Tag Archives: James Comey

Rebellious Thoughts, by the Zman

Slowly but surely, people are giving up hope that the political system will change for the better. William Barr’s refusal to prosecute James Comey didn’t help. From the Zman at theburningplatform.com:

Most people reading this will claim that they are not surprised that the people behind the seditious plot to overturn the 2016 election will not face charges. To be on the dissident right requires a degree of cynicism about political institutions. Democracy assumes things about humans that the dissident knows are false. Therefore, a system relying on people to act in a way that is against their nature is doomed to fail. That and the people attracted to democratic politics are always the worst society has to offer.

No matter how clear-eyed you are about the nature of man, politicians always have the ability to disappoint even the most cynical. If most people on this side of the great divide are being honest, they are let down by the news that the oleaginous James Comey will escape justice for his crimes. There was that flicker of hope that William Barr would not be another slithering reptile and do the right thing. Again, these people always have the ability to disappoint even the most jaded among us.

The thing is, there has always been a sense that these people operate by a different set of rules than the rest of us. It’s such an overused trope that when you see a James Comey type of character in a movie, they seem one-dimensional. They’re just the stock bureaucratic bad guy everyone knows how to hate. The same is true of the duplicitous villain like Bill Barr. In movies, that’s the guy the hero foolishly trusts, only to learn that he is more villainous than the James Comey character.

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Keep Your Powder Dry, Comey Is Not Out of the Woods, by Larry C. Johnson

Larry C. Johnson gives a plausible explanation for why Attorney General William Barr refused to indict James Comey after the Inspector General’s report, and why he may still indict him for his role in the FISA applications. SLL thinks the fix is in and Barr is a Deep State fixture (see Whitney Webb’s recent 4-part article “Too Big to Fail”and Barr’s role in the Ruby Ridge whitewash). Time will tell. From Johnson at turcopolier.typepad.com:

There is no doubt that Jim Comey was part of a conspiracy to destroy Donald Trump and his Presidency. But all the evidence is not yet on the record. There is some understandable frustration reverberating around the web that Comey is not being indicted in the wake of the latest Inspector General report detailing Jim Comey’s inappropriate and unethical handling of Government material. But that is not the role of the Inspector General. It is up to DOJ to prosecute and a careful reading of the current report makes clear that there was not adequate foundation to get an indictment and prosecute.

However, if you believe that Jim Comey is getting a pass and will get away with corrupt activity, let me suggest you are overreacting and that patience is warranted. Comey is not out of the woods.

My only previous experience with Bill Barr was the role he played in making sure that the two guys who planted the bomb on Pan Am 103 were prosecuted. Barr was a straight shooter and would not cut corners. I also am friends with a person who worked directly for him during that period. That person insists that Barr is not going to let Comey and Brennan and Clapper off the hook. But that person also has reminded me that Barr will do it by the book and do it fairly.

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Fish Fry, by James Howard Kunstler

Will anyone responsible for the coup against President Trump ever see the inside of a jail cell? James Howard Kunstler is more optimistic about that prospect than SLL. From Kunstler at kunstler.com:

The old plantation spiritual comes to mind as the first in a series of DOJ Inspector General’s reports is issued — this one outlining the turpitudes of former FBI Director Jim Comey — while even more fateful inquiries by Barr and Durham grind away in silence and mystery, and one senses that sometime soon the whole hot mess of RussiaGate will land on the doormat of Barack Obama.

Many other (by now) well-known names have been implicated in this fiasco but Mr. Obama has stood aloft from them on a fluffy cloud of his own, enjoying his multimillion book deal, plenty of international travel, and shopping for real estate on Martha’s Vineyard, the elephants’ graveyard of the One Percenters. And yet, something wicked is creeping his way as investigators work up the food chain to discover why and how so many high government officials cooked up a scheme to get rid of the despised winner of the 2016 election.

President Obama, Liberalism’s great bowling trophy, its incarnate virtue signal, is going to get “the business” from the very justice department he sicced on his successor, only now under new management. If you think the Left has gone batshit crazy since the Mueller report flopped, along with the supposed author’s Mr. Magoo-like performance before congress in July, just wait until Mr. Obama is called upon to do some official ‘splainin’ about who exactly authorized the operation to unseat Mr. Trump. I daresay the Left would rather blow up what remains of the Republic than see their retired champion in a witness chair, subjected to the peevings of mere mortal federal attorneys.

And yet, certain remorseless legal machinery has been set in motion now that could send a whole boardroom of former Obama administration higher-ups into disgrace, infamy, and possibly the federal slammer. Think: former CIA Director John Brennan in his future role as ping-pong round-robin manager at the Allenwood, PA, penitentiary; Loretta Lynch paring turnips at Camp Alderson, WV; James Clapper trying to catch a little tan in the ‘yard’ at Lompoc…. Somewhere along the line, someone is going to point a finger at Mr. Obama and those who were around him in the dear dead days of 2016.

There’s no precedent for this, of course, not even the case of ole Tricky Dick Nixon, who never had to take a witness chair in the Watergate matter and received a pardon from his successor, Gerald Ford, which made the whole tiresome business go away pronto. Wouldn’t it be a kind of poetic justice if Mr. Trump had to do the same for Mr. Obama? The New York Times would surely find a way to spin that as “racist.” CNN would declare war on FlyoverLand and send Don Lemon to Kentucky in a Lincoln Navigator with a light-saber to subdue the Ku Klux Klan and the satanic hosts of White Supremacy. Well, you see how easily this country could lose its shit.

In the meantime, cries of consternation rise from Right at the DOJ’s demurral to actually indict Mr. Comey on any of the charges listed rather explicitly in the new report. The explanation goes something like this: Comey gave an official FBI memo of his own composition to pal (and attorney) Daniel Richman, and instructed him to leak the contents (though not the memo itself) to a New York Times reporter. The memo involved recollections of a one-to-one meeting with Mr. Trump in which the case of General Flynn came up, with Mr. Trump making the case that there was nothing illegal about the National Security Advisor speaking with the Russian ambassador — since, after all, that is precisely what ambassadors from foreign lands are in Washington to do. I actually wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out that Mr. Comey was wearing a wire during that, and several other, meetings he had with Mr. Trump — before the president grokked that he was being personally set-up for an obstruction-of-justice rap and issued Mr. Comey a pink slip.

In sum, this particular matter amounted to a rinky-dink charge, where Mr. Barr’s prosecutors are concerned, compared to the greater and darker matter of Mr. Comey’s role in defrauding the FISA judges to get warrants to spy on US citizens. That will likely be Mr. Comey’s true Waterloo. So, he greeted this week’s IG report with a smarmy Twitter tweet celebrating his imagined “exoneration.” Imagine instead what his cortisol level will be in the months ahead as he awaits further moves by Messrs Barr, Durham, and IG Horowitz.

In an early riposte to all this bother, hapless MSNBC anchor Lawrence O’Donnell came out with a “bombshell” report that Mr. Trump had used a claque of Russian oligarchs to co-sign some loans in his hotel business — more proof that the President is Putin’s puppet! Alas, like so much other information seeping from the bloated, decomposing carcass of RussiaGate, the report had not been verified before Mr. O’Donnell opened his pie-hole to blab it out on prime-time TV. The President’s attorneys promptly offered to sue Mr. O’Donnell for defamation unless he apologized post haste and renounced the phony report. Which he did. Just another day in hysteria-gripped MediaLand.

As a sidelight, given the content of the IG’s report on Comey, one can easily imagine Judge Emmet Sullivan having to now throw out the case against General Flynn, which has been fermenting in pre-sentencing limbo for the better part of a year, perhaps awaiting developments like these. If not, Mr. Trump will surely have to pardon the General. It would be real poetic justice to see him hired back to the job he was underhandedly shoved out of.

 

Two Tiered System Of Justice: Top FBI Officials Escape Prosecution, While Others Pay Heavy Price, by Sara Carter

Connected FBI officials skate for launching a coup, while the less fortunate caught in their dragnets spend fortunes defending themselves against potentially severe sentences. From Sara Carter at saracarter.com:

All we need is what we already know.

And what we know is that top senior officials at the FBI, thus far, have escaped any prosecution for lying and leaking. It wasn’t the same for others. Just look at Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, who is still fighting for justice against a bureaucracy that didn’t want him snooping around to discover how those in senior positions of power in the intelligence community and law enforcement were breaking the law and the spine of the U.S. constitution with unwarranted unmaskings, spying and weaponization of the intelligence apparatus.

Flynn was targeted by former Obama Administration officials from the very beginning. Remember how former FBI Director James Comey laughed publicly about how he set up the former National Security Advisor. He also contends it wouldn’t have happened to another administration:

Comey admitted he didn’t go through the White House counsel’s office, but arranged the meeting with FBI Special Agents Joe Pientka and Peter Strzok directly with Flynn. He said it was not standard practice. He said it was “something I probably wouldn’t have done or maybe gotten away with in a more … organized administration.”

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Will Comey Be Indicted? by Paul Craig Roberts

Let’s hope President Trump doesn’t forgive and forget the conspirators who tried to end his presidency. From Paul Craig Roberts at paulcraigroberts.org:

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2019/07/22/comey_under_scrutiny_for_own_inquiry_and_misleading_trump_119584.html 

When President John F. Kennedy threatened the budget and power of the military/security complex by seeking to end the Cold War with the Soviet Union, the military/security complex physically assassinated him.

When Donald Trump threatened the power and profit of the military/security complex by stating his intention to normalize US relations with Russia, the military/security complex attempted to assassinate him politically with the Russiagate hoax pushed by CIA director John Brennan, FBI director Comey, special prosecutor Mueller, CNN, the New York Times, the Washington Post, NPR, the Obama Justice (sic) Department, House Democrats, and the Democratic National Committee.  This was the most massive conspiracy in American history, the intent of which was a coup against the elected president of the United States in order to terminate his presidency.

Almost all of the participants in this conspiracy against democracy knew that they were participating in a conspiracy against democracy and the American people, but they did not care. For them, their hatred of Trump was far more important than mere democracy. In America hate is a far more powerful motivating force among the “liberal, progressive, left” than the preservation of a rule of law, democracy and accountable government.

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Justice Dept. Watchdog Has Evidence Comey Probed Trump, on the Sly, by Paul Sperry

James Comey played many ends against the middle, telling people, including Trump, that he was or wasn’t investigating the president. From Paul Sperry at realclearinvestigations.com:

It is one of the most enduring and consequential mysteries of the Trump-Russia investigation: Why did former FBI Director James Comey refuse to say publicly what he was telling President Trump in private — that Trump was not the target of an ongoing probe?

That refusal ignited a chain of events that has consumed Washington for more than two years – including Comey’s firing by Trump, the appointment of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, and ongoing claims that Trump obstructed justice.

The report of Inspector General Michael Horowitz is expected in September. Top photo: Then FBI Director James Comey shakes hands with the new President on Jan. 22, 2017.
Now an answer is emerging. Sources tell RealClearInvestigations that Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz will soon file a report with evidence indicating that Comey was misleading the president. Even as he repeatedly assured Trump that he was not a target, the former director was secretly trying to build a conspiracy case against the president, while at times acting as an investigative agent.

Two U.S. officials briefed on the inspector general’s investigation of possible FBI misconduct said Comey was essentially “running a covert operation against” the president, starting with a private “defensive briefing” he gave Trump just weeks before his inauguration. They said Horowitz has examined high-level FBI text messages and other communications indicating Comey was actually conducting a “counterintelligence assessment” of Trump during that January 2017 meeting in New York.

In addition to adding notes of his meetings and phone calls with Trump to the official FBI case file, Comey had an agent inside the White House who reported back to FBI headquarters about Trump and his aides, according to other officials familiar with the matter.

Although Comey took many actions on his own, he was not working in isolation. One focus of Horowitz’s inquiry is the private Jan. 6, 2017, briefing Comey gave the president-elect in New York about material in the Democratic-commissioned dossier compiled by ex-British intelligence officer Christopher Steele. Reports of that meeting were used days later by BuzzFeed, CNN and other outlets as a news hook for reporting on the dossier’s lascivious and unsubstantiated claims.

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FBI Never Saw CrowdStrike Unredacted or Final Report on Alleged Russian Hacking Because None was Produced, by Ray McGovern

The FBI never examined the DNC’s servers and instead relied on a report from the DNC’s handpicked “investigator,” CrowdStrike for the conclusion that the servers were hacked by the Russians and passed on to WikiLeaks. However, CrowdStrike never even produced a final report. This is a very good summary of all the issues surround the DNC’s servers. From Ray McGovern at consortiumnews.com:

The FBI relied on CrowdStrike’s “conclusion” to blame Russia for hacking DNC servers, though the private firm never produced a final report and the FBI never asked them to, as Ray McGovern explains.

CrowdStrike, the controversial cybersecurity firm that the Democratic National Committee chose over the FBI in 2016 to examine its compromised computer servers, never produced an un-redacted or final forensic report for the government because the FBI never required it to, the Justice Department has admitted.

The revelation came in a court filing by the government in the pre-trial phase of Roger Stone, a long-time Republican operative who had an unofficial role in the campaign of candidate Donald Trump. Stone has been charged with misleading Congress, obstructing justice and intimidating a witness.

The filing was in response to a motion by Stone’s lawyers asking for “unredacted reports” from CrowdStrike in an effort to get the government to prove that Russia hacked the DNC server. “The government … does not possess the information the defandant seeks,” the filing says.

In his motion, Stone’s lawyers said he had only been given three redacted drafts. In a startling footnote in the government’s response, the DOJ admits the drafts are all that exist. “Although the reports produced to the defendant are marked ‘draft,’ counsel for the DNC and DCCC informed the government that they are the last version of the report produced,” the footnote says.

In other words CrowdStrike, upon which the FBI relied to conclude that Russia hacked the DNC, never completed a final report and only turned over three redacted drafts to the government.

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‘Spying’: Comey Doth Protest Too Much, by Thomas Knapp

James Comey only lies when his mouth moves. From Thomas Knapp at antiwar.com:

“We didn’t ‘spy’ on anyone’s campaign,” writes former FBI director James Comey in a recent Washington Post op-ed.

“We asked a federal judge for permission to surveil” former Donald Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, but that’s not “spying.”

Before that (unmentioned in the op-ed), we infiltrated an informant into the campaign to gather information on its operations, but that’s not “spying.”

What a strange allergic reaction from Comey, and others associated with US intelligence and counterintelligence operations, to US Attorney General William Barr’s simple statement before the US Senate: “Spying on a campaign is a big deal … I think spying did occur. The question is whether it was adequately predicated.”

Comey insists that the spying was indeed “adequately predicated,” and that for some reason this makes it not spying.

It was spying.

You know, the same activity for which 98-year-old Patricia Warner, who infiltrated Nazi circles in Spain during World War Two, just received the Congressional Gold Medal.

The same activity for which dozens of CIA assets have received the Intelligence Star medal, and for which 113 of them have their names inscribed on that agency’s “Memorial Wall.”

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Comey Launched Trump Russia Investigation Day After General Exposed ‘The Hammer’, by Mary Fanning and Alan Jones

The Hammer is a secret surveillance system created for the CIA, NSA, and FBI and used to wiretap Trump. From Mary Fanning and Alan Jones at theamericanreport.com:

FBI Deputy Assistant Director of the Counterintelligence Division Peter Strzok and his supposed paramour, FBI lawyer Lisa Page, exchanged a cryptic, indeed coded, text message on Sunday, March 19, 2017, twenty-six minutes after retired U.S. Air Force Four Star General Thomas McInerney read our exclusive “Whistleblower Tapes” exposé over America’s airwaves, revealing “The Hammer.”

The Hammer is the Stasi-like secret surveillance system created by CIA/NSA/FBI contractor-turned-whistleblower Dennis L. Montgomery for Obama’s intelligence chiefs, CIA Director John Brennan and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.

The Hammer, under the Obama administration, negated every American’s constitutional rights to privacy, turning the United States into a police state where the federal government was weaponized by the Obama administration against its political enemies.

According to the secretly-recorded audio tapes released by Federal Judge G. Murray Snow, Brennan’s and Clapper’s illicit super surveillance system “The Hammer” wiretapped Trump “a zillion times.”

Late that Sunday evening, just hours after General McInerney’s radio appearance, Strzok and Page exchanged a text message that explicitly referenced Dennis Montgomery and Montgomery’s attorney Larry E. Klayman.

Only a few hours earlier, General McInerney had referenced Montgomery and Klayman on “Operation Freedom,” exactly the same names about which Strzok and Page were now texting.

General McInerney appeared on Dr. Dave Janda’s “Operation Freedom” that broadcasts from terrestrial radio station WAAM 1600.

The next morning, the Russian Collusion investigation was born.

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No Wonder Obama Intel Chiefs Panicking – Trump To Declassify “Bucket 5” Russiagate Docs, by Tyler Durden

Sunlight is the best disinfectant. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

As Congressional Democrats insist on conducting post-Mueller probes into President Trump and those around him, much of the recent infighting and backpedaling we’ve seen from former Obama intel chiefs is starting to make sense.

Appearing with Fox News‘s Sean Hannity Tuesday night, The Hill‘s John Solomon revealed that according to his sources (and Hannity’s as well), President Trump will begin declassifying ‘Russiagate’ documents in the next 6-7 days.

Among those will be the so-called “Bucket Five” – documents which were originally presented to the Gang of Eight in 2016, which included everything the FBI and DOJ used against Trump campaign aide Carter Page – including the FISA surveillance application and its underlying exculpatory intelligence documents which the FISA court may have never seen.

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