The Comey hearing (June 8th 2017) was when James Comey first appeared before the Senate after being fired as FBI Director by US President Donald Trump. Trump admitted he fired Comey because of the Russiagate investigation, which was (and still is) looking into possible secret ties between Trump’s people and Russia, both before and after the 2016 election.
What Comey confirmed:
- Trump asked for his loyalty.
- Trump secretly asked him to drop the investigation into Michael Flynn, the former National Security Adviser.
- Comey kept memos of his meetings with Trump, writing down what was said right after each meeting.
What Comey said in addition about Trump and the Russiagate investigation:
- He kept memos because he did not trust Trump to tell the truth. He did not feel the need to do that with Presidents Obama or Bush.
- After being fired, he leaked a memo to a friend in New York, a Columbia Law School professor, so that news of it would get into the press and lead to the appointment of an independent investigator. Robert Mueller was so appointed. Comey has complete confidence in him.
- Comey was “stunned” when Trump asked him to drop the Flynn investigation, but does not know if it amounts to obstruction of justice. That is for Robert Mueller to determine.
- When Trump asked him to drop the Flynn investigation, he phrased it as “I hope” – yet cleared the room before informing Comey of his “hopes”. Comey took it as a command, not a wish. He disobeyed it since the president has no right to tell the FBI to drop an investigation.
- Comey told Trump that he was not personally under investigation, but refused to say so publicly, as Trump wanted (he had asked Comey to “lift the cloud”). The investigation was not over and so Trump was not yet in the clear.
- Comey turned over his memos to Mueller, so they are now part of the Russiagate investigation.
- No one from US intelligence asked him to stop the Russiagate investigation.
- Comey is very sure that Russia hacked the election and tried to affect the outcome. All that is in doubt is whether Trump’s people worked with the Russians.
- Obama talked to him at great length about Russian hackers, while Trump never even brought it up.
The most disturbing piece is that last one: it seems that either Trump knew or does not care.
Obstruction of justice is what brought down Nixon in Watergate. “The cover-up is worse than the crime,” as they say.
Trust: Of course, all of this is only Comey’s side of the story, even if it is stated under oath. But Trump is such a huge liar I trust Comey way more.
The press: While Comey did note that some reports in the press have been way off, in the main it seems to me they have got it right. Whatever Trump Derangement Syndrome or “media hysteria” they may suffer from, it has not impaired their judgement too much.
– Abagond, 2017.
Update (June 13th): Since the hearing, Trump and his people have denied that he is a liar, that he ever asked Comey to drop the Flynn investigation or asked Comey for his loyalty. Trump accused Comey of perjury and leaking. When asked if he is willing to testify about his side of the story under oath, Trump said “100%”.
Today, Jeff Sessions, the attorney general, appeared before the Senate. Like Trump, he is also strangely incurious about Russians hacking the election: he says he has never received a briefing on it nor asked for one.
See also:
520
I trust Comey way more as well.:)
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But James Comey has proven over and over again that he was not suitable for the job of FBI director. He’s milking his 15 minutes of fame. He’s a corporate lawyer with a long public resume as well. But he has to accept the fact that unless he wants to run for high office and he gets some votes doing, his public career has come to an end.
He should go to work. Either that or declare himself a public gadfly and segue into semi-retirement of visiting fellow positions and occasional public pronouncements. He’s not acting very grown up. I admit, and everyone even in their late 20’s knows it, being grown up isn’t grown up like you thought it would it be. But you can at least try.
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not if obama was trying to frame trump. he’d be constantly harping on it.
i’ll believe this when he shows me the evidence
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why would he want to talk about a psy op designed to remove him from office?
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I thought this was interesting:
Pretty much confirmed what I suspected. Lynch “leaned” on Comey and would not have allowed Clinton to face the music. Why didnt’ he leak Lynch’s possible interference?
Now I’m supposed to trust a man who refused to enforce the law against Clinton and tries to hurt his former boss after being fired (nobody ever does that /sarc) just because the Left side of American politics hates Trump but doesn’t care if their institutions are corrupt?
lol
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@nomad
The hypocrisy of this whole thing almost makes my head explode. There is no evidence of any improper relationship between Trump and Russia. Even if there were Russian hackers there is no evidence Trump collaborated with them of gave them access. Heck, he didn’t even have access himself as he wasn’t a government employee. OTOH, there was overwhelming evidence of Clinton lawbreaking. The same people who turned a blind eye to it and wanted that woman to be president are quite willing to try to attempt the impeachment of Trump on a made up narrative.
At Watergate, Nixon was alleged to have covered up a crime [the break-in]. Tell me the crime Trump had attempted to cover up. There hasn’t been a suggestion of anything. Merely meeting with Russians, Brits, Chinese is not a crime. If it were almost all politicians would be in prison. If they can establish a crime being covered up, I’ll agree there could be a basis for Trump’s impeachment. Even then, President Pence would be quite an own-goal by the political Left [if not the “deep state”]. I say clean up your own house and prepare for 2020.
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I watched Fox News last night. They were all but high-fiving over the Loretta Lynch thing (which Origin just quoted at length) and, especially, that Comey said Trump had not been under investigation. Sean Hannity said the scandal was over, the president was in the clear. And then proceeded to bash the Mainstream Media and, especially, James Comey.
They wondered if Comey has committed crimes by leaking his memo and by not reporting Trump to Sessions for obstruction of justice. From what I saw there was no serious discussion of whether TRUMP had obstructed justice, something on which his presidency could turn. It was all about Comey being the bad guy, accusing the accuser.
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@ Origin
So why do you trust Comey when it comes to Lynch but not when it comes to Trump? How do you tell when he is telling the truth and when he is lying? Or is it just confirmation bias all the way?
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thats rich. the post itself is confirmation bias. you are convinced that russia hacked on behalf of trump. almost all of your trump posts have been attempts at confirming the conclusion youve already reached.
Confirming what you believe.
their judgement is abysmally impaired already. this russophobic witch hunt is ample evidence.
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I said that I believe Loretta Lynch had a hand in the Clinton investigation long before the latest Comey testimony (check the Russiagate thread). You have to be an idiot to believe Bill Clinton met with her to talk about grandkids. So yes, Comey’s testimony in this regard is consistent with what I believe.
I also believe Trump suggested that Comey back off Flynn because he thought it was a “witch-hunt”. I have no reason to doubt that this happened. Yet I haven’t seen any claim of actual lawbreaking on Flynn’s part. Clinton almost certianly violated the Espionage Act. What was Flynn supposed to have done? Beats me.
So I believe many points of his testimony. Come was under oath so he had to be careful. However, I don’t “trust” Comey implicitly as if he is some paragon of virtue. I don’t trust him to be a judge of other people, on my behalf, when I can do that myself.
Clearly he was trying to make Trump look bad by leaking memos when he aparently tolerated pressure from Obama’s AG, Lynch, to massage the Clinton investigation … without leaking anything to the press. His righteous outrage is quite selective and it seems to have little to do with the seriousness of of the potential crimes being investigated.
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@nomad
“thats rich. the post itself is confirmation bias.”
Yes it was quite rich. I can be won over by the Trump/Russia collusion conspiracy with motive and evidence. Sorry the meida/DNC can’t just make up stuff and expect me to believe. If that’s “confirmation bias” then I’m guilty as charged. “Confirm” your allegations and I will no longer be “biased” against them.
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If Comey’s allegations are true, then it’s reasonable to assume Trump obstructed justice under federal law.
But there are two obvious problems: Comey’s allegations amount merely to his word against Trump’s, meaning it would be tough to convict Trump in any trial by the Senate; and House Republicans are unlikely to pass Rep. Al Green’s articles of impeachment.
So whilst I wish abagond and his campaign team good luck in their unending effort to bring down Trump, it’s a fat chance it happens until Democrats regain control of the Senate and House, which Republicans have gerrymandered themselves into controlling for the foreseeable future.
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the cure is worse than the disease. in the process of trying to dethrone trump the msm loses the last shred of its very tattered credibility. and literally, what you get if you succeed is worse than trump. you get pence. the rightwing status quo without the resistance that trump arrouses. (well, we have him already in the pipe, but with the trump impeachment we will get him sooner.) pence is like the worst of trump and clinton combined.
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@nomad
“thats rich. the post itself is confirmation bias. you are convinced that russia hacked on behalf of trump. almost all of your trump posts have been attempts at confirming the conclusion youve already reached.”
+1000. A conclusion based on opinion and not fact. But we can expect nothing less.
@Origin
““Confirm” your allegations and I will no longer be “biased” against them.”
+1000. Evidence, shmevidence…
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@resw
Even then it’s not a given according to some (eg. Alan Dershowitz). Comey had said in the past that the DOJ, under the president’s AG, can weigh in on cases (and apparently did so during the Clinton “probe”).
Comey:
That was testimony from earlier in May when Comey was still in his job. I said at the time (in Russiagate thread) that it’s unlikely that the DOJ can legally weigh in and the president can’t. Heck, the president can pardon criminals if he wants. However, I do think they really want to try to impeach Trump so we’ll see how it goes.
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@nomad
“pence is like the worst of trump and clinton combined.”
Some idiots seem to think that if Trump is impeached Hillary will be enthroned.
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@Origin
“Even then it’s not a given according to some (eg. Alan Dershowitz).”
I agree, but even if we disregard Comey’s testimony, the act of Trump firing Comey, while legal, can also be considered obstruction of justice, since the law is so broad and there’s precedent for it in US v. Cueto, where a lawyer was convicted for taking legal actions against a gov’t investigator because the court deemed his motive to be for purposes of obstructing justice.
At any rate, I think it’s all futile because a Republican-controlled Congress is unlikely to impeach one of their own–regardless of the law.
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I also watched MSNBC last night, the Fox News of the left. Rachel Maddow, who has been pushing Russiagate hard all along, says that Trump, by way of his lawyer, has already chosen the hill to die on: whether or not Trump told Comey to drop the Flynn investigation. Comey says he did, Trump denies it emphatically. Since that conversation can be seen as obstruction of justice, everything could turn on just that. A very similar conversation is what brought down Nixon.
Maddow also defended the New York Times article that Comey said was way off. The New York Times yesterday asked the FBI why they think it was way off, but got no answer. They stand by it.
The NYT article in question is from February 14th: “Trump Campaign Aides Had Repeated Contacts With Russian Intelligence”:
(https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/14/us/politics/russia-intelligence-communications-trump.html)
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@ nomad
I did not always believe that, so it has not been confirmation bias all the way. A year ago I laughed with Guccifer 2.0 at CrowdStrike. In July I thought Clinton was just leaning on Cold War tropes as a sorry-ass excuse for her sorry-ass campaign. In August I looked into Trump’s connections with Russia but found nothing persuasive and so did not do a post on it. Even on Election Day the only thing I said about Russia was:
I did, though, believe in Russian trolls by that time (and with good reason that had nothing to do with Trump):
What persuaded me of Russians hacking the election was a book by Malcolm Nance, “The Plot to Hack America” (2016), He is a long-time Navy intelligence officer. I had read part of his book on the Iraq War, so he already had credibility with me. You will see him listed as the source for my post on Russian hackers:
I would say there is a 90% chance the Russian hacking is true, 60% chance Trump’s campaign worked with Russia.
I think the truth about Russiagate, one way or the other, will come out, but it will probably take years, as it did with Watergate. So, unlike some people, I am not going to sit here and pretend to magically know the truth in advance. It is not that simple. All I have at this point are suspicions of various strengths.
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@ Origin
What are you talking about? Asking the FBI Director to drop an investigation is much worse than asking him to give it a vaguer name.
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@”I did not always believe that, so it has not been confirmation bias all the way”
What a disingenuous deflection. Nomad’s comment was about this post in the present tense, and abagond’s response was about the past, which he didn’t even care to substantiate. So we should just take him at his word today, and forget about his writings about the subject.
This is the type of deceptive game abagond and msm pundits love to play.
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Scott Adams of “Dilbert” fame:
(http://blog.dilbert.com/post/161585486426/the-comey-fog)
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I find it interesting that some of the very same people who hate Hillary Clinton for being a sleazy character do not seem to notice or care that Trump is one too. How odd.
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it has nothing to do with the sleaziness of trump. it has to do with stratcom type manipulation of public opinion to facilitate a coup. dump trump by legitimate means, not fabricated stories. its about not being mind controlled by the deep state and msm which are one and the same. the cure, as i said, of losing every shred of credibility in the sabotage of trump, is worse than the disease. you destroy your home trying to kill a roach. in the end the roach is dead but your home is destroyed. what a price to pay.
andrew levine agrees with me about pence. the cure is worse than the disease.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/06/09/pro-trump-identity-politics/
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resw
im talking about this post and everything abagond has written on trump since his russiagate post. and that includes much of his writing on RT which iirc repeatedly alludes to russiagate.
getting trump at any cost has been his thesis from the beginning. if russiagate had not come along he would have found something else to perform the same function, with or without evidence. it doesnt matter..
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“What are you talking about? Asking the FBI Director to drop an investigation is much worse than asking him to give it a vaguer name.”
LOL. Really abagond? If a policeman shot a black man and the prosecutor refused to call the matter an “investigation” because he doesn’t want the policeman to look bad would you expect justice to be done or would you think that he’d likely get away scot free? But now you can’t come to reasonable conclusions and need everything spelled out in painstaking detail?
It’s pretty damn obvious Comey was pressured not to recommend an indictment in the Clinton case; he’d actually outlined all the wrong things she did while letting her off the hook. He didn’t leak memos then so we’re not able to see detailed transcripts of his alleged conversations with Lynch but he told us Lynch was instructing him to make Clinton look better. So given that information, I’m supposed to believe that Lynch would have accepted a Comey recommendation that Clinton be prosecuted? Yeah right. That would have been extremely inconvenient so it never happened.
The investigation was compromised for political reasons, same as Trump is being accused of doing in the case of Flynn. However, Clinton’s lawbreaking was obvious and potentially detrimental to national security. She didn’t seem that concerned about “Russian hackers” when she was hiding her correspondence from FOIA requests by having an unsecured private server. So, based on what I know I consider it more egregious that she was allowed to get away and had the nerve to remain in the presidential race. Flynn resigned from the Trump administration over even the appearance of impropriety.
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Update: Since the hearing, Trump and his people have denied that he is a liar, that he ever asked Comey to drop the Flynn investigation or asked Comey for his loyalty. Trump accused Comey of perjury and leaking. When asked if he is willing to testify about his side of the story under oath, Trump said “100%”.
Today, Jeff Sessions, the attorney general, appeared before the Senate. Like Trump, he is also strangely incurious about Russians hacking the election: he says he has never received a briefing on it nor asked for one.
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Since Republicans control Congress and have made it clear they’re not interested in convicting Trump, I have the same response as abagond’s dear leader:
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“If you are resisting Russian collusion with Trump, then what you are resisting is a fantasy,” BAR executive editor Glen Ford told the opening plenary of the Left Forum. “And, if you are simply resisting Trump, the idiot in the White House, then you are simply a tool of a Democratic Party strategy.”
https://www.blackagendareport.com/ba-radio-a-real-left-would-demand-peace
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