an FBI investigation that was under way. Both did so for the sake of their own careers, lied about it to their bosses, and even let other FBI agents take the blame.

Start with Felt, who died in 2008. Though sometimes cast as the noble truth-teller of Watergate—in “All the President’s Men” he was memorably played by a chain-smoking Hal Holbrook—reality is less flattering. Felt saw himself as the rightful heir to J. Edgar Hoover. When he was passed over for L. Patrick Gray III, Felt flattered Gray to his face while sabotaging the new FBI director behind his back.

He also let others take the fall. On a Saturday morning in June 1972, a furious Director Gray summoned 27 agents from the Washington field office to the conference room at FBI headquarters. He then cussed them out over a leak to Time magazine. Paul Magallanes, an FBI agent working the Watergate burglary, said Gray called them all “yellow-bellied sniveling agents” and demanded the guilty party step forward. No one did, of course, and Gray vowed to find out who the leaker was and fire him.

Felt never corrected the record on behalf of his falsely accused brother agents. To the contrary, Deep Throat would himself assume control over the investigation into who was leaking—and use that position to admonish other agents about leaks for which he himself was the culprit.

The ex-director’s first TV interview finally broke the loyalty of one longtime FBI colleague, others reacted with disbelief as their former boss pontificated.

James Comey’s first interview since President Trump fired him as director of the FBI has enraged his former agents, who deluged The Daily Beast with their disdain as they watched him tell his side of the story to George Stephanopoulos on Sunday night.

Seven current or former FBI agents and officials spoke throughout and immediately after the broadcast. There was a lot of anger, frustration, and even more emojis—featuring the thumbs-down, frowny face, middle finger, and a whole lot of green vomit faces.

One former FBI official sent a bourbon emoji as it began; another sent the beers cheers-ing emoji. The responses became increasingly angry and despondent as the hourlong interview played out.

“Hoover is spinning in his grave,” said a former FBI official. “Making money from total failure.”

When a promo aired between segments announcing Comey’s upcoming interview with The View, the official grew angrier.

“Good lord, what a self-serving self-centered jackass,” the official said. “True to form he thinks he’s the smartest guy around.”

A current FBI official said it was bizarre that Comey seemed so pleased with the whole episode. “It’s how happy he looked on TV while cashing in on the biggest mistake in history. His mistake,” they said. “Jim Comey made that mistake. We all just wonder what could have been and what we could’ve done to change it.”

‘My book is about ethical leadership,’ tweeted former FBI Director James Comey yesterday.

To which my immediate response, having watched his shockingly self-serving, unctuously arrogant and cynically exploitative ABC interview to launch the book, is this:

1) What would he know about ethics?

2) What would he know about leadership?Having watched Comey’s self-serving ABC interview to launch his book, it’s revealed by his own damning words that it’s the former FBI director himself who is ‘morally unfit’

The central premise of Comey’s lengthy literary whine is that Donald Trump’s ‘morally unfit’ to be President.

Yet, as revealed by his own damning words, it’s Comey himself who is not only ‘morally unfit’, but was also ultimately most responsible for getting Trump elected.

It was HIS decision to announce, just 11 days before the 2016 election, that the FBI was re-opening its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails after new ones had been uncovered.

Nine days later, just 48 hours before America voted, and after a week of fevered media coverage, Comey then announced the new emails had been reviewed and Hillary was in the clear.

By then, the damage was done and many people, including Hillary herself, believe the sudden onslaught of negative publicity that followed the original bombshell news helped tip Trump into the White House.

They or may not be right about that, but nobody could argue it was anything but massively unhelpful to the Democrat candidate.

Now, astonishingly, Comey’s admitted he made this decision for political, not legal reasons.

Allies and advisers to Hillary Clinton can finally agree with President Trump on one thing: former FBI Director James Comey is no hero.

After reading excerpts from Comey’s new book, “A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership,” and watching his first interview since being fired, with ABC anchor George Stephanopoulos on Sunday night, former aides on the Clinton campaign are collectively gnashing their teeth.
“Of course they’re upset,” said Patti Solis Doyle, who served as Clinton’s campaign manager during her 2008 presidential bid. “How could you not be if you worked on that campaign?”

“I think he displayed unreliably poor judgment in the Clinton investigation by bucking [Department of Justice] procedures and having a press conference when there were no charges brought, and I think he has displayed incredibly poor judgment in the timing of this book before the end of the [Robert] Mueller investigation,” she added.

While much of the coverage generated by Comey’s book has centered on his feud with Trump, Clinton allies are focused on his disclosures about the 2016 election.

They are particularly incensed by Comey’s acknowledgment that, when deciding how to handle the investigation into Clinton’s email server, he took into account polls showing she would win the White House.

“Nobody is satisfied with anything he’s been saying,” said one longtime Clinton adviser. “We thought that Comey was always a factor in her loss, but now nobody can deny that perceptions were changed because of it.”

“I’ve made peace with it, but it’s still a punch in the gut,” the adviser said.

Clinton and her allies have argued that Comey helped swing the election to Trump when he announced in late October 2016 that he was reopening the FBI’s email investigation. He made that decision after new emails were uncovered on the laptop of Anthony Weiner, the husband of longtime Clinton aide Huma Abedin.

There were many interesting moments in Mark Zuckerberg’s testimony before Congress – starting with the gazillionaire child-man’s decision to follow Larry Kudlow’s advice and eschew his usual garb for a suit and tie. “I’m tired of that t-shirt, hoodie stuff,” remarked Larry. “The guy’s running one of the largest corporations of the world, for heaven’s sake.” This was reported by the leftie lads at ThinkProgress under the headline “Trump official rants about Zuckerberg’s clothes”.

I’m with Larry on this one. One of the reasons my old boss Conrad Black was resented by large sections of the proletariat (and, eventually, a decisive sliver of his Chicago jury) was that he looked like the masses’ idea of a rich man, bespoke and luxuriously upholstered. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen Conrad out in public in a top hat, but he was wearing one metaphorically. Like 19th century robber-baron cartoons and the Monopoly man, he hewed to time-honored preconceptions of the plutocrat. Zuckerberg does not. He is, as Larry noted, a “chief executive” of a “corporation”, but he talks of it as if he’s running a kindly charity – his customers are “the community”, and all he does is “connect” them, a word that means harvesting your personal information as Planned Parenthood harvests your body parts. Streamlining traditional business models by discreetly transforming the customer into the product has proved infinitely more lucrative than making widgets. But it is necessary to be somewhat coy about this, and, if you think at this stage that the hoodie is not a consciously selected prop in this strategy, I’ve a bridge-building community-outreach social-media data-mining operation in Brooklyn to connect you with.

My favorite exchange yesterday came when Senator Dan Sullivan took the microphone. He’s a Republican from Alaska, but he could as easily have been a Democrat of a certain disposition. He observed that Mr Zuckerberg had created his spectacularly lucrative global behemoth in his college dorm room at the age of nineteen. And then he said: “Facebook is an ‘Only in America’ story, right?”

The witness looked befuddled – as I do in, say, Marseille, when a bit of local vernacular runs up against the limits of my conversational French.

So Senator Sullivan attempted to clarify what he meant. “You couldn’t do this in China, right?”

Zuckerberg considered the matter, sincerely. “Well, Senator,” he said, “there are some very strong Chinese Internet companies.”

“Come on, I’m trying to help you,” growled the plain-spoken Sullivan, throwing in the towel. “Gimme a break, you’re in front of a bunch of senators: the answer is yes.” The audience laughed. But the child-man seemed genuinely nonplussed.

It has been a yeasty couple of weeks for President Trump. Last Monday, he, like the rest of us, learned that his personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, had his home, office, hotel, and safe deposit box hoovered by gumshoes at the direction of prosecutors from the Southern District of New York. They carried away the stuff by the boatload—documents, computers, cell phones, tablets: the lot. If you discerned the dogged hand of Special Counsel Robert Mueller in this breathtaking episode, you would not be wrong. Although carried out by feds in N.Y., who apparently had been investigating Cohen “for months,” it was done at the behest of the special counsel.

Exactly what that portends for President Trump is unclear. Andrew McCarthy spoke for many when he outlined the reasons it might place the president in serious legal jeopardy.

Maybe so. As of this writing, the reasons for the raid have included looking into Mr. Cohen’s alleged non-disclosure agreements with Stephanie Clifford, aka Stormy Daniels, and certain other members of the fair sex who claim to have had intimate relations with the president, or people close to the president, at some point in the past. The feds are also said to be interested in the infamous “Access Hollywood” video in which Donald Trump, in 2005, was taped saying crude things about how women were pushovers for celebrities. Cohen’s interest in a taxi business has also been bruited about. And just a few hours ago, Robert Mueller reported that he now has evidence that Cohen was in Prague in 2016 just as the opposition dossier compiled by Christopher Steele and paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee said he was. Cohen vigorously denies the claim. “I have never been to Prague in my life,” he tweeted.

Well, either he has or he hasn’t. We’ll see.

While we wait for answer, ask yourself this: what does all this have to do with the central reason a special counsel was appointed in the first place, namely, “to investigate any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump”? Well might you ask.

Meanwhile, there is this breaking development. Just a short while ago, federal agents, apparently with guns drawn, raided St. Andrew’s Episcopal in Maryland, where the president’s youngest child, Barron, who just turned 12, goes to school. Early reports are confusing, but this is sure to be a major story. One unnamed source close to the special counsel’s office has said that the feds are investigating suspicious interest in Russia among several teachers at St. Andrew’s, some of whom travelled to Moscow during the 2016 presidential campaign, two of whom were photographed in sight of the Kremlin. There are also reports that one of the teachers placed near the Kremlin surreptitiously passed as yet undisclosed documents to Barron in a secluded hallway between classes. Barron himself was photographed speaking alone with a Russian student at school. Anonymous sources have identified the student as the youngest son of Sergey Kislyak, the Russian ambassador, whom Michael Flynn, President Trump’s first national security advisor, also spoke to. The special counsel is also said to be looking into irregular payments made to Barron Trump’s lemonade stand business, which The Washington Post—citing a source close to John Brennan, former head of the CIA under President Obama—claims was unregistered. Some pundits have expressed skepticism about the heavy-handed behavior of the FBI in this case, but Rachel Maddow expressed the consensus opinion in Washington when she said that the whole future of our democratic society is at stake. “Robert Mueller is a national hero, a real straight arrow,” she said. “It is imperative that we let him follow the evidence wherever it may lead.” Steven Hatfill, the government virologist whom Mueller wrongly fingered for the 2001 anthrax attacks, was unavailable for comment, probably because he is off somewhere enjoying the $5.8 million settlement he won from the government and various media outlets who hounded the poor man on the authority of Robert Mueller. CONTINUE AT SITE

They were among the most powerful men of the last decade. They commanded armies of armed agents, had the ability to bug and wiretap almost anyone, and had virtually unlimited budgets. They were the leadership of the FBI, the CIA and the director of national intelligence under President Obama. Each day, it becomes clearer that they are the real abusers of power in this drama.

The book by former FBI Director James Comey and the daily hyperbolic John Brennan sound bites are perhaps the final reveal of just how much hubris and vitriol they had. Comey’s book, according to reports, contains nothing new of legal consequence to Trump (while suggesting that former Attorney General Loretta Lynch has something to worry about), but it unmasks the hatred that Comey had for Donald Trump from the beginning. It impeaches Comey’s fitness to have ever held high, nonpartisan office.

Whether you are a Democrat who can’t stand Trump, a Hillary Clinton supporter who feels robbed by Comey, or a Trump supporter, any use of wiretapping and vast prosecutorial machinery against our political campaigns and sitting presidents always has to be viewed skeptically and should meet the highest standards of conduct and impartiality. The post-election actions of these former officials makes suspect their actions as officials.

It was, after all, Comey who went to the president during the transition seeking a one-on-one meeting to tell him about the inflammatory dossier, but who critically omitted telling the president that the dossier was a product of the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee. These facts, he knew, if revealed at that moment in January, would have ended further inquiry. This was no effort to inform the president and douse the fires of unverified and salacious information, but one to inflame the president and spread the stories everywhere.

President Trump recently tweeted that firing former FBI director James Comey was something he was glad he did.

James Comey is a proven LEAKER & LIAR. Virtually everyone in Washington thought he should be fired for the terrible job he did-until he was, in fact, fired. He leaked CLASSIFIED information, for which he should be prosecuted. He lied to Congress under OATH. He is a weak and…..

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 13, 2018

….untruthful slime ball who was, as time has proven, a terrible Director of the FBI. His handling of the Crooked Hillary Clinton case, and the events surrounding it, will go down as one of the worst “botch jobs” of history. It was my great honor to fire James Comey!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 13, 2018

There’s some merit to that thought, because it turns out Comey wasn’t just the one at the heart of appointing his buddy, Robert Mueller to his current ‘get-Trump’ role as special counsel for the very-bogus Russia collusion investigation. He as also the guy who appointed Scooter Libby’s dishonest prosecutor, Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, to a similar post.

Here’s what the Wall Street Journal editorial page (subscription) noted in its editorial titled ‘Justice for Scooter Libby:’

As it happens, Mr. Fitzgerald was appointed by his good friend, James Comey, who was then Deputy Attorney General. This is the Jim Comey who told Congress last year that his goal in leaking information to the press about his conversations with Donald Trump after he was fired was to trigger a special counsel investigation that is now led by Mr. Mueller. This special counsel’s work isn’t done, but the Fitzgerald episode is worth keeping in mind as it unfolds.

Which makes one wonder if the reason President Trump pardoned Libby, who committed no crime and who got the book thrown at him, was to root out all markers of Comey’s destructive presence, which included his history of appointing dishonest prosecutors, first Fitzgerald, and now Mueller, who has a history of problematic prosecutions-at-any-cost of his own. Everyone knew Libby was innocent, but President Bush put pleasing the left first in his failing to pardon him. Trump killed two birds with one stone by pardoning Libby, a guy he said he doesn’t even know, rebuking the pious, pompous Comey, as well as the status-seeking Bush.

President Trump now has real legal peril. The potential jeopardy stems from the investigation that came to light this week when the FBI conducted raids on the office and residences of his lawyer and self-professed “fixer,” Michael Cohen.

I’ve never thought “collusion with Russia” posed jeopardy. If there had been anything criminal to that storyline, the politicized anti-Trump factions in the intelligence and law-enforcement agencies would have leaked it. And, notwithstanding Trump’s nauseating nods to Putin, the administration has taken enough aggressive steps against Russia that it is past time for the Kremlin to broadcast the big kompromat file if it exists.

I’ve also never thought Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s other known angle, obstruction, posed a great risk. There is a line between foolishness and crime. For important policy reasons, a president should not weigh in with the FBI director on the merits of investigating a friend and political ally; and it would be better if he did not make personnel moves that could be perceived as efforts to influence witnesses or affect the course of an investigation. But as long as a president’s actions — e.g., firing the FBI director, discussing the possibility of pardons — are on their face legal and within his legitimate constitutional authority, I do not believe they can validly predicate an obstruction prosecution. (In theory, they could be grist for impeachment, which involves a political inquiry into abuse of power, not a legal proceeding to establish the essential elements of a statutory crime.)

The matter now under investigation by the FBI and federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York (SDNY), however, is a very live criminal investigation. Anyone potentially connected to it should be worried.

Much of the commentary about the SDNY investigation puts the cart before the horse. When Cohen’s law office, hotel residence, and home were searched pursuant to court-approved warrants this week, there were howls about a purportedly unconscionable violation of the attorney–client privilege. As I pointed out in the aftermath, however, whether this was an egregious constitutional affront or textbook investigative rigor depends on (a) exactly what was under investigation and (b) whether the materials sought from Cohen were, in fact, privileged attorney–client communications.