Tag Archives: James Comey

Comey Admits Under Oath That Obstructions To Investigations “Never Happened”, by Tyler Durden

This testimony from Comey undercuts the supposed game-changing memo he wrote in which he recounted that Trump had expressed the hope that the investigation of Michael Flynn could be brought to a close.

Update: Citi’s Aerin Williams notes that the USD is higher on the Comey video below:

DXY is rallying as traders pass around a CSPAN video of Comey testimony from May 3. This is not a new testimony. Under oath, he suggests that there have been no obstructions by saying that a President did not seem to be telling Comey to stop investigations for political reason.

One could imagine that the deputy Attorney General saw this testimony before appointing a special prosecutor, but it adds to the puzzle investors are trying to put together.

Bloomberg Dollar Index:

Note – 10Y Yields are not moving on this.

As we detailed earlier, next week’s James Comey hearing is certainly setting up as a ‘grab yr popcorn’ moment with Democrats lining up for their 5 minutes of fame to ask the question that ‘proves’ Trump deserves impeachment. However, it appears there is no need for the hearing as Mr. Comey already confirmed – under oath – that “he has not been pressured to close an investigation for political purposes.”

Testifying under oath in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee on May 3rd, Comey states that he has not been pressured to close an investigation for political purposes, “not in my experience.”

COMEY: Not in my experience. Because it would be a big deal to tell the FBI to stop doing something like that — without an appropriate purpose.

I mean where oftentimes they give us opinions that we don’t see a case there and so you ought to stop investing resources in it. But I’m talking about a situation where we were told to stop something for a political reason, that would be a very big deal.

It’s not happened in my experience.

Caught on tape?

The Slow-Motion Assassination of President Trump, by Scott Adams

Usually ebullient Scott Adams sounds downright angry and a little panicked. From Adams at theburningplatform.com:

I saw this quote on CNN.com today: “The episode is the latest woe for Trump, whose administration is engulfed in a series of scandals linked to Russia.”

A “series of scandals linked to Russia”? Would it be equally accurate to characterize it as a series of stories manufactured by the media, none of which have been confirmed to be a big deal?

Today’s headline news is that an alleged Comey memo indicates President Trump tried to obstruct justice in the Flynn investigation by saying to Comey in a private meeting, “I hope you can let this go.”

Key word = hope

How did the New York Times characterize Trump’s expression of hope?

image

Do you see Trump asking Comey to end the Flynn investigation in the quote “I hope you can let this go”?

All I see in that sentence is “duh.” Obviously Trump HOPED his friend and advisor Flynn would be okay. Did it need to be said? Was there some confusion on this point with Comey? Did Comey enter the meeting thinking maybe President Trump wanted to see his friend and advisor Flynn get eaten by the system?

I’m no lawyer, but I can’t see any judge or jury in the United States prosecuting someone for expressing a hope that the future turns out well for his friend.

Watch the headlines and pundits today transmogrify “hope” into “asked to end the Flynn investigation.”

That isn’t news.

That is an assassination.

I also think we are seeing with the recent leaks the first phase of Mutually Assured Destruction of our government. The leaks will destroy Trump if they continue. But if that happens, no Democrat and no anti-Trump Republican will ever be able to govern in the future. Payback is guaranteed. The next President to sit in the White House will be leaked to the point of ineffectiveness. And that’s how the Republic dies.

To continue reading: The Slow-Motion Assassination of President Trump

Bravo! The Donald Finally Fired a Swamp Creature, by David Stockman

David Stockman applauds Trump’s firing of Comey. From Stockman at antiwar.com:

We were beginning to think the Donald’s days as the Great Disrupter were over before he even got started. So bringing the hammer down on one of the most self-righteous prigs and self-aggrandizing swamp creatures to ever inhabit the Imperial City came just in the nick of time.

After all, just in the last week Trump got rolled by the Capitol Hill porkers on the continuing resolution (CR) and conned by the GOP leadership on Obamacare repeal, which is already DBA (dead before arrival) in the Senate. At the same time, his one-page Goldman Sachs tax plan has already been laughed off the beltway stage.

He’s even being misdirected by Javanka, who are carrying water for the establishment on the Paris climate accord abomination. Rather than cancel the latter as promised repeatedly during the campaign, Jared and Ivanka are shipping Trump off to the G-7 meeting to be, presumably, enlightened on the matter by the likes of Justin Trudeau, Emmanuel Macron, and Jean-Claude Junker.

Even more ignominiously, he was given the Ron Zeigler treatment by the Deep State mole in the White House, H.R. McMaster, who passes for his national security advisor. It was bad enough that McMaster declared the Donald’s completely valid statement that the South Koreans should pay for their own defense to be “inoperative”.

Apparently, he is also bamboozling Trump with the discredited Hillary-Petraeus “surge” agenda in Afghanistan. Yet re-escalating a pointless war in the strategically barren expanses of the Hindu Kush would amount to reneging on his entire campaign platform that rejected the nation-building and empire expansion policies of the Washington establishment.

Indeed, the $25 billion per year “McMaster Plan” to revive the Afghan war by sending more US troops to the “graveyard of empires” amounts to nothing less than insanity. The fact is, after $1.5 trillion of wasted treasure and 23,000 American GI’s killed or wounded – to say nothing of hundreds of thousands of Afghan civilian casualties – more than half of the country and one-third of the population is still under Taliban control.

To continue reading: Bravo! The Donald Finally Fired a Swamp Creature

Comey Memo Says Trump Asked Him to End Flynn Investigation, by Michael S. Schmidt

This will, if verified, be very big news, and may be disastrous for Trump. From Michael S. Schmidt at nytimes.com:

WASHINGTON — President Trump asked the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, to shut down the federal investigation into Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, in an Oval Office meeting in February, according to a memo Mr. Comey wrote shortly after the meeting.

“I hope you can let this go,” the president told Mr. Comey, according to the memo.

The documentation of Mr. Trump’s request is the clearest evidence that the president has tried to directly influence the Justice Department and F.B.I. investigation into links between Mr. Trump’s associates and Russia. Late Tuesday, Representative Jason Chaffetz, the Republican chairman of the House Oversight Committee, demanded that the F.B.I. turn over all “memoranda, notes, summaries and recordings” of discussions between Mr. Trump and Mr. Comey.

Such documents, Mr. Chaffetz wrote, would “raise questions as to whether the president attempted to influence or impede” the F.B.I.

Mr. Comey wrote the memo detailing his conversation with the president immediately after the meeting, which took place the day after Mr. Flynn resigned, according to two people who read the memo. It was part of a paper trail Mr. Comey created documenting what he perceived as the president’s improper efforts to influence a continuing investigation. An F.B.I. agent’s contemporaneous notes are widely held up in court as credible evidence of conversations.

Mr. Comey shared the existence of the memo with senior F.B.I. officials and close associates. The New York Times has not viewed a copy of the memo, which is unclassified, but one of Mr. Comey’s associates read parts of it to a Times reporter.

“I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go,” Mr. Trump told Mr. Comey, according to the memo. “He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.”

Document: Representative Jason Chaffetz’s Letter to the F.B.I.

Mr. Trump told Mr. Comey that Mr. Flynn had done nothing wrong, according to the memo.

Mr. Comey did not say anything to Mr. Trump about curtailing the investigation, replying only: “I agree he is a good guy.”

In a statement, the White House denied the version of events in the memo.

“While the president has repeatedly expressed his view that General Flynn is a decent man who served and protected our country, the president has never asked Mr. Comey or anyone else to end any investigation, including any investigation involving General Flynn,” the statement said. “The president has the utmost respect for our law enforcement agencies, and all investigations. This is not a truthful or accurate portrayal of the conversation between the president and Mr. Comey.”

To continue reading: Comey Memo Says Trump Asked Him to End Flynn Investigation

He Said That? 5/10/17

From Julian Assange’s Twitter Feed:

WikiLeaks would be happy to consider hiring James Comey to help lead its DC office should he like to properly investigate the US government.

FBI source says the FBI will now start leaking leaking like Niagara. But please FBI friends full docs or you know the press will spin it!

Comey’s firing will be an extraordinary boon for transparency as his loyalists leak and the admin counter-leaks. Will he run for 2020?

 

Mr. Comey knows where many bodies are buried. Working for WikiLeaks is fulfilling. James–don’t become another lobbyist for Glock or Donkin.

 


He Said That? 5/9/17

From Donald Trump:

trump20letter20comey202

 

The Triumph of James Comey, by Justin Raimondo

James Comey spouts his own unique brand of disinformation (lies) and nonsense. From Justin Raimondo at antiwar.com:

He’s the most powerful man in America

Since FBI Director James Comey has become a kind of arbiter of the political discourse – to say his pronouncements have been decisive would not, I think, be an overstatement – his appearance before the Senate Intelligence Committee was much anticipated. As Hillary Clinton and her supporters continue to re-litigate the presidential election, blaming him for her defeat, how he would defend his decision to reveal that the FBI was investigating her private email server, and the possible unauthorized release of classified information, was the focus of much interest. And yet the really interesting aspects of his testimony had to do with two questions that, in a free society, would not normally be the domain of law enforcement: 1) What should be the nature of our relations with a foreign country, i.e. Russia? And 2) what is a legitimate journalistic enterprise?

The first question belongs in the realm of the State Department, the White House, and Congress: that is, unless having any sort of non-hostile relations with Russia have now become illegal. Given the current political atmosphere, one might well conclude that this is now the case, and that was certainly the tone of the questioning – and Comey’s answers – at the hearing. Leave it to Lindsey Graham to gin up a veritable orgy of Russia-bashing: after a series of questions about the investigation into alleged Russian “interference” in the election, he asked:

“GRAHAM: So what kind of threat do you believe Russia presents to our democratic process, given what you know about Russia’s behavior of late?

“COMEY: Well, certainly in my view, the greatest threat of any nation on earth, given their intention and their capability.

“GRAHAM: Do you agree that they did not change the actual vote tally, but one day they might?

On this last, Comey seemed to demur, but that such a question could even be asked unaccompanied by a chorus of laughter highlights the utter absurdity of the discourse in Washington. The very idea that any nation, anywhere on earth, represents a dire threat to our democratic process is itself absurd. After all, are Russian armies poised at the Canadian border, ready to take New York? To listen to our solons, assembled in solemn conclave, one would think it was the KGB, and not al-Qaeda, that blew up the World Trade Center and attacked the Pentagon on 9/11.

To continue reading: The Triumph of James Comey

Obama, Comey Relied On Discredited Dossier To Obtain FISA Warrant On Trump Campaign, by Tyler Durden

Still more evidence that the intelligence community’s so-called case for Russian-Trump collusion is tissue-thin. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

James Comey, the man who refused to bring charges against Hillary Clinton despite a mountain of concrete evidence that she, and several members of her staff, knowingly violated several federal laws, apparently used the largely discredited “Trump Dossier” to help secure a FISA warrant to secretly monitor Trump’s former campaign aide, Carter Page, according to CNN.

Among other things, the dossier alleged that Page met senior Russian officials as an emissary of the Trump campaign, and discussed quid-pro-quo deals relating to sanctions, business opportunities and Russia’s interference in the election. Page has denied meeting the officials named in the dossier and says he never cut any political deals with the Kremlin. Per CNN:

The FBI last year used a dossier of allegations of Russian ties to Donald Trump’s campaign as part of the justification to win approval to secretly monitor a Trump associate, according to US officials briefed on the investigation.

The dossier has also been cited by FBI Director James Comey in some of his briefings to members of Congress in recent weeks, as one of the sources of information the bureau has used to bolster its investigation, according to US officials briefed on the probe.

This includes approval from the secret court that oversees the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to monitor the communications of Carter Page, two of the officials said. Last year, Page was identified by the Trump campaign as an adviser on national security.

According to the Washington Post, the warrant to monitor Page was obtained in the summer of 2016 which indicates that the FBI was in possession of the now-infamous dossier well before President Obama supposedly received his first briefing on the material in December 2016.

To continue reading: Obama, Comey Relied On Discredited Dossier To Obtain FISA Warrant On Trump Campaign

 

The Federal Bureau of Political Investigation, by Andrew P. Napolitano

The FBI’s so-called investigation of Hillary Clinton was riddled with procedural errors, some of which may have been illegal. From Andrew Napolitano at antiwar.com:

When Hillary Clinton delivered a campaign post-mortem to her major supporters in a telephone conference call late last week, she blamed her loss in the presidential election on FBI Director James Comey. She should have blamed the loss on herself. Her refusal to safeguard state secrets while she was secretary of state and her failure to grasp the nationwide resentment toward government by the forgotten folks in the middle class were far likelier the cause of her defeat than was Comey.

Yet it is obvious that law enforcement-based decisions in the past four months were made with an eye on Election Day, and the officials who made them evaded the rule of law.

Here is the back story.

The statutory obligation of the FBI is to gather evidence to aid in the prosecution or prevention of federal crimes or breaches of national security. The process of complying with this obligation necessarily involves making some legal judgments about the relevance, probity and even lawfulness of the gathered evidence. These judgments are sometimes made on the streets in an emergency and sometimes made after consultation and consensus. But the whole purpose of this evidence-gathering and decision-making is to present a package to the Department of Justice, for which the FBI works, for its determination about whether or not to seek a prosecution.

In cases in which subpoenas are needed, the FBI must work in tandem with the DOJ because subpoenas in criminal cases can be issued only by grand juries and only DOJ lawyers can ask grand juries to issue them. Usually, the FBI and the DOJ work together to present what they have to a grand jury in order to build a case for indictment or to induce a grand jury to issue subpoenas and help them gather more evidence.

Federal judges become involved when search warrants or arrest warrants are needed. These are often emergent situations, as the evidence to be seized or the person to be arrested might be gone if not pursued in short order. They require the presentation of evidence to a judge quickly and in secret. It is the judge’s role to decide whether the DOJ/FBI team has met the constitutional threshold of probable cause. Probable cause is met when the prosecutorial team shows the judge that the evidence the team seeks from the execution of the warrant more likely than not will implicate someone in criminal behavior.

Having issued many search and arrest warrants myself, I know that judges need to be curious and skeptical. After all, only one side is appearing before the judge, and the whole appearance is often quick, unorthodox and in secret. A healthy curiosity and skepticism will cause a prudent jurist to ask whether the grand jury really needs what the search warrant seeks. If the reply is that there is no grand jury, most judges will terminate the application and conclude that it is a fishing expedition – or going “sideways,” as law enforcement says – not a serious criminal investigation worthy of judicial involvement.

All of this is commanded by law to be kept secret so as to preserve evidence, avoid tipping off a potential defendant capable of flight and preserve the reputation of a person not indicted.

That is at least the way these things are supposed to work. Yet none of this happened in the recently reopened and re-terminated investigation of the misuse of emails containing state secrets by Clinton.

To continue reading: The Federal Bureau of Political Investigation

 

Hillary’s Watergate? by Patrick J. Buchanan

If Hillary wins, she may find herself out of office long before her first terms officially ends. From Patrick J. Buchanan at buchanan.org:

After posting Friday’s column, “A Presidency from Hell,” about the investigations a President Hillary Clinton would face, by afternoon it was clear I had understated the gravity of the situation.

Networks exploded with news that FBI Director James Comey had informed Congress he was reopening the investigation into Clinton’s email scandal, which he had said in July had been concluded.

“Bombshell” declared Carl Bernstein. The stock market tumbled. “October surprise!” came the cry.

The only explanation, it seemed, was that the FBI had uncovered new information that could lead to a possible indictment of the former secretary of state, who by then could be the president of the United States.

By Sunday, we knew the source of the eruption.

Huma Abedin, Clinton’s top aide, sent thousands of emails to the private laptop she shared with husband Anthony Weiner, a.k.a. Carlos Danger, who is under FBI investigation for allegedly sexting with a 15-year-old girl.

The Weiner-Abedin laptop contains 650,000 emails.

The FBI has not yet reviewed Abedin’s emails, and they could turn out to be duplicates of those the FBI has already seen, benign, or not relevant to the investigation of Clinton.

But it does appear that Abedin misled the FBI when she told them all communications devices containing State Department work product were turned over to State when she departed in 2013.

Clinton, understandably, was stunned and outraged by Comey’s letter. For it casts a cloud of suspicion over her candidacy by raising the possibility that the FBI director could reverse his decision of July, and recommend her prosecution.

By Monday, Oct. 31, new problems had arisen, some potentially crippling or possibly lethal to a Clinton presidency.

Reporters have unearthed a near-mutiny inside the FBI over the decision to shut down the investigation of the Clinton email scandal and Comey’s recommendation of no prosecution.

Andrew McCabe, No. 2 at the FBI, has come under anonymous fire from inside the bureau as one of those most reluctant to pursue aggressively any investigations of the Clintons.

McCabe’s wife, in a 2015 state senate race in Virginia, received $475,000 in PAC contributions from Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a longtime friend and major fundraiser for Bill and Hillary Clinton.

After the Senate race that McCabe’s wife lost, he was promoted from No. 3 at the FBI to No. 2, where he has far more influence over decisions to investigate and recommend prosecution.

Justice Department higher-ups under Attorney General Loretta Lynch apparently disagreed with Comey notifying Congress, and the nation, to new developments in the email scandal. Yet Comey had given his word to Congress that he would do so.

In the Southern District of New York, which has jurisdiction over the Weiner sexting investigation, FBI agents have reportedly been blocked from opening an investigation into charges of corruption in the Clinton Foundation.

This follows revelations that corporate chiefs and foreign rulers and regimes, hit up for contributions to the Clinton Foundation, were then urged by an ex-Clinton aide to provide six-figure speaking fees for Bill Clinton.

This follows reports the Clinton Foundation took contributions for victims of natural disasters, and awarded multimillion-dollar contracts to contributors to do the work.

Still unanswered is what Bill Clinton and Attorney General Lynch discussed during that 30-minute meeting on the Phoenix tarmac, prior to the FBI and Justice Department decision not to indict Hillary Clinton.

The stench of corruption is reaching Bhopal dimensions.

To continue reading: Hillary’s Watergate?