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James Comey Tag

Two conservative groups, Judicial Watch and the American Center for Law and Justice, have been doing the hard work the mainstream media refuses to do to investigate the infamous tarmac meeting between then Attorney General Loretta Lynch and the husband of a subject of FBI Investigation, Bill Clinton. The tarmac meeting was not initially disclosed by either Lynch or Clinton. Rather, the get together was discovered by a local news crew, as we previously reported on June 29, 2016, Gross appearance of impropriety in AG Lynch private meeting with Bill Clinton:

When former President Bill Clinton met with then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch at an Arizona airport, the gross impropriety of the "tarmac summit" was immediately evident.  Clinton's wife and 2016 Democrat presidential hopeful was then under FBI investigation for her server and email scandals.  The impropriety was pooh-poohed away by a defensive AG, a disinterested media, a complicit FBI, and the corrupt Clinton clan. The American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) has released 413 pages of memos obtained from the DOJ that show the "tarmac summit" was planned and that the media was working with the Obama-Lynch DOJ to downplay and bury the entire incident.

The NY Times breathlessly reported yesterday that Donald Trump, Jr. and others involved in the Trump campaign met with a Russian lawyer who got the meeting by claiming she had damaging information on Hillary Clinton. So the Trump people did what any campaign would do when promised damaging oppo research - they took the meeting. Does anyone in their right mind think the Clinton campaign (and the media) would not have taken the meeting with such a tease of information? There is no indication that the promised information related to hacking or anything illegal. The media has been pushing the mostly (if not entirely) bogus "Dossier" on Trump, which reportedly was based on Russian sources, so the feigned outrage is hardly credible.

Today is the one-year anniversary of the meeting on an airplane on a tarmac in Phoenix between then Attorney General and Bill Clinton, the husband of the presumptive Democratic nominee for President, Hillary Clinton. Hillary was under investigation, at the time, by the FBI and Justice Department for her home email server used to handle official State Department business, including as we now know, classified information. The meeting was not announced. It was discovered. By a local news crew. Only then was the meeting officially disclosed. Lynch said they mostly discussed grandchildren.

Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) has called out Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) over his public comments about the president being under investigation. The problem, Grassley states, is that Schumer knew this was untrue because former FBI head James Comey had briefed not only the Senate Judiciary Committee but the Gang of Eight, including Schumer.  During that briefing in March of this year, Comey stated that the president was not under investigation.  This knowledge did not stop Schumer from, only weeks later, making public statements that he knew to be false.

When Robert Mueller was first appointed Special Counsel, I thought, given his generally good reputation, that this might be a streamlined process with fewer leaks, focused on either proving or disproving allegations of Russian interference. But I did acknowledge, for example in this radio interview, that there was a risk that in the wrong hands the powers vested under the Order appointing Mueller could be abused:

Watching Attorney General Jeff Sessions testify before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence was both an inspiring and infuriating experience. When it comes to inspiration, there's Jeff Sessions. He did as well as he possibly could in slaying the media and Democratic innuendo machine. For several months we have heard conspiracy theory after conspiracy theory about Sessions based on "contacts" with the Russian ambassador. The theory that a mere "contact" was evidence of impropriety never made sense, certainly not for an Ambassador who seems to be a well-traveled fixture on the D.C. political circuit.

I was a guest today on Newsmax TV – America Talks Live with Bill Tucker. The main topic was my post about James Comey's Senate testimony, Robert Mueller should step aside: Friends shouldn’t be investigating friends:
"... the case has dramatically changed since James Comey was outed, or outed himself, as the leaker of a memorandum to the NY Times and testified before the Senate. Remember this case started as an investigation of Russian involvement.

The Special Counsel investigation led by Robert Mueller barely has gotten off the ground, and already there is a stench. That stench was created by former FBI Director James Comey, who admitted in testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee that he leaked, through a friend, memoranda purporting to document improper conversations between Donald Trump and Comey. Most important among those conversations was a February 14, 2017, one-on-one meeting in which Trump supposedly told Comey that Trump "hoped" that Comey would see fit to "let go" of the investigation into Michael Flynn. As described in Comey's prepared statement (emphasis added):

Donald Trump has laid down the gauntlet, or maybe taken the bait, on key portions of James Comey's Senate testimony. We'll have a transcript and video when available. Here are the key Trump points: Never told Comey to close Flynn investigation, never asked for loyalty pledge, willing to testify under oath. On the issue of whether he has tapes of his conversations with Comey, Trump said he'll let people know in the near future, and the media won't like it - "You're going to be very disappointed when you hear the answer, don't worry."

I was not able to watch James Comey's testimony today live, as I was in the car much of the day. I was able to listen to the first hour and a half on terrestrial radio, as so many AM stations were carrying it that I was able to keep tuned even as one station faded out. After that, I followed on Twitter, and since then have seen many accounts and videos of what I missed. I'm not going to try to catalog the questions and answers, I'm late to that.

The official statement (pdf.) from James Comey, to be read during the hearing tomorrow, has bombshells -- but they are helpful to Donald Trump. The statement is embedded in full at the bottom of this post. Comey confirms -- contrary to media reports -- that he told Trump that Trump was not personally under investigation. That's a pretty big concession considering speculation that Trump himself was under investigation. Comey also paints a picture of Trump trying to put in a good word for Michael Flynn, but there is no suggestion that anything rising to the level of obstruction of justice was said. Also, Comey made clear that those comments did not relate to the general investigation of Russian interference in the election. We will have additional analysis shortly.

On Thursday James Comey will testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee. It will be the Greatest Show on Earth that day, broadcast live by every major network:
“The Young and the Restless” will be preempted by a different soap opera on Thursday. The star will be former FBI director James B. Comey. In a rare move, CBS is scrapping its daytime lineup to carry live coverage of Comey's testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, and NBC and ABC are doing the same. This is a big deal that places the Comey session on a shortlist of congressional hearings deemed worthy of live airings on broadcast television — a list that includes the Army-McCarthy hearings in 1954, Watergate hearings in 1973, Iran-contra hearings in 1987, Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas hearings in 1991 and President Bill Clinton impeachment hearings in 1998.

I was a guest today on Newsmax TV - America Talks Live with Bill Tucker. The main topic was James Comey's upcoming testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee. I was able to clear up a common misconception about Comey's May 3, 2017, testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Many people -- on Twitter and in the punditry -- believe that Comey stated on May 3 there had been no attempts to stop his investigation. If Comey gave such testimony before the Senate, it would be consistent with the testimony of Rod Rosenstein, the Deputy Attorney General, on May 19 that there had been no "political interference" in the investigation (emphasis added):