RUTHFULLY YOURS

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.

Arguably, the most interesting part of the testimony of James Comey, the cowardly lion of the criminal justice system, before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday is not that President Trump was cleared of even a smidgeon of corruption and obstruction of justice but that President Obama’s Attorney General, Loretta Lynch, is up to her eyeballs in both. As the Daily Caller reports:

Loretta Lynch, the former attorney general under Barack Obama, pressured former FBI Director James Comey to downplay the Clinton email server investigation and only refer to it as a “matter,” Comey testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday.

Comey said that when he asked Lynch if she was going to authorize him to confirm the existence of the Clinton email investigation, her answer was, “Yes, but don’t call it that. Call it a matter.” When Comey asked why, he said, Lynch wouldn’t give him an explanation. “Just call it a matter,” she said….

Earlier in his testimony, Comey said Lynch instructed Comey not to call the criminal investigation into the Clinton server a criminal investigation. Instead, Lynch told Comey to call it a “matter,” Comey said, “which confused me.”

Comey cited that pressure from Lynch to downplay the investigation as one of the reasons he held a press conference to recommend the Department of Justice not seek to indict Clinton.

Comey also cited Lynch’s secret tarmac meeting with Bill Clinton as a reason he chose to hold the press conference, he said, as he was concerned about preserving the independence of the FBI.

This is far worse than President Trump asking Comey in a private conversation to wrap up the Flynn investigation after Flynn was dismissed as National Security Adviser. This was a director order by Comey’s immediate superior to align his rhetoric with the Clinton campaign spin. This is what Comey did, calling it a “matter” and not a criminal investigation, which is the only thing the FBI does. Couple this submissive compliance to an order to help the Clinton campaign with their spin with the meeting on the tarmac between Lunch and Bill Clinton, the husband of the target of that criminal investigation, and you have an obvious case for charging Lynch with obstruction of justice.

If Comey was concerned about preserving the integrity of the FBI, he wouldn’t have leaked the memo of his private conversation with President Trump to the New York Times through a third party. That memo, prepared on a government computer by a government employee on government time, is the property of the U.S. government and the U.S. taxpayer. Its unauthorized dissemination is a clear violation of the Federal Records Act and executive privilege. Comey was charged to find leakers, not be the leaker-in-chief.

Just as he didn’t have the authority to leak the memo, he didn’t have the authority to go before the American people and declare that the multiple felonies committed by Hilary Clinton while she was Secretary of State were not prosecutable due to lack of intent. Not only was he wrong on the law, which does not require intent, but his job is to gather evidence not to recommend prosecution or not. If Comey wanted to preserve the independence of the FBI, he wouldn’t have held the press conference giving Hillary Clinton a pass. He would have thrown the evidence on Lynch’s desk and told her to do her job. He bailed both Clinton and Lynch out and gave the Clinton campaign a boost.

Lynch ordered Comey to drop the word “investigation.” Did she also order him to drop the investigation itself and take the hit for doing so? Questions still remain as to why Comey did not attend the final Clinton interview, why the interview was not recorded, why Clinton was not under oath, and why obvious follow-up questions were not asked. It would seem that Comey, perhaps at the order of Lynch, was doing everything that would benefit the Clinton campaign.

Let us not forget another example of the tangled web woven between the FBI and the Clinton campaign — the relationship between Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe. As Caherine Herridge of Fox News reported:

Not one US senator asked former FBI Director James Comey to account for the sinister fact that the source of the explosive determination that “Russia hacked the DNC” computer system is a DNC contractor, not the FBI.

Not one US Senator asked why Comey’s FBI deferred to Debbie Wasserman-Schultz’s DNC when the DNC refused to permit FBI forensics specialists to examine the DNC computer system; or why the FBI was never able to examine John Podesta’s personal devices, either. Not one member of the Senate Intelligence Committe inquired as to why the DNC servers have not, after all of this time, ever been re-examined by the FBI; or whether it is just possible that this same DNC contractor putting forward the DNC/Russian hacking charge might have destroyed the DNC computer system.

The scene of the crime.

As mysterious and sensational as these unanswered questions are, so, too, are the reasons they have not been asked.

To be sure, there was this exchange:

BURR: Do you have any doubt that Russia attempted to interfere in the 2016 elections?

COMEY: None.

BURR: Do you have any doubt that the Russian government was behind the intrusions in the DNC and the DCCC systems, and the subsequent leaks of that information?

COMEY: No, no doubt.

Followed by this:

BURR: And the FBI, in this case, unlike other cases that you might investigate — did you ever have access to the actual hardware that was hacked? Or did you have to rely on a third party to provide you the data that they had collected?

COMEY: In the case of the DNC, and, I believe, the DCCC, but I’m sure the DNC, we did not have access to the devices themselves. We got relevant forensic information from a private party, a high-class entity, that had done the work. But we didn’t get direct access.

The “third party” Comey and Burr discuss is a DNC contractor named Crowdstrike. How “high class” Crowdstrike really is becomes an open question on learning that Crowdstrike has had to retract signficant portions of a recent report — also on “Russia” “hacking” — following “a damaging series of questions over its credibility,” as the Daily Mail explains in detail here. The Daily Mail further reports that Crowdstrike’s co-founder Dmitri Alperovitch and president Shawn Henry themselves refused to testify in March before the House Intelligence Committee, although Committee spox Jack Langer put it more delicately: “They declined the invitation, so we’re communicating with them about speaking to us privately.”

That’s the way to get to the bottom of things never. No doubt special “Russia influence” counsel Robert Mueller will get similar non-results, having, as FBI director, promoted Shawn Henry to big cyber security jobs at least twice during Henry’s FBI career. It’s a safe bet such rapport can only serve to make the Mueller investigation even more non-illuminating to the American people. Isn’t it more and more apparent that this is the point? Ladies and gents, the dreaded Fix is in. Hocus-pocus and the president will be gone.

BURR: But no content?

COMEY: Correct.

BURR: Isn’t content an important part of the forensics from a counterintelligence standpoint?

COMEY: It is, although what was briefed to me by my folks — the people who were my folks at the time — is that they had gotten the information from the private party that they needed to understand the intrusion by the spring of 2016.

Here, of course, was the perfect opening for Burr, or any other Senator, to sit up, adjust his microphone and say:

Are you telling the American people, Mr. Comey, that there has been no independent corroboration of this “third party,” this DNC contractor’s investigation, of the DNC servers? That the FBI just took this incendiary information about “Russian hacking” from this “third party” — and that was that? Further, you have stated in previous testimony that the DNC repeatedly denied FBI requests for access to the servers. Why? What reasons did the DNC give you? How is it possible that you, as FBI director, allowed this to stand?

Mr. Comey, please share with the American people your own reasons for acquiescing to the DNC denial of FBI access to the DNC servers, even as the DNC claimed these servers had been breached by a hostile foreign power! Did you ever possibly consider overriding the DNC to ensure that the FBI could enter what was by all accounts a highly sensitive crime scene to conduct professional, non-partisan analysis?

If not, why not? In fact, Mr. Comey, I’d like to hear more about your deliberations. Who was part of the decision-making process that led you to outsource the investigation of a purported foreign cyber strike on the United States, with all of the ramifications for increased tensions and hostilities with a leading nuclear power, to any third party? Do you consider that good police work? And what does this say about the professionalism of the rest of the IC that has relied on this same “third party” for its assessments? And how “high-class” is this “entity,” anyway, when we now know it has had to retract significant sections of a recent report, also on “Russia” “hacking,” due to the exposure of shoddy data and practices?

Tell me, Mr. Comey, is the FBI now outsourcing all of its counter-intelligence investigations to such “high class entities” — ? Or only in this singularly controversial, momentous and internationally explosive one?

Why would that be so, Mr. Comey…?

Instead, Senator Burr — but it could have any one of them — changed the subject.

Before the angry mob of breathless Democrats gets too spun up and ahead of itself, the anti-Trumpers should calm down and try to absorb just how preposterous it is to suggest that President Trump may have committed a criminal offense by supposedly obstructing justice during the Russia/Michael Flynn investigation.

Consider for a moment what would have happened if Trump had placed an op-ed in a prominent newspaper, arguing that the investigation into his campaign and former national security adviser Flynn was misguided, a wasteful use of government resources, and that he thought it should stop. To do so would be foolish, but not criminal.

Similarly, what if the president paraded up and down Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the Justice Department with a bullhorn shouting, “Stop the Flynn investigation!”?

It would be unwise and inappropriate, but no one would say the president committed a crime. And he certainly could not be charged with obstruction of justice.

So, if the president’s wishes about an investigation can be loud and public, how is it possible that he violated the law by having a private conversation with a member of his own administration? How can it be that a bold position made in public would be legal, yet an arguably reserved position made in private is somehow considered criminal?

When it comes to obstructing justice before an audience, does size matter? I would love to hear from lawyers about this.

Anyway, everyone should also carefully consider the arguments made by constitutional scholar Alan Dershowitz. Dershowitz presented some compelling legal insight. “The president,” he writes, “is the head of the unified executive branch of government, and the Justice Department and the FBI work under him and he may order them to do what he wishes.”

Former FBI director James B. Comey likewise confirmed during yesterday’s testimony that, “as a legal matter, [the] president is the head of the executive branch and could direct, in theory, we have important norms against this, but direct that anybody be investigated or anybody not be investigated. I think he has the legal authority because all of us ultimately report in the executive branch up to the president.” “Norms” are important, and Trump is not big on playing by the rules, but that does not mean he has broken a law.

Comey’s testimony should be enough to let this issue of criminality fade away, but the Democrats and their allies in the media are heavily invested in bringing the president down. Yesterday did not go as they wanted it to, and the Democrats’ rage won’t let them see the truth.

Again, Dershowitz argues, “it is important to put to rest the notion that there was anything criminal about the president exercising his constitutional power to fire Comey and to request — ‘hope’ — that he let go the investigation of General Flynn.”

Democrats will continue to lash out and contort Comey’s testimony, but the facts speak for themselves. President Trump has not asked anyone to lie, he has not prevented anyone from performing his or her legal obligations, and he has most certainly not obstructed justice.

Comey’s testimony was not flattering toward the president, but, as I wrote yesterday, it did more to help Trump than to hurt him. No matter how much the Democrats and mainstream media outlets try to spin a crime out of the straw that was Comey’s testimony, the facts just do not take us there.

The president still has the advantage of being innocent. If the Democrats want to impeach Trump, they will have to keep looking. I’m sure they will.

Anchor Insurance has announced that it will not offer insurance plans on the Ohio ObamaCare exchange next year, leaving 20 counties without any subsidized insurance options.

Regarding the Anthem departure, the New York Times breezily dismisses the fact that

Although [Anthem’s] departure would leave a small number of people — roughly 10,500 who live in about a fifth of the state’s counties — without an insurance carrier, the move was seized on by Republicans as more evidence that the markets are ‘collapsing’ under the Affordable Care Act.

Don’t you just love the satirical use of the quotations marks around the word collapsing indicating that such a charge is just utter nonsense?

Consequently, when Americans relate their horrific experiences under ObamaCare, they are met with insensitive, foul-mouthed responses and threats of violence for daring to expose the built-in problems of ObamaCare. Michelle Malkin relates how “millions of us who wanted our individual market health insurance plans left alone were branded selfish or liars for the past eight years. Our stories were stifled; our cancellation notices derided; our accounts of skyrocketing health insurance costs and diminished access to doctors mocked.” In fact, “[t]he partisan Beltway press shot down true stories of government-engineered pain and suffering, while hyping countless tall tales spun by the Obamacare Fable Factory.”

John Hayward asserts that Obama “needed to conceal how many people would lose their insurance under his plan. Millions of people lost their insurance plans because of the Affordable Care Act. Quite a few people have lost more than one insurance plan because of Obamacare-related disruptions to the market since 2010.” Moreover, “[i]t matters very much that Obamacare is absurdly expensive and wasteful. That’s real money being siphoned from our productive private economy and thrown around by the bureaucracy. A repeal plan that saves American taxpayers billions of dollars is a good thing and should be promoted to the people who pay all those taxes, insurance premiums, and deductibles as such.”

In addition, physician organizations now predict that in a mere 13 years, there will be a near-catastrophic shortage of primary care doctors and specialists in the United States. Kevin Campbell explains that:

Based on a new report from the Association of American Medical Colleges, it is expected that we will see a shortfall of nearly 100,000 doctors by the year 2030. A closer look at the predictions show that we will have a shortage of 40,000 primary care physicians, as well as a shortage of nearly 60,000 physicians in specialties such as allergy and immunology, cardiology, gastroenterology, and infectious disease. In general surgery, the report predicts that there will be 30,000 fewer surgeons than are needed to provide care to those who need it.

But, rest assured that “all federal employees could see a better rate on their health insurance premiums under a bill to overhaul the U.S. Postal Service, according to an analysis from the Congressional Budget Office.” Eric Katz reports that:

A key component of the 2017 Postal Service Reform Act would be the creation of a new health benefits program just for postal employees and retirees, while also requiring all eligible annuitants to enroll in Medicare as their primary provider. Federal workers remaining in their current Federal Employees Health Benefits plans would see their costs shrink, as removing postal employees — who are generally costlier to insure than the rest of the federal workforce — from their pools would decrease the overall expenses associated with their insurance. CBO did not estimate the savings FEHB enrollees would themselves receive, but it did predict the government’s portion of premium costs would decrease by $1.4 billion for federal retirees and $1.9 billion for current employees over 10 years.

Analysts also predicted premiums in the new system ‘for postal employees and annuitants would be lower than the FEHB premiums those people would face under current law.’ Again, CBO did not project savings for the individual, but said USPS would save $2.2 billion for current postal workers and $2.5 billion over 10 years under the postal-specific health care program.

If you’re looking for American ingenuity and technological prowess to help resolve the climate issues that face the world, the Paris Climate Pact is not for you. The pact is a voluntary agreement among countries including the world’s worst polluters (this is axiomatic, since only Nicaragua and Syria are not signatories, and thus far, chemical agents dropped on civilians have not been classed as “pollutants”). Nearly 200 countries are encouraged (not required) to make plans based on their own priorities and commitments to their own people – except the United States, it appears.

The goals of the pact are strikingly modest – to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels – but the withdrawal of the United States by President Donald Trump was followed by denunciation and frenzied despair for the future of the planet. German chancellor Angela Merkel, along with the new president of France and the prime minister of Italy, announced, “We deem the momentum generated in Paris in December 2015 irreversible and we firmly believe the Paris Agreement cannot be renegotiated, since it is a vital instrument for our planet, societies, and economies.”

“Irreversible” and “vital” are heavy adjectives applied to theoretically voluntary choices.

Jean-Claude Juncker, the European Commission president; Donald Tusk, the European Council president; and Mrs. Merkel decried the abdication of American leadership. Junker said the U.S. wanted to “untie itself from international connections” – more heavy words for a president withdrawing from an agreement not ratified or even discussed by the U.S. Senate.

What the rest of the world says is less germane here than what the United States does. A dozen American states and more than 200 cities have committed themselves (or their constituents) to maintaining the principles and goals of the Paris pact. More than 1,000 companies and institutions, including more than a dozen Fortune 500 businesses, signed a statement joining them.

Whether they planned it this way or not (probably not), they have exercised a fascinating burst of American federalism. Federalism, defined as “the distribution of power in an organization – such as a government – between a central authority and the constituent units,” is how states and municipalities exercise their authority separate from the federal government. For decades, liberals have sought more federal power over states (abortion, redefining marriage, mandatory health insurance), while conservatives have argued for less (school choice, Medicaid, abortion).

Not this time.

In fact, the determination of state, local, and business leadership to forge ahead on standards for conservation, energy, and pollution control is an outstanding development that does not require the federal government and appears not to run afoul of federal law (unlike, for example, sanctuary cities). The question is not whether it is better to have clean air and water or not. The question is not whether to find better ways of managing waste and generating electricity or not finding them. There are only two questions:

Who will do the heavy lifting for what we all consider benefits? Certain states, cities and companies say they will, and more power to them, so to speak. American ingenuity and American capability will surely create better and smarter ways to live in the only atmosphere we have.
What constitutes the best use of American money in pursuit of those aims?

Technology doesn’t create itself, and the role of government and private investment choices looms large. The federal government has a poor track record of choosing investments – Solyndra, anyone? The market, from startups to Fortune 500 companies, is the better mechanism for emerging and adaptive technologies – Wayze (Israeli) and Amazon and Uber (American) come to mind.

Absence of a market or investment mechanism, or money for the sort of innovation at which America excels, is a major shortcoming of the Paris pact. Consider the construct, and pay attention to the words of the founding document that the Europeans are adamantly opposed to changing.

Former FBI Director James Comey, who claims President Trump ordered him to end an investigation into former National Security Advisor Mike Flynn’s ties to Russia, admitted he leaked his notes from a private conversation with Trump in hopes of spurring an investigation of the president himself.

This raises the question, Why isn’t Comey being investigated? He has proven himself to be a prolific liar who abused his power in the vein of J. Edgar Hoover but without Hoover’s competence.

For Comey, leaking was revenge for the humiliating, public way President Trump fired him. His leaking to the media of what amount to official FBI documents may itself be unlawful and may violate the terms of his employment as FBI director. He’s not the victim he paints himself as.

Comey’s comments came as he testified for hours before the Senate Intelligence Committee as part of a massive fishing expedition against the Trump administration that should never have been launched in the first place. (A transcript of Comey’s testimony is available here.)

Commentators were all over map in their evaluations of the political significance of the testimony.

It was a bad day for Trump, retired Judge Andrew Napolitano said on Fox News Channel. Interfering with a federal criminal investigation for a corrupt purpose would be obstruction of justice, he told Shepard Smith on Fox News Channel. Some of Comey’s testimony was damning, Napolitano added, particularly Comey’s statement that he understood Trump was seeking some kind of a quid pro quo.

In response to a question from Sen. Angus King (I-Me.), Comey said during the hearing that Trump’s “hope” that he would “drop” the investigation into Flynn’s connections to Russia reminded him of 12th century English King Henry II’s annoyance with Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Becket.

The use of the word “hope,” Comey said, “rings in my ear as kind of, ‘will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?'” A group of Henry’s followers interpreted the statement as an indication that he wanted Becket dead and they did the king’s will.

But this is weak sauce. It is extremely unlikely a criminal case would arise out of a president’s stated “hope” that a probe be ended, with no actual evidence to back it up. Besides, the ultra-manipulative Comey has already proven himself an unreliable witness possessed of a self-serving memory.

And even if President Trump did order Comey to make the probe into Flynn go away, the president is entitled to do such things.

Harvard Law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz, a liberal Democrat, made the point that in his testimony yesterday,

Comey confirmed that under our Constitution, the president has the authority to direct the FBI to stop investigating any individual. I paraphrase, because the transcript is not yet available: the president can, in theory, decide who to investigate, who to stop investigating, who to prosecute and who not to prosecute. The president is the head of the unified executive branch of government, and the Justice Department and the FBI work under him and he may order them to do what he wishes.