I was once a fan of James Comey. I thought he was a man of honor and principle. He is not. He has proven himself to be nothing more than another political hack. I confess that I do not fully understand his motive or objective. I do not know what game he is playing. I can only judge his actions.
Let's review the facts:
Comey went public last July with a litany of allegations regarding Hillary Clinton's decision to use a personal server to send classified emails to herself and her staff. Here are the conclusions that Comey offered up regarding Hillary:
1. "Extremely careless"
2. "Should have known"
3. "Especially concerning"
4. "Still obligated to protect it"
5. "Generally lacking"
6. "Hostile actors"
7. "Sophisticated adversaries"
I vividly recall my thinking as I listened to Comey reel off this litany of misdeeds by Clinton. I fully expected him to announce that these charges would be presented to a Grand Jury and that an indictment would be forthcoming. Wrong. He concluded his presentation by saying that no charges would be filed and no laws were broken. I could not believe it. If he did not believe that charges were warranted then Comey had an obligation to say nothing more then to acknowledge that the investigation was completed, the facts were presented to the prosecutor and the decision had been made to not pursue a prosecution.
I am no Hillary fan. But she has a legitimate beef that she was smeared by Comey. Truth of the matter is that she deserved to be indicted. If not her, at least one of her minions.
Now we have Comey's public testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday of this week. Comey made a stunning admission regarding Huma Abedin:
FBI Director James Comey told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday that Huma Abedin, a top aide to Hillary Clinton, often forwarded classified information to her husband, Anthony Weiner, to print out for her while she was serving as one of Clinton's closest advisers at the State Department.
Those emails were found on Weiner's laptop last year while he was being investigated by the FBI for allegedly sending explicit messages to an underaged girl. The discovery of those emails is part of the reason why the bureau felt compelled to revisit the investigation — shortly before the presidential election — into whether Clinton and her aides mishandled classified information while she was Secretary of State, Comey said.
"On October 27, the team that had finished its investigation into Clinton's email server asked to meet with me," Comey explained earlier in the hearing. "What they could see from the metadata that they found on Anthony Weiner's laptop is that there were thousands of new emails… including what might be the missing emails from her Verizon Blackberry. So I authorized them to seek a search warrant."
Later, Comey explained that Abedin "had a regular practice of forwarding emails to [Weiner] for him to print out for her, which she would then deliver to the Secretary of State."
At a minimum, Huma should have been indicted and prosecuted. But that did not happen because Comey, or someone who reported to him, agreed to immunize Abedin. Any other American who did such a thing would have faced a trial and most likely a long prison sentence. So much for Justice being blind. The scales of Justice were tipped in favor of the well-connected Huma Abedin, Hillary's gopher extraordinaire.
Once again, Comey's mishandling of this affair exposed his incompetence. When the FBI learned of the emails he should have dealt with the issue by briefing key Congressional leaders in private. By going public he made himself into a partisan. While I understand the anger and the frustration of the Hillary cheerleaders over Comey's inappropriate actions, that does not excuse the fact that she allowed one of her key staffers to mishandle Top Secret and Secret information. Huma Abedin knowingly put those emails on the computer of a sexual pervert. That cannot be excused nor ignored. Yet, James Comey chose to ignore it.
That was not Comey's only sin. He also decided to turn a blind eye to an alleged threat from Russia. Let me make my position clear–Russia did not interfere in our election and Russia certainly did not throw the election to Trump. Russia is nothing more than a Red Herring; a diversion from the facts. Hillary was terrible candidate and ran a terrible campaign. Russia is nothing more than a convenient excuse. But that is not what Comey apparently believed and still believes. Fielding softball questions from the the Little Old Lady from South Carolina, Comey testified as follows:
Sen. Lindsey Graham’s interrogation of FBI Director James Comey in a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Wednesday revealed that Russia has continuing influence on the United States government beyond the recent presidential election.
“Is it fair to say that the Russian government is still involved in American politics?” Graham asked.
“Yes,” Comey replied.
“So what kind of threat do you believe Russia presents to our democratic process? Given which you know about Russia's behavior of late?” Graham asked.
“Well, certainly, in my view, the greatest threat of any nation on earth, given their intention and their capability,” Comey replied.
He exhibited signs of someone who’s been squeezed, pressed, threatened, cajoled, etc by the borgists pre and post e-mail revelation.
He surrendered and is saying whatever he’s supposed to say. It seems pretty clear that he didn’t want to ‘interfere’ with the election, but Clinton committing crimes that would get you or me locked up had to be spoken of. He would have been faced with internal insurrection if he’d remained silent. He shoved a lukewarm platter of maybes and possibles out, now he’s paying the consequence, because he took the cowards way out. If he’d actually tried to indict her for a crime, or had sat idly by, he’d either be held in high esteem or totally forgotten. Instead, he’s a man without a country.
A timely indictment could have resulted in a Sanders presidency (as Sanders was ahead of Trump in head to head polling from start to finish,) and Comey could have singlehandedly fixed the FBI’s reputation as domestic dissent crushing organization that also convinces the feebleminded into planning terrorist attacks that it then claims credit for stopping. People might have seen it as an organization interested in enforcing the law for both our haughty masters and the riff raff equally. Ifs and buts
What’s strange is that Hillary had to follow the old Clinton playbook and never admit to doing anything wrong, despite the facts being clear. She simply can’t do wrong as she’s too important and everyone knows that special people get special treatment. Find the powerful by deducing who has to obey the law and who has to pay taxes, and to whom flouting those normally grave obligations are but a problem of ‘optics’ and ‘messaging.’
Colonel,
I share your revulsion at how things played out here.
Ironically, and probably without his conscious intent, I daresay Comey was right about Russian influence, NOT as direct collusion or cyberespionage (beyond ordinary spy mischief), but rather that it is the irrational fear that Roosevelt warned us about, itself.
It’s of the same cloth of legalized lawlessness that is attached to the entire stretch of the Obama administration years, from DoJ meeting for polite tea with Libor scandal bankers and an epidemic of African American youth gunned down in public with no accountability whatsoever but other than a nod of silent consent from the white house & co.
Basically Obama-Clinton nexus handed the whole of American politcs to the Koch Brothers-style libertarianism, because now that all credibility of the government that took decades to build has been flushed down the toilet, no one in the public wants any funding whatsoever to go toward such corruption and incompetence, which is the only thing people think of when they hear the words “US Gov” (past generations typically gave us one or the other, but not both simultaneously). It is such an insult to the federal employees and fbi rank and file. So long as Wall St holds their pension money (whats left of it in virtual since theyve gambled away the actual funds, as far as anyone can tell), it will continue like this.
Is it true that Huma has the family connections to Muslim Brotherhood?. MSM is silent about that. In any case, is not hard to imagine that whatever classified material got on Weiner’s computer is also in the capital of every country on earth. If Russia has dnc intel it looks like it is because HRC gave it to them.
Without getting too deep in the weeds, an omnipresent danger in following this drama/farce, I would suggest Comey ‘went off the rails’ (not as in; objectively did the wrong thing/s, but in the sense that he jettison FBI/DOJ guidelines and went off on his own) in July when he made the announcement about Hillary not being indicted.
In testimony this week before Congress here is how Comey reference this pivotal moment in July:
“I struggled as we got closer to the end of it [the FBI investigation of Hillary] with the — a number things had gone on, some of which I can’t talk about yet, that made me worry that the department leadership could not credibly complete the investigation and declined prosecution without grievous damage to the American people’s confidence in the — in the justice system.”
APPARENTLY, he was referencing the Lynch/Bill CLinton meeting on the tarmac in Ariz. In essence, this caused Comey to ‘take the reins’ so to speak, and go off on his own. But if this is correct, he never explained this loudly and clearly to the American people. i.e. the AG did something so bad that………
And this was Obama’s handpicked AG. So, implicitly, if not explicitly, Lynch’s, AND Clinton’s, actions should have to lead back to Obama. And that Comey would not do. He wanted the justification, to go off on his own, he just did not want to highlight it. It was one thing to have Fox News and Limbaugh et al, highlight things, just as summer was heating up in a distracted America. Its another to have the Director of the FBI do it in a press conference. Directly.
This Lynch/Clinton meeting is the key event here. Because, I, for one, do not believe that Comey want off the rails on July 5th because of the mere *appearance* of a conflict. He had to believe, accurately or not, reasonably or not, that something more, much more, went on in that plane and that is may have gone on beyond DOJ, right up to the White House. And so out stepped Comey in his ‘white knight’ role, albeit cautiously, and opaquely, on July 5th, near the holiday. Without connecting the dots for the American people, that he had obviously, again, rightly or wrongly, connected in his own mind.
IOW….he wanted, and got to, have his cake and eat it too.
james
No, that would be plain old bribery. pl
James
Hmmm. Feathering his own nest for a run for office?
Perhaps Comey was captured by the neocons, just like Trump. His friendly repartee with Lindsey Graham would certainly suggest as much. Captured assets, canoodling together.
OT: I’d be interested Col. Lang’s take on this:
This study was co-authored by America’s top three scientists specializing in analysis of weaponry and especially of the geostrategic balance between nations: Hans Kristensen, Matthew McKinzie, and Theodore Postol.
America’s Top Scientists Confirm: U.S. Goal Now Is to Conquer Russia
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists published a study, on 1 March 2017, which opened:
“The US nuclear forces modernization program has been portrayed to the public as an effort to ensure the reliability and safety of warheads in the US nuclear arsenal, rather than to enhance their military capabilities. In reality, however, that program has implemented revolutionary new technologies that will vastly increase the targeting capability of the US ballistic missile arsenal. This increase in capability is astonishing — boosting the overall killing power of existing US ballistic missile forces by a factor of roughly three — and it creates exactly what one would expect to see, if a nuclear-armed state were planning to have the capacity to fight and win a nuclear war by disarming enemies with a surprise first strike.”
http://www.unz.com/article/americas-top-scientists-confirm-u-s-goal-now-is-to-conquer-russia/#comment-1860779
Tom in San Fran
No idea, not my end of the business. pl
Tom in San Fran,
Some observations, perhaps pointing in contradictory directions.
1. Eric Zuesse is not a reliable source. In a recent discussion, ‘Marko’ appeared to be thinking that people were seriously attempting to contend that the sarin used at Ghouta came on the ‘rat line’ from Libya described by Seymour Hersh in his April 2014 article in the ‘London Review of Books.’
This reflected the fact that ‘Marko’ was clearly incompetent at handling evidence, but also the flagrant misrepresentation of Hersh’s argument by Zuesse. It appeared that ‘Marko’ had made the classic error, of reading a commentary on an article without checking it with the article.
To see what a shifty character Zuesse is, have a look at his attempt to wriggle out after it was pointed out that he had simply misrepresented what Hersh had claimed, at
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2016/05/seymour-hersh-says-doesnt-know-whether-hillary-clinton-knew-sarin.html
2. This should not be allowed to obscure the fact that the ‘Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ piece which Zuesse was discussing really is both extremely important and very frightening indeed.
(See http://thebulletin.org/how-us-nuclear-force-modernization-undermining-strategic-stability-burst-height-compensating-super10578 .)
The title: ‘How US nuclear force modernization is undermining strategic stability: The burst-height compensating super-fuze’ is much to the point.
And all the authors – among whom is Professor Theodore Postol of MIT, whose arguments that accusations that the Syrian government has used sarin both at Ghouta and Khan Sheikhun we have been discussing here on SST – really do know their stuff.
3. The full dangerousness of the situation only becomes apparent, however, when one puts the technical arguments about ‘strategic stability’ together with those about the dishonesty, recklessness, and sheer stupidity of Western policy in Syria, Ukraine and elsewhere.
We are running non-neglible risks of nuclear war, not because, as to a very substantial extent was in the case of the Cold War, we are trying to make sense of new intractable dilemmas for which there were only limited precedents, but because we are led by arrogant idiots intoxicated by ‘hubris’ arising from a shallow triumphalism about the outcome of the Cold War.
(Perhaps McMaster needs some remedial classes in Clausewitz!)
“She simply can’t do wrong as she’s too important and everyone knows that special people get special treatment.”
The age old pathological problem of Exceptionals, which is followed by anger at the inferior beings for not accepting the god like genius leading them to human perfection.
Your comment made me wonder if Huma might be a CIA asset using her contacts to provide info on the Saudis.
China, US, and Russia are all working on disrupting the strategic stability.
All 3 are working on hyper-sonic weapons; e.g.
http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/hypersonic-weapons-idea-so-crazy-it-just-might-work-20520
China is also developing a second strike capability.
Richard
Could be. I met her once and would be more likely to characterize her as a spoiled brat who Hillary liked too much. pl
My opinion of Comey’s behavior in this is simply that he has reached his level of incompetence, as in the Peter Principle. He just seems to me to be a guy in over his head. He was probably a good FBI soldier, but he is just not made of the stuff necessary for command.
It’s too sad for me because I had been waiting to see HRC in horizontal black and white striped prison garb.
In evaluation Comey, it must be remembered how Bill Clinton compromised Attorney General Lynch by meeting privately with her while the Justice Department was considering indicting Hillary.
This caused Lynch to step back from her constitutional power as head of Justice Department, and forced Comey to increase his role. FBI is under the Justice Department, it has no independent authority of its own.
An old Hawaiian friend on Molokai once told me “look out for the boomerang.”
Captured?
More like groomed, no? (Kuchner-Soros business partner style?) Wasn’t Comey was a Wall Street bank employee before taking up his FBI post?
Your right, he has Petered Out.
The man should enter retirement for the good of the country as he has allowed the FBI to become a political animal. Too many leaks and even he cannot keep his mouth shut. Contrast Comey with Mueller and it becomes obvious.
James,
Minor quibble: he was at Bridgewater, which is based in Connecticut.
” Some observations, perhaps pointing in contradictory directions.
1. Eric Zuesse is not a reliable source. In a recent discussion, ‘Marko’ appeared to be thinking that people were seriously attempting to contend that the sarin used at Ghouta came on the ‘rat line’ from Libya described by Seymour Hersh in his April 2014 article in the ‘London Review of Books.’
This reflected the fact that ‘Marko’ was clearly incompetent at handling evidence, but also the flagrant misrepresentation of Hersh’s argument by Zuesse. It appeared that ‘Marko’ had made the classic error, of reading a commentary on an article without checking it with the article…. ”
David ,
Does it always take you a whole week to formulate your potshots ?
First of all , I didn’t realize I’d been put in charge of “handling evidence”. Now that I know , I’d like to turn the job over to someone else , both because I’m apparently terrible at it but also because it doesn’t pay for shit,with zero benefits to boot.
Second ,if you apply a little reading comprehension to what I said about Libyan CWs as a possible source for Syrian rebels , you’ll see that I mentioned Hersh “among others” , and even though it turns out that Hersh didn’t associate CWs with the “rat line” used for other weapons , it’s not much of a stretch to suggest that it would have provided a convenient architecture for moving CWs as well. Everything Hersh says is speculative , since he never documents anything or names sources , so I’m not about to apologize for adding a bit of speculation of my own , especially since it’s not critical to my argument anyway. Other published reports of opposition seizures of Libyan CW stocks include those from a Libyan military officer, Gaddafi’s cousin , and Former British Army officer Hamish de Bretton-Gordon. As ‘evidence handling’ goes in the Syrian CW debate , that’s about par for the course , or better.
Here’s what I think demonstrates incompetence : Claiming on one hand that the Syrian sarin program was exclusively and definitively binary-only , and then engaging in a nearly four year long debate about whether hexamine was used as an acid-scavenger. Of course , if you’re not clear about the stage of the process where proton removal is supposed to occur , it would be kinda hard to know that a strictly binary-only system should preclude the hexamine debate altogether.
Gentlemen:
The OpenSecrets website, linked, has claimed that Comey takes large sums of money from well-connected corporations.
Quote:
In 2005, Comey left law enforcement for the defense industry, joining money-in-politics powerhouse Lockheed Martin. As senior vice president and general counsel he earned more than $6 million in compensation in his last full year with the company.
During that time he also sat on the board of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s National Chamber Litigation Center, created to advance business interests in the courts. The Chamber has been the reigning lobbying champ for years and is now getting involved in campaigns in a big way, spending more than $35.6 million in outside money on the 2012 elections.
After nearly five years at Lockheed Martin, Comey spent three years at Bridgewater Associates , the largest hedge fund in the world. He left Bridgewater and became senior research scholar and Hertog Fellow on National Security at Columbia Law School in February 2013, and also joined the board of London-based HSBC Holdings.
Marko,
The prime purpose of my comment was, on the one hand, to point out that Zuesse is a misleading source – we have incidentally had people recycling his misreading of Hersh on SST before – and on the other, that the paper co-authored by Postol is extremely important and very frightening.
As to why I brought you into it, someone drew my attention a few days back to the existence of a certain ‘Marko Attila Hoare’ – who earlier in his career was involved with the ‘Henry Jackson Society’, that disreputable product of the dregs of the Cambridge (UK) history faculty.
From the tenor of your comments, I thought you might be him. One has, over the years, got used to ‘trolls’ surfacing on SST. But perhaps I was being unduly suspicious.
As to Hersh. A rather basic point of intelligence and journalistic methodology is that, if you come across a report, you evaluate it in the context of the total body of available evidence. As Colonel Lang has repeatedly stressed, that means looking at sources, and what the sources claim, separately.
Last month, Colonel Lang posted a long piece of mine entitled ‘Sentence first – verdict afterwards?’ which attempted to demonstrate that a close look at publicly available evidence vindicated Hersh’s claims. As you have clearly not read it, let me recommend it to you.
(See http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2017/04/sentence-first-verdict-afterwards-a-revision-by-david-habakkuk-14-april-2017.html .)
As you will see, I discussed the role of Colonel de Bretton-Gordon at some length in the piece. And I discussed the problems that arise when one and the same person is in charge of an ‘intelligence function’ – retrieving samples – and intimately involved in a ‘StratCom’ one, making the case for ‘régime change’ in Syria.
For more material on his role – and I think, further compelling reasons why one should treat more or less anything de Bretton-Gordon claims with caution – you might look at the material accumulated on the pages entitled ‘Talk: British involvement in Syria’ on the ‘A Closer Look On Syria’ site.
(See http://acloserlookonsyria.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Talk:British_involvement_in_Syria .)
As it happens, there is rather good reason to think that de Bretton-Gordon was responsible for the retrieval of ‘environmental’ samples from the Saraqeb incident, both to the French OPCW-certified laboratory at Le Bouchet, and to Porton Down.
In fact, it looks like the same old ‘StratCom’ network may well be behind the French revival of the ‘hexamine hypothesis’. So one does not need to do much work with ‘Google’ to see de Bretton-Gordon is linked to the Kaszeta/Higgins ‘double act’. So also, among other others, are Tom Coghlan of the ‘Times’, and Michael D. Weiss, also a sometime luminary of the ‘Henry Jackson Society’, and now (among other positions) editor-in-chief for the Khodorkovsky-funded ‘Interpreter’ online magazine.
Addendum from a less prominent source:
…James Comey’s … personal and professional relationships … reinforce bipartisan concerns that he may have politicized the criminal probe.
These concerns focus on millions of dollars that Comey accepted from a Clinton Foundation defense contractor, Comey’s former membership on a Clinton Foundation corporate partner’s board, and his surprising financial relationship with his brother Peter Comey, who works at the law firm that does the Clinton Foundation’s taxes.
Lockheed Martin
When President Obama nominated Comey to become FBI director in 2013, Comey promised the United States Senate that he would recuse himself on all cases involving former employers.
But Comey earned $6 million in one year alone from Lockheed Martin. Lockheed Martin became a Clinton Foundation donor that very year.
Comey served as deputy attorney general under John Ashcroft for two years of the Bush administration. When he left the Bush administration, he went directly to Lockheed Martin and became vice president, acting as a general counsel.
How much money did James Comey make from Lockheed Martin in his last year with the company, which he left in 2010? More than $6 million in compensation.
Lockheed Martin is a Clinton Foundation donor. The company admitted to becoming a Clinton Global Initiative member in 2010.
According to records, Lockheed Martin is also a member of the American Chamber of Commerce in Egypt, which paid Bill Clinton $250,000 to deliver a speech in 2010.
In 2010, Lockheed Martin won 17 approvals for private contracts from the Hillary Clinton State Department.
HSBC Holdings
In 2013, Comey became a board member, a director, and a Financial System Vulnerabilities Committee member of the London bank HSBC Holdings.
“Mr. Comey’s appointment will be for an initial three-year term which, subject to re-election by shareholders, will expire at the conclusion of the 2016 Annual General Meeting,” according to HSBC company records.
HSBC Holdings and its various philanthropic branches routinely partner with the Clinton Foundation. For instance, HSBC Holdings has partnered with Deutsche Bank through the Clinton Foundation to “retrofit 1,500 to 2,500 housing units, primarily in the low- to moderate-income sector” in “New York City.”
“Retrofitting” refers to a Green initiative to conserve energy in commercial housing units. Clinton Foundation records show that the Foundation projected “$1 billion in financing” for this Green initiative to conserve people’s energy in low-income housing units.
Who Is Peter Comey?
When our source called the Chinatown offices of D.C. law firm DLA Piper and asked for “Peter Comey,” a receptionist immediately put him through to Comey’s direct line. But Peter Comey is not featured on the DLA Piper website.
Peter Comey serves as “Senior Director of Real Estate Operations for the Americas” for DLA Piper. James Comey was not questioned about his relationship with Peter Comey in his confirmation hearing.
DLA Piper is the firm that performed the independent audit of the Clinton Foundation in November during Clinton-World’s first big push to put the email scandal behind them. DLA Piper’s employees taken as a whole represent a major Hillary Clinton 2016 campaign donation bloc and Clinton Foundation donation base.
DLA Piper ranks #5 on Hillary Clinton’s all-time career Top Contributors list, just ahead of Goldman Sachs.
And here is another thing: Peter Comey has a mortgage on his house that is owned by his brother James Comey, the FBI director.
Peter Comey’s financial records, obtained by Breitbart News, show that he bought a $950,000 house in Vienna, Virginia, in June 2008. He needed a $712,500 mortgage from First Savings Mortgage Corporation.
But on January 31, 2011, James Comey and his wife stepped in to become Private Party lenders. They granted a mortgage on the house for $711,000. Financial records suggest that Peter Comey took out two such mortgages from his brother that day.
This financial relationship between the Comey brothers began prior to James Comey’s nomination to become director of the FBI.
DLA Piper did not answer Breitbart News’ question as to whether James Comey and Peter Comey spoke at any point about this mortgage or anything else during the Clinton email investigation.
Peter Comey Re-Designed the FBI Building
FBI Director James Comey grew up in the New Jersey suburbs with his brother Peter. Both Comeys were briefly taken captive in 1977 by the “Ramsey rapist,” but the boys managed to escape through a window in their home, and neither boy was harmed.
James Comey became a prosecutor who worked on the Gambino crime family case. He went on to the Bush administration, a handful of private sector jobs, and then the Obama administration in 2013.
Peter Comey, meanwhile, went into construction.
After getting an MBA in real estate and urban development from George Washington University in 1998, Peter Comey became an executive at a company that re-designed George Washington University between 2004 and 2007 while his brother was in town working for the Bush administration.
In January 2009, at the beginning of the Obama administration, Peter Comey became “a real estate and construction consultant” for Procon Consulting.
Procon Consulting’s client list includes “FBI Headquarters Washington, DC.”
So what did Procon Consulting do for FBI Headquarters? Quite a bit, apparently. According to the firm’s records:
Procon provided strategic project management for the consolidation of over 11,000 FBI personnel into one, high security, facility.
Since 1972 the Federal Bureau of Investigation has had its headquarters in a purpose built 2.1 million square foot building on Pennsylvania Avenue. Having become functionally obsolete and in need of major repairs, GSA and the FBI were considering ways to meet the space needs required to maintain the Bureau’s mission and consolidate over 11,000 personnel.
Procon assisted GSA in assessing the FBI’s space needs and options for fulfilling those needs. Services provided included project management related to site evaluations, budgeting, due diligence, and the development of procurement and funding strategies.
Those “funding strategies” included talking to “stakeholders”: “Worked with stakeholders and key leadership to identify strategic objectives, goals and long range plans for capital and real estate projects.”
Procon Consulting obtained its contract for FBI Headquarters prior to James Comey’s nomination to serve as director of the FBI.
In June 2011, Peter Comey left Procon Consulting to become “Senior Director of Real Estate Operations for the Americas” for DLA Piper.
Peter Comey has generated some controversy in that role. According to Law360 in May 2013 (the same month that James Comey was confirmed as someone being considered by Obama to become FBI director):
Two real estate services businesses filed a $10 million suit against the law firm Monday alleging it stiffed them on as much as $760,000 of work done at DLA Piper’s Chicago office and improperly gave proprietary information to a competitor.
….
The plaintiffs take particular aim at Peter Comey,…
So, PT, do you feel that Trump was justified in firing (on 2017-05-09) Comey?
http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2017/05/the-comey-firing.html
In general, how do you feel about that act?
Yes. He had lost all credibility. Trump did the right thing in the wrong way. The firing, in my view, was mishandled. Very amateurish. Comey should have been called to the White House. Confronted face-to-face and given a chance to resign. Trump should have been very up front with him that he no longer had confidence in him.
In a subsequent post, dated 2017-05-14:
http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2017/05/donald-trump-will-not-survive.html
PT wrote:
And in the above post, PT writes:
Comey has been attacked from both sides for his 2016, pre-election, public statements regarding HRC.
In particular, from HRC’s side comes the argument that
what he did and said “violated DoJ procedure and precedents”.
Well, no doubt it did.
But Hillary was a unique case (AFAIK),
in that she was running for president,
and in fact at the time the leading candidate to become POTUS.
That really distinguishes her from all (AFAIK) precedents.
Should not the public be informed of what Comey said,
so that it could better assess her fitness to be POTUS?
I think it needed that information.
Hillary and the Dems were playing a much-too-cute game in 2016.
When cries came for her email handling to be investigated by Congress,
Hillary and the Dems said:
“Wait, the FBI is already investigating these matters.
Congress must not involve itself because
that would (or might) interfere with the FBI investigation.”
Then, when her actions were not deemed to be indictable,
they use the DoJ precedents to argue that
her actions should never have been revealed by the FBI.
All that seems way too cute to me.
A transparent effort to keep what she had done
from being revealed to the public.
OTOH, from the Trump/GOP side, the complaint is:
“After all that negative stuff about Hillary,
why didn’t Comey recommend indictment?”
I’m no legal eagle,
but an argument I saw from one commentator made sense to me:
Comey didn’t want to go down in history as
the man who stopped Hillary from becoming
the first female president of the United States.
The 2016 election was a really remarkable one,
in that it was the first one in history (AFAIK)
where both major-party candidates for president
were under investigation by the FBI during their campaigns.
It looks to me like the FBI, and Director Comey,
were simply in a very difficult situation,
where whatever they did would come under heavy fire.
And it did.
I think they, and he, should have been given a break
for making the best out of a very difficult situation.