RUTHFULLY YOURS

1.In May he said he was “mildly nauseous” about the possibility he effected the election, but has no regrets…..He also claimed that the Clinton e-mail investigation and Loretta Lynch gave him a “queasy feeling.” He seems prone to visceral symptoms.

2.He admits that he is not “Captain Courageous” and did not stand up to a man who was “pressuring him” or report the incident, and that he bowed to Loretta Lynch’s request to call an investigation “a matter” and did not report the incident.

3.He contradicts himself often….After disclosing that Hillary Clinton used her private e-mail for classified material in “the matter”,in July he exonerated her, stating that “no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case” although she and her aides had been “extremely careless”with classified material. Never mind that there was destruction of evidence- more than 30,000 e-mails disappeared, and Mrs. Clinton lied about it.

4.At the Congressional hearing on “the matter” he caved to a serious grilling by Representative Jim Jordan and Trey Gowdy, with the weaselly response ““You can call us wrong, but don’t call us weasels….. We are not weasels.” Okay then, not weasels just duplicitous, perfidious, untrustworthy, partisan, dishonest and Janus-faced?

5.Again, at the recent testimony to Congress he went off message by revealing that he had leaked a memo to a friend who leaked it to the New York Times, and then disclosed how former Attorney General Loretta Lynch actually tried to subvert an investigation and how he failed to report the “matter.” The latter was not leaked…maybe he was too queasy

6. He revealed that Donald Trump was not under investigation; the Russians had not hacked the election; and Trump encouraged him to proceed with the Russian investigation;- all of which blurred his anti-Trump campaign. Not leaked.

Finally, CNN- Gurgly Gergen, overwrought Toobin, and Borger hated him and painted him as a political hack before they loved him and praised his intellect and probity. They were right the first time.

Would you hire this lawyer? rsk

The commentary about James Comey’s memoranda has been all over the map. The former FBI director says he made memos contemporaneous to, or immediately after, all nine of the meetings or phone calls he recalls having had with Donald Trump, when the latter was president-elect and, later, president. Comey acknowledges that he orchestrated the leak of at least one memo — or rather, a snippet mined from its contents — to the New York Times. All of the memos, he testified, have now been surrendered to the special counsel, Robert Mueller.

George Washington University’s Jonathan Turley does a good job in The Hill outlining much of the relevant law. One major issue is whether these documents belonged to Comey, in the sense of being his property rather than the government’s. That is the position he took in his testimony. Like Turley, I think the former director is wrong.

As a longtime prosecutor, I have a black-and-white test for this sort of thing: Would a judge in a criminal trial consider the documents to be government property for purposes of federal discovery law?

That law requires the government to disclose to the defense any prior statement made by a witness, written or otherwise recorded, that is in the government’s possession. It also mandates that the government disclose any information that is material to the preparation of the defense (such as evidentiary exhibits that the prosecution plans to introduce into evidence). Finally, the government must produce any exculpatory evidence — meaning, any evidence that (a) suggests the accused is not guilty, (b) contradicts the prosecution’s theory of the case, or (c) could be used to impeach a witness’s testimony.

Comey’s notes may fall into all three of those disclosure categories. Let’s imagine that Democrats get their dream scenario: President Trump is charged with obstruction. (As I’ve observed several times — see, for instance, here and here – there is no prosecutable obstruction case, but let’s stick with the hypothetical.) Comey could be a witness at trial; his memos could be evidence; and the memos contain exculpatory information (e.g., Comey’s recollection of Trump’s actual words expressing “hope” that the FBI would drop the Flynn investigation are inconsistent with the inference Comey now draws that Trump was ordering him to drop the Flynn investigation).

With that as our hypothetical, what would happen if a prosecutor in the case argued to the presiding judge that the government did not need to disclose Comey’s notes because they are his personal property and not in the government’s possession? Rest assured, the judge would blow a gasket, and rightly so.

The memos were written by an FBI official, apparently on FBI equipment, and related directly to FBI investigative business. Indeed, the fact that investigative business was central to Trump’s conversations with the former director is what induced Comey to write the memos: He perceived the president’s statements as political intrusion into law-enforcement investigations and intelligence probes. The memos were thus government property, and the then-director was obliged to make sure they were retained in government files.

That does not mean it would have been improper for Comey to keep a copy of them for himself. But doing that would not change the character of the memos as government property, and it would not relieve Comey of the obligation to comply with all government disclosure restrictions on the contents of the memos. At the Federalist, Bre Payton reproduces a copy of the standard FBI employment agreement, making a persuasive argument that Comey’s memos are government property and that the former director’s disclosure of information in them to unauthorized persons violated the employment agreement’s terms.

“Republicans of all stripes must be made to acknowledge and accept that Trumpism is an experiment that failed,” Noah Rothman wrote in Commentary.

It was October 2016 and Rothman was declaring the terms on which Never Trumpers would accept the surrender of Republicans after Trump’s defeat. Some “examples must be made”, but after some political purges, the GOP could be reunited around “free trade” and “an internationalist foreign policy”.

But instead of losing, Trump won. The disasters that Rothman was predicting, the loss of Congress and the White House, never came about. And the scorned prophets of Never Trump, instead of apologizing or being offered terms for rejoining the GOP, continued forecasting disaster and doom for the heretics.

Like Democrats, Never Trumpers were still stuck on an election that Trump wasn’t supposed to win. Democrats had predicted a Hillary victory and Never Trumpers predicted a Republican disaster. Both Democrats and Never Trumpers want to reverse the results of the election. The Democrats invent vast conspiracies and the Never Trumpers predict disasters that will never happen.

Never Trumpers are obsessed with proving to Republicans that electing Trump was a disastrous mistake.

So everything is a disaster. Trump is infuriating Europeans alienating Muslims, abandoning NATO and destroying the planet. The sky is always falling. The apocalypse is just around the corner. And when it finally arrives, Rothman and the rest of the gang can lay out their terms for reunifying the GOP around illegal alien amnesty, destructive trade practices and open borders for terrorist refugees.

Even after the election, President Trump still can’t win.

The Navy is Preparing the MQ-4C Triton Maritime Drone for Service in the Pacific Theater; the drone is now being configured with collision avoidance technology and advanced maritime sensors enabling it to zero in on enemy ships at sea.

The Navy and Northrop Grumman are updating software and sensors on a new high-tech, autonomous maritime drone designed to identify and zero in on enemy ship targets at sea, service and industry officials said.

The Navy’s Triton autonomous drone, called the MQ-4C, is now receiving a “3.1 software” integration as part of a technical plan for the aircraft to be operational by 2018. The first Tritons are slated to deliver sometime later this year, developers said.
“3.1 software gets you to the point where you can use the sensors in an operational environment,” Tom Twomey, senior manager business development, Triton, Northrop Grumman, told Scout Warrior in an interview.

The sensor package being designed for the aircraft includes what the Navy calls a multi-function array sensor, or MFAS.

The Triton’s electronics include an electro-optical/infrared sensor, a 360-degree active electronically scanned array radar and inverse synthetic aperture radar (ISAR), among other things, Navy developers have said. The sensors create a common operational maritime picture including images, data and full-motion video. An electronic support measure is also able to detect maritime signals.

Synthetic Aperture Radar, or SAR, sends an electromagnetic signal forward and then analyzes the return signal to paint a picture or “rendering” of the terrain below. SAR is primarily used for land missions, whereas ISAR is especially engineered to zero in on targets in a maritime environment.

“Inverse synthetic aperture radar is a mode that allows you to stop on one particular target and get an ID on that. It gives you a picture of a ship showing the superstructure in order to see if, for example, it is a tanker or warship. It can pick steel out of the water,” Twomey said.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/2017/06/11/feinstein-calls-for-probe-of-loretta-lynch-handling-of-email-investigation/

The ranking minority member of the Senate Judiciary Committee has called for an investigation into former Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s actions in connection with the federal investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails.

Senator Diane Feinstein was reacting to comments made by former FBI Director James Comey during testimony on Capitol Hill that Lynch asked him to downplay the Clinton investigation.

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?