To understand the depth of Comey’s leaking and lying, all you have to do is go back and look at his scummy maneuvering in response to Trump’s “wiretap” tweets. Those tweets turned out to be entirely accurate: The Obama administration was intercepting communications at Trump Tower, both during the campaign and the transition. Comey knew perfectly well that Trump was right — FBI agents had been sifting through the Trump Tower records of Carter Page and Paul Manafort — but he sent his team out to lie about Trump’s tweets anyways.
*****Actually the FBI started survaillance of several Trump team members after it was found that one of them had lied to the Vice President about contacts with Russia. The Obama administration did not order the Trump team be wired tapped. The Trump Team earned the wiretaps by putting themselves in positions to be blackmailed. When Justice Department officials tried to warn Trump, he fired them****
He had a
story placed in the
New York Times shortly after Trump’s tweets: “Comey Asks Justice Department to Reject Trump’s Wiretapping Claim.” It quoted Comey’s leakers, “senior American officials,” as saying that Trump’s assertion was “false” and that the FBI director had asked the Justice Department to refute it.
**** He refuted the claim, because the claim was false. The claim was that the Obama administration ordered wiretaps of Trump tower based on campaign research documents and the Steele Dossier which was unfounded. That was not true. The reason the Trump Transition team was under survaillance was because senior team members were in direct communication with known spies and those people were in direct contact with the president. That is a national security risk and was being followed up on legally.*********
As Comey’s stenographer, the
Times wrote up his lie in its inimitably smearing style:
Mr. Comey’s request is a remarkable rebuke of a sitting president, putting the nation’s top law enforcement official in the position of questioning Mr. Trump’s truthfulness. The confrontation between the two is the most serious consequence of Mr. Trump’s weekend Twitter outburst, and it underscores the dangers of what the president and his aides have unleashed by accusing the former president of a conspiracy to undermine Mr. Trump’s young administration.
****Comey was completely correct to defend the people under him. His loyalty has always been to himself and his employees - it was always this way - when he worked in the Justice Department and the FBI. Whoever he was with came first, NOT the sitting president, not senators, not the media, not anybody else. Trump decided that this was not going to cut it because the only loyalty he cares about is loyalty to Trump and Trump interests. Again, Obama did not try to undermine Donald Trump or his presidency because under Obama the Justice Department and FBI were truly independent. *****
So here was an FBI director using the front page of a newspaper to libel a sitting president, all while a FISA warrant based on Hillary’s campaign research, which gave Comey the power to reach into Trump Tower, sat on his desk.
*****Again - the assertion that the Steele Dossier, which has now been found to contain far more truth than previously known, was the reason the wiretaps were ordered on the Trump team is not true. The reason was that Michael Flynn, previously the guy in charge of briefing the president on the nation's most important national security issues, was caught having intimate and possibly illegal conversations with Russians and then he chose to lie about it on multiple ocassions. That opened up the possibility the National Security Advisor to the President of the United States could be blackmailed by a foreign power. Something the Justice Department was not going to allow to happen. You need to understand this is what actually happened, this is the truth*******
In retrospect, the article is laughably dishonest, with the
Times pretending to wonder why Comey chose to leak a denial to it rather than make a formal denial. It wasn’t much of a puzzle; he was lying his head off. But the
Times struck an innocent tone:
It is not clear why Mr. Comey did not issue a statement himself. He is the most senior law enforcement official who was kept on the job as the Obama administration gave way to the Trump administration. And while the Justice Department applies for intelligence-gathering warrants, the F.B.I. keeps its own records and is in a position to know whether Mr. Trump’s claims are true. While intelligence officials do not normally discuss the existence or nonexistence of surveillance warrants, no law prevents Mr. Comey from issuing the statement.
******The reason Comey did not issue a statement on anything is because the guy has a spine and a sense of integrity. He did it to protect the integrity of the investigation, and to make it clear that the FBI was an independent and impartial participant in all of this. He also did it to save his own ass, he knew that crossing Trump by openly contradicting him would get him fired. He got fired anyway, which was a fucked up version of poetic justice.************
Meanwhile, Comey sat back as Jim Clapper, another dolt he could manipulate, reinforced his lie on television, which the
Times included in its story to bolster Comey’s leak:
Senior law enforcement and intelligence officials who worked in the Obama administration have said that there were no secret intelligence warrants regarding Mr. Trump. Asked whether such a warrant existed, James R. Clapper Jr., a former director of national intelligence, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” “Not to my knowledge, no.”
“There was no such wiretap activity mounted against the president-elect at the time, as a candidate or against his campaign,” Mr. Clapper added.
******* This is true. At the time they were investigating Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, Carter Page, Jared and Trump Jrs. They were investigating Flynn for lying about contacts with Russians. They were investigating Paul Manafort and Carter Page for lying about their relationship with Russians. Jared and Trump Jr.s lied about having meetings with Russians and about the content of those meetings.
Trump himself was not under investigation at the time because he's very good at keeping crime at 3-4 'onion levels' away. It comes from experience working with his dealings in real estate and gambling - he knows if you want to play ball in some places you have to get dirty, and learned early on that it is far easier to put a couple of fall guys in between him and the dirty bit*****
Think about that: Comey, with the Carter Page warrant in hand (which gave Comey the power to rifle through Trump Tower communications both past and future), planted a story in the
Times, designed to make Trump look like a lunatic, that makes use of a Clapper quote Comey knew to be false. What a weasel
********** Again a lie - the warrant issued were looking for specific information on specific people. It does not clear Comey to do anything. It gives the FBI permission to conduct an investigation on a specific case. Comey doesn't have to plant anything anywhere to make Trump look like a lunatic. Trump does that himself without any help*******
In a just age, Comey would have the book thrown at him, not be writing one. It is a measure of our skewed times that an unelected charlatan could subvert the elected chief executive and then emerge from his subversion as a celebrated
********Comey did not subvert anybody. Trump's chosen inner circle and his own actions have subverted him. His sons' talking to russian agents looking for dirt on political opponents. His campaign manager lying about foreign lobbying interests. His National Security Advisor engaging in deceitful conversations with foreign agents. His Secretary of State allegedly calling him a fucking moron.... him asking the FBI director to drop an active investigation in the pursuit of political convenience, his deranged tweeting, the fact the guy can't communicate at a level above a 8-10 year old.... all of those things have subverted Trump. Comey didn't do shit, he was doing his job.....***********
