“I understood this to be my recollection recorded of my conversation with the president.”https://amgreatness.com/2017/06/14/special-counsel-swamps-watchdog-trump/
That statement by James Comey had this old trial lawyer’s antennae buzzing. While being questioned about his memos-to-self by Senator Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) at last week’s big intelligence committee hearing, the former FBI director used the term “recollection recorded” not once but twice. He was rationalizing why he had failed to treat the notes he’d made of conversations with President Trump as government documents (maintaining, instead, that they were his own property).
“My view,” Comey elaborated, was that the “memorialization of those conversations was my recollection recorded.”
I won’t belabor the fact that the former FBI director’s memos were government records. It is a moot point. He has surrendered them to Robert Mueller, the special counsel appointed by the Justice Department.
My focus is on the fact that a special counsel is what Comey says he wanted, even though he repeatedly acknowledged that Trump himself was not under investigation, and even though the investigation in question—a counterintelligence probe of Russia’s interference in the 2016 election—is the kind that ordinarily does not get a prosecutor assigned. Because its objective is not to build a criminal case, a counterintelligence probe is conducted by intelligence agents and analysts, not criminal investigators and prosecutors.
Many other former Obama administration officials wanted a special counsel, too. So did Democrats and their media echo chamber—all convinced that Trump was not merely objectionable but unfit.
So, the question is: Was that the plan all along—to impose a watchdog on Trump?
Obviously, it has not mattered that there is no crime to investigate, even though the governing regulations make that a prerequisite for appointing a special counsel. Was Washington’s push for a special counsel spurred by concern over Russia or revulsion over Trump?
Without an evidence-based predicate for a criminal investigation of Trump, did the intelligence agencies undertake to build the predicate themselves? Did they reckon that the semblance of a criminal investigation would justify installing a monitor from outside Trump’s administration, with jurisdiction sufficiently elastic to keep the president in check?