RUTHFULLY YOURS

It now seems clear that Barack Obama was a corrupt machine politician in the worst Chicago mold. He used the IRS to silence his enemies, and the Justice Department to protect his friends. His two major “achievements” — a health care law that doesn’t work and a deal that increased the power and prestige of the terrorist state of Iran — were built on lies to the public and manipulation of the press. And that’s according to his own allies! Only the leftist bias and racial pathology of the media kept his administration from being destroyed by scandal, as it surely would have been had he been a white Republican.

I don’t mention this to bring up old grudges, but for what it says about the current moment and the week just passed. Here’s some of what we recently learned:

Former FBI Director James Comey’s Senate testimony concerning former Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s corruption confirmed our worst suspicions about the Obama DOJ. In an apparent attempt to help Hillary Clinton’s campaign, Lynch told Comey to refer to the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s abuse of classified material as “a matter” rather than an investigation. And, as we already knew but Comey confirmed, Lynch’s secret tarmac meeting with Bill Clinton so underscored Comey’s sense of her crookedness that the self-serving drama queen Comey actually went around her to publicly declare Hillary guilty-but-not-guilty.

“It won’t get much attention, but that was pretty damning,” said CNN’s John King of Comey’s testimony about Lynch. You can translate “it won’t get much attention” into “we won’t give it much attention.”

But all that was nothing compared to the brutal, nearly 300-page report released last week by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, a report absolutely blasting the previous Obama AG, Eric Holder. The report details how Holder and the Obama administration labored to cover up the details of the Fast and Furious gun-running scandal — a scandal which, unlike the non-collusion-with-Russia non-scandal, was implicated in the murder of an American law officer. Even the mom of the slain officer couldn’t get the truth out of Holder and his cronies. The report says Holder considered the officer’s family a “nuisance” because they were trying to get him to tell them how exactly the lawman died at the hands of gangsters who were wielding guns Obama’s DOJ had allowed them to buy. CONTINUE AT SITE

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.”

Jan LaRue is senior legal analyst with the American Civil Rights Union.
Former FBI director James Comey’s testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday suggests that the first question to FBI director nominee Christopher Wray at his Senate confirmation hearing should be: “Are you currently going through menopause?”

Comey said he was confused, uneasy, troubled, concerned, shocked, very disturbed, and stunned during his conversations with President Trump. The only missing menopausal symptoms are night sweats and weight gain.

Comey should have been sweating when he “woke up in the middle of the night” and decided to potentially violate federal law by using a close friend to leak contents of a government memo to a reporter at the New York Times, which Comey wrote while FBI director on an FBI computer while in an FBI car.

Comey’s bombshell – that he’s a leaker – came during questioning by Sen. Mark Warner:

I created records after conversations. I think I did it after each of our nine conversations. If I didn’t, I did it for nearly all of them, especially the ones that were substantive.

Much of the media reaction to Comey’s testimony, including some in the “fair and balanced” wing, began: “President Trump had a bad day.”

Really? It’s like a headline announcing that a guy was spared from an 11th-hour execution that reads: “Condemned Missed Traditional Last Meal.”

Comey’s angry, self-serving opinion of President Trump as a liar is the swamp “gospel” of self-evident “truth” by much of the spinner class. The real news – that Comey confirmed that Trump was never under investigation on Comey’s watch, never interfered with the Russian investigation, and didn’t order him to stop investigating Gen. Michael Flynn – is their “oh, yeah, by the way” subtext.

Comey admitted having “a queasy feeling” when he obeyed former attorney general Loretta Lynch’s order to downplay the criminal investigation of Hillary Clinton. She told him to call it a “matter,” just as Clinton was spinning it.

That’s the same Lynch who met with Bill Clinton in a plane on the tarmac at the Phoenix airport while his wife was under criminal investigation by Lynch’s DOJ. Good thing for Lynch that Bill wasn’t the Russian ambassador.

Comey’s queasiness didn’t prompt him to memorialize Lynch’s instruction. He told Sen. Tom Cotton that he didn’t record conversations or memos with the attorney general or any other senior member of the Obama administration.

Nor did Comey mention Lynch’s order in his infamous July 2016 statement recommending against indictment of Clinton:

Although there is evidence of potential violations regarding the handling of classified information, our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case.

Comey made it his job to decide that Clinton shouldn’t be charged with violating numerous federal laws after laying out the case for her indictment. But he told the Senate committee it wasn’t his job to decide if Trump had obstructed justice.

Comey didn’t cave to “pressure” from Trump. He didn’t obey what he now perceives as Trump’s “order” to drop the investigation of Gen. Flynn.

Comey said he didn’t have the “presence of mind” to tell Trump it was inappropriate. He said he was not strong, not “captain courageous.” Wonder Woman in need of hormones, possibly.

Yet Comey never considered resigning or telling the White House counsel about his feelings about Trump’s “inappropriate” behavior. He did tell Attorney General Jeff Sessions not to leave him alone with Trump.

There’s a headline AARP should be hyping to seniors everywhere: “Giant Terrorist Tracker Cowered by 70-Year-Old.”

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. He has served as defense counsel in national security cases involving classified information and alleged leaks to the media.

The testimony of James Comey proved long on atmospherics and short on ethics. While many were riveted by Comey’s discussion of his discomfort in meetings with President Trump, most seemed to miss the fact that Comey was describing his own conduct in strikingly unethical terms. The greatest irony is that Trump succeeded in baiting Comey to a degree that even Trump could not have imagined. After calling Comey a “showboat” and poor director, Comey proceeded to commit an unethical and unprofessional act in leaking damaging memos against Trump.

Comey described a series of ethical challenges during his term as FBI director. Yet, he almost uniformly avoided taking a firm stand in support of the professional standards of the FBI. During the Obama administration, U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch gave Comey a direct order to mislead the public by calling the ongoing investigation a mere “matter.” Rather than standing firm on the integrity of his department and refusing to adopt such a meaningless and misleading term, Comey yielded to Lynch while now claiming discomfort over carrying out the order.

When Trump allegedly asked for Comey to drop the investigation of Michael Flynn or pledge loyalty, Comey did not tell the president that he was engaging in wildly inappropriate conduct. He instead wrote a memo to file and told close aides. He now says that he wishes he had the courage or foresight to have taken a stand with the president.

However, the clearest violation came in the days following his termination. Comey admits that he gave the damaging memos to a friend at Columbia Law School with the full knowledge that the information would be given to the media. It was a particularly curious moment for a former director who was asked by the president to fight the leakers in the government. He proceeded in becoming one of the most consequential leakers against Trump.

Comey said that he took these actions days after his termination, when he said that he woke up in the middle of the night and realized suddenly that the memos could be used to contradict Trump. It was a bizarrely casual treatment of material that would be viewed by many as clearly FBI information. He did not confer with the FBI or the Justice Department. He did not ask for any classification review despite one of the parties described being the president of the United States. He simply sent the memos to a law professor to serve as a conduit to the media.

As a threshold matter, Comey asked a question with regard to Trump that he should now answer with regard to his own conduct. Comey asked why Trump would ask everyone to leave the Oval Office to speak with Comey unless he was doing something improper. Yet, Trump could ask why Comey would use a third party to leak these memos if they were his property and there was nothing improper in their public release.

At last, at least for your humble correspondent, this week’s big hearing brought clarity. I now believe President Donald Trump fired Federal Bureau of Investigation director James Comey because he believes Comey intentionally misled the public into believing Trump was under investigation by the FBI. There is enough support for this theory that, had the president been forthright in explaining it when he dismissed Comey on May 9, there might have been considerably less uproar. Instead, Trump dissembled, as he seems hardwired to do. He thus bought himself a debilitating special-counsel investigation, despite its being increasingly patent that there is no crime to investigate.

March 20 was the big day. Understanding why requires us to go back several weeks, to January 6, the day Trump and Comey first met.

It was also the day the FBI, in conjunction with the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency, issued a report called “Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections.” The report was based on intelligence that had been gathered over several months. But it made clear to the public that the FBI was continuing to investigate. As the agencies put it, “new information continues to emerge, providing increased insight into Russian activities.” Thereafter, the continuing investigation was widely covered in the media, often on the strength of unlawful leaks of classified information.

The agencies’ report was the reason for Trump’s introduction to Comey that day, at Trump Tower in New York City. The Bureau’s then-director, accompanied by other intelligence-agency bosses, was there to brief the then-president-elect.

In written testimony that Comey submitted this week to the Senate Intelligence Committee, he recounts his concern that the incoming president might form the misimpression that “the FBI was conducting a counter-intelligence investigation of his personal conduct.” Thus, after discussing the matter with his FBI “leadership team,” Comey came to the meeting “prepared to assure President-Elect Trump that we were not investigating him personally.” He met one-on-one with Trump to deliver part of the briefing. Though the president-elect did not ask, Comey volunteered the “assurance” that Trump was not being investigated.

Three weeks later, on January 27, Trump, now sworn in as president, hosted Comey at a one-on-one dinner in the White House. Yet again, the then–FBI director assured Trump that he was not under investigation.

In light of what would come later, the context of this second assurance is striking. Trump explained that he was considering ordering Comey to investigate lurid claims made in a dossier about Trump and prepared by former British spy Christopher Steele. The president said he wanted the claims examined “to prove it didn’t happen.” That is, far from curtailing the Russia investigation, Trump was calling for additional FBI focus on Russia, where Steele alleged these salacious activities had occurred.

Comey discouraged the idea. As the former director recounted in his written testimony, he advised the president against taking steps that could create a misleading public “narrative” — in this instance, a narrative that the FBI was “investigating him personally, which we weren’t.”

With this as background, let us turn to then-director Comey’s March 20 testimony before the House Intelligence Committee.

In his opening statement, he made this startling disclosure (my italics):

I have been authorized by the Department of Justice to confirm that the FBI, as part of our counterintelligence mission, is investigating the Russian government’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election and that includes investigating the nature of any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russia’s efforts. As with any counterintelligence investigation, this will also include an assessment of whether any crimes were committed.

In presaging this revelation, Comey noted that it was against the “practice” of the FBI “to confirm the existence of ongoing investigations, especially those investigations that involve classified matters.” As we noted at the top, though,it had already been publicly confirmed in the intelligence agencies’ report, and it was already publicly known through media reporting, that the FBI was investigating the Russian government’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election. Consequently, the only apparent purpose of Comey’s irregular disclosure was to proclaim that the Bureau was probing links between the Trump campaign and the Putin regime — in particular, any “coordination” between the campaign and Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election.

And note Comey’s reference to the FBI’s “counterintelligence mission.” Given that it is not the purpose of that mission to investigate crimes, and that it is in fact improper to use counterintelligence authorities with the intention of building criminal cases, why would the FBI director invoke an “assessment of whether any crimes were committed”?

It had only been a few weeks since Comey cautioned Trump to avoid creating misleading narratives. Yet it was inevitable that the then-director’s explosive disclosure would fuel the narrative that Trump — who, as NBC News’s Lester Holt pointed out, was the “centerpiece of the Trump campaign” — had ties to Russia that were worthy of FBI scrutiny. In addition, Comey’s assertions invigorated the narrative that Trump had colluded with Putin to manipulate the American electoral process.

Comey’s testimony seemed, for example, to validate an explosive New York Times report (February 14) headlined “Trump campaign aides had repeated contact with Russian intelligence” — a report that Comey now describes as “almost entirely wrong.” Indeed, as our Dan McLaughlin notes, the Times reported on the March 20 bombshell under the headline, “F.B.I. Is Investigating Trump’s Russia Ties, Comey Confirms.” Even as Comey was giving his testimony, Neera Tanden, president of the left-leaning Center for American Progress, tweeted (next to her “Resist” avatar), “The FBI is investigating a sitting President. Been a long time since that happened.” As Dan shows with numerous cognate examples, Comey’s announcement was understandably and predictably exploited by mainstream media outlets, which blared that Trump himself was under FBI investigation.

In this week’s written testimony, Comey further related that he “briefed the leadership of Congress on exactly which individuals we were investigating and . . . told those Congressional leaders that we were not personally investigating President Trump” (emphasis added). This was done, of course, out of the public earshot. And — mirabile dictu! — it seems to be the only detail the intelligence community and plugged-in Democrats have resisted leaking to the media.

At Thursday’s hearing, Senator Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) noted that as late as May 18, his colleague Senator Dianne Feinstein (D., Cal.) conceded to CNN that she’d seen no evidence that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia. As the ranking member on two relevant committees, Feinstein has had access to intelligence unavailable to Cotton and other more junior senators. Comey, furthermore, has acknowledged that as long as he was at the FBI (i.e., until his May 9 dismissal), there was no investigation focused on President Trump.

To summarize, then, despite over a year of investigation, no evidence of collusion between Trump’s circle and the Putin regime has been uncovered — and, clearly, none had been uncovered by March 20. Moreover, whatever threads the FBI has been following are sufficiently remote from the president himself that Trump was never under investigation — a fact that, by March 20, was well known to the intelligence agencies, who made it known to Congress.

Nevertheless, a decision was made — Comey stresses, with Justice Department approval — to have Comey announce to the nation on May 20 not only that there was an ongoing FBI counterintelligence investigation but that it was focused on the Trump campaign’s suspected collusion with Russia, and that criminal prosecutions were a possibility. Since the existence of the counterintelligence investigation was well known, Trump had to wonder: What point could there have been in that announcement other than to cast suspicion on the Trump campaign — and, inexorably, on Trump himself?

We are not told who at the “Trump” Justice Department authorized the then-director to make this announcement. I scare-quote the president’s name advisedly. On March 20, the only Trump appointee yet installed at the Justice Department was attorney general Jeff Sessions. He was already recused from Russia-related matters and therefore presumably not consulted on Comey’s planned disclosure.

Ten days later, on March 30, Trump called Comey to complain about the “cloud” over his presidency. Naturally, it had intensified since the congressional hearing, impairing his ability to govern. On this point, Comey’s testimony addresses the president’s desire to know what the FBI could help him do to “lift the cloud.” Left unaddressed, however, is what had been done at the March 20 hearing to intensify the cloud. When, in their March 30 conversation, Comey again confirmed that Trump was not personally under investigation, the president insisted — quite understandably — “We have to get that fact out.”

In his written testimony, Comey observes that he and Justice Department leaders (again, not Trump appointees) were “reluctant to make public statements that we did not have an open case on President Trump.” Remarkably, the rationale offered for this reluctance was fear of the uproar that would be caused if the record eventually had to be corrected — meaning: The speculative possibility that some evidence implicating Trump in Russia collusion might someday come to light, notwithstanding that (a) in all the months and months of investigating, no signs of such evidence had surfaced, and (b) as Comey explained in answering hearing questions from Senator Marco Rubio (R. Fla.), Trump had encouraged the FBI to do the Russia investigation and let it all come out.

In any event, why was this the FBI director’s call to make, rather than the president’s? If Trump is so confident about his lack of culpability in Russia’s cyberespionage that he was willing to run Comey’s “duty to correct” risk, what would have been the downside of informing the public that Trump was not under investigation — especially when any sensible person, on hearing what Comey did disclose, would assume that Trump was under investigation?

I don’t see how Trump could have handled Comey’s dismissal worse — no warning, conflicting explanations, talking him down in a meeting with Russian diplomats, savaging his reputation.

All that said, and as the former director learned painfully during the Clinton caper, the FBI and Justice Department should not make public statements about investigations unless and until they are prepared to file charges formally in court, where people get to see the evidence and have a chance to defend themselves. What possible good reason was there to alert the public that the Trump campaign was under investigation? Inevitably, that would induce the media to tell the world — incessantly — that Trump himself was under investigation.

Comey maintains, as he did in the July 2016 Clinton-e-mails press conference, that there is a “public interest” exception to the Justice Department rule against commenting on investigations. But public interest is the very reason for the no-comment rule. The point is to avoid smearing people who have not been charged with a crime. Such a smear happens only if the public is interested in the case.

More fundamentally, what is the “public interest” in misleading the public? If you know that what you are about to say is going to lead people to believe the president of the United States is under investigation (as it did), and you know for a fact that the president of the United States is not under investigation (as Comey did), why make the statement? And if it was important enough to tell Congress that Trump was not under investigation so that Congress would not be misled, what conceivable reason is there not to tell the public — especially when you must know that withholding this critical detail will make it much more difficult for the president to deal with foreign leaders and marshal political support for his domestic agenda?

The fact that President Trump was not under investigation did not get out until Trump finally put it out himself. That was in the May 9 letter that informed FBI director Comey that he was removed from office: “I greatly appreciate you informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation.”

Do you suppose the desperation to tell that to the world, the exasperation over Comey’s refusal to tell it to the world, just might have been at the front of the president’s mind?

— Andrew C. McCarthy is a senior policy fellow at the National Review Institute and a contributing editor of National Review.