Is James Comey a Tragic Hero, or the Ultimate Washington Operator?

 

Former FBI director James Comey testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee, on Thursday, June 8, 2017
 

By Nicholas Stix

I’m dizzy, even though I spent almost all day Thursday and Friday sitting!

On Thursday, June 8, 2017, a date which should but won’t live in infamy, former FBI Director James Comey spent three hours testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee. I followed all of Comey’s testimony, and yet I’ve been reading articles ever since, to correct some of my confusion.

To recapitulate: Trump fired Comey on May 9, citing the latter’s handling of the Russia investigation.

Democrats pounced on Trump’s explanation, saying that he was guilty of “obstruction of justice,” i.e., it was grounds for removing him from office, and began talking about all the parallels between Trump and Nixon.

There were no such parallels between the men; the parallels were in the imaginations of today’s Democrats, who were seeking to undo the election.

(The last Republican president whose election Democrats didn’t seek to undo was Ike.)

Following Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-North Carolina), the committee vice chairman, Virginia Sen. Mark Warner (ZANU-PF), told the hearings’ first lie: “We are not here about re-litigating the election…”

In fact, the only reason Warner was there was to undo the election.

When Trump fired Comey, my judgment was that Trump did so, not because of anything Comey did or did not do in the Russia investigation, but in order to remind everyone that he was the President. At that point, his enemies in both parties were acting as though he were a powerless puppet who would soon be discarded. My judgment today is the same.

Trump should have refused to explain himself, and simply said, “It was my prerogative as the President to fire the FBI director, and I did just that. End of story.”

Unfortunately, Trump started giving reasons why he fired Comey, he talked too much, and his enemies gave the most sinister interpretations of what he did say.

Left professor at CNN, Jeffrey Toobin said, “Obstruction of justice.”

Of course, Toobin had been making the same unfounded assertion for months. If his telephone rang in the middle of the night, a bleary-eyed Toobin would pick up the phone and say, “Obstruction of justice,” to whoever was on the other end.

About three weeks ago, I saw an amazing, very atypical panel presentation on CNN.

To those of you who have never savored one of these experiences, every day CNN produces multiple Trump hatefests. During the day, these often involve performers playing the roles of “correspondents,” while at night, they play roles such as “law professor,” “Democratic strategist,” etc. You might have as many as eight leftist hacks, including the host, and one wimpy pro-Trump guest, say Jeffrey Lord.

(On rare occasion, they’ll let a single lion in the arena, e.g., Breitbart’s Joel Pollak, who devours the mob. Pollak once smacked Don Lemon silly, repeatedly pointing out that Lemon hadn’t read the article Lemon was referring to.)

Well, on the night in question, Jeffrey Toobin’s old law professor, Alan Dershowitz, was on the panel, and Dershowitz was after raw meat. While noting that he had voted for Mrs. Clinton and did not like Trump, the old teacher argued that the President certainly can tell the FBI/DOJ whom to, and whom not to investigate. Dershowitz compared what Democrats are trying to do to President Trump to what the Communists did under Stalin and his secret police chief, Lavrenti Beria in the Soviet Union: “Show me the man, and I’ll find you the crime” (Beria).





(Never mind the stupid title.)





Comey testified that the President had lied about him, and hurt his dignity, and that of the FBI.

And although the law required no reason at all to fire an FBI director, the Administration then chose to defame me, and more importantly, the FBI, by saying that the organization was in disarray, poorly led, that the workforce had lost confidence in its leader. Those were lies, plain and simple. James Comey, Testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, June 8, 2017.

The FBI director’s testimony was so moving that at the time it brought tears to my eyes. When one senator observed that it was Comey’s word versus that of the President, and asked for reasons to believe the former, Comey humbly said, “My mother didn’t raise me that way.”

It was like something out of a Norman Rockwell painting.

And when Comey recalled thinking, “This isn’t a hill worth dying on,” I was so charmed by his turn of phrase that I misunderstood who he was talking about. Why, it was Obama Criminal General Loretta Lynch telling the FBI Director to speak publicly of the investigation of Hillary Clinton as “a matter,” rather than an “investigation,” so as to be in sync with Mrs. Clinton’s campaign propaganda.

This was a man who, I later realized, had stage-managed the entire hearing! He had drawn up his infamous “memo” on the President, and plotted out a cold-blooded PR campaign, with one liberal crony, the Brookings Institution’s Benjamin Wittes, appearing regularly on CNN, and the other, Columbia Law School professor Daniel C. Richman, leaking Comey’s memo to the media.

Indeed, Comey confessed in his Senate testimony Thursday that he had written and leaked the memo for the purpose of getting a special counsel appointed!

I asked a friend of mine [N.S.: Richman] to share the content of the memo with a reporter. I didn't do it myself for a variety of reasons but I asked him to because I thought that might prompt the appointment of a special counsel.

As a Fox News talking head observed, James Comey is “no Polyanna boy scout.”
 

 

Democrat George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley wrote that Comey’s conduct with his memo and PR campaign committed a whole raft of felonies and violations of ethics rules (including those of the Bar), in short, that Comey was a criminal who had disgraced every institution to which he was connected.

It was a particularly curious moment for a former director who was asked by the president to fight the leakers in the government. He proceeded in becoming one of the most consequential leakers against Trump….

Comey’s position would effectively gut a host of federal rules and regulations….

The Justice Department routinely claims such memos as privileged and covered by the deliberative process privilege and other privileges….

Besides being subject to nondisclosure agreements, Comey falls under federal laws governing the disclosure of classified and unclassified information….

There are also ethical and departmental rules against the use of material to damage a former represented person or individual or firm related to prior representation….

The standard FBI employment agreement bars the unauthorized disclosure of information “contained in the files, electronic or paper, of the FBI” that impact the bureau and specifically pledges that “I will not reveal, by any means, any information or material from or related to FBI files or any other information acquired by virtue of my official employment to any unauthorized recipient without prior official written authorization by the FBI.”

Had Comey taken the minimal step of seeking clearance, the department would likely have said that this was FBI information and not personal information. Comey instead decided to ask forgiveness rather than permission. [OPINION: The damaging case against James Comey by Jonathan Turley, The Hill, 06/09/17 03:00 P.M. EDT]

But don’t worry. The anti-Trump brigades will celebrate James Comey for as long as they live.

I don’t claim to be able to pierce the masks within masks that James Comey wears—such masquerades seem to be a part of surviving at the highest levels of politics—but one thing I am confident about is that the man is a virtuouso actor and manipulator of powerful people. What Comey set in motion reminds me of the character played by the late Paul Newman in the picture, Absence of Malice. However, Newman’s character was an avenging angel; Comey more closely resembles a death angel.

Anyone who hates Donald Trump can get a special prosecutor appointed on a whim. That wouldn’t happen, if this country had a party in opposition to the DPUSA.

In my opinion, there should never have been any Comey hearings (public or secret), and no special prosecutor, er, special counsel should ever have been named.

And why are Trump’s enemies outraged at him for firing Comey? Because they hate him. It’s that simple. Donald Trump could cure the common cold, and the New York Times would run a headline, saying, “Trump Fails to Cure Flu.”

Keep in mind that it has been widely reported that if Hillary Clinton had won the election, she would have fired Comey the day after her inauguration. But in that case, she would have been the President. However, as far as the Democrats are concerned, Trump is not the President. Never has been, never will be. (They took the same approach to George W. Bush.)

The only time I can recall the MSM and the Democrat Party—but I repeat myself—not condemning Trump was when he did something stupid, i.e., bombing Syria. They were merely being prudent, because support for the bombing was so widespread.

Let’s go back to last year. We had a situation, in which a career criminal was running for President who had committed all manner of crimes as Secretary of State. GOP-dominated congressional committees had lacked the intestinal fortitude to play hardball with Mrs. Clinton, and she skated (I’m looking at you, Trey Gowdy). James Comey likewise backed down from her, just as he had backed down from the most criminal administration in American history, including when said administration engaged in a seditious conspiracy to destroy an administration that hadn’t even yet been sworn in, through a torrent of criminal leaks. But boy is he courageous, when it comes to Donald Trump!

And now we’re saddled with a less than stellar special counsel who has a conflict of interest, and whose very mandate will lead him away from the real bad guys. [Comey and Mueller: Russiagate’s Mythical Heroes by Coleen Rowley, The Unz Review, June 8, 2017.]

On the other hand, Jeffrey Toobin thinks that Bob Mueller is the perfect man for the job.

If the Republicans are worth anything, they will take the offensive, and mount their own investigations into the Obama Administration conspiracy to commit sedition against President Donald Trump, and the various opportunists who have acted as “lone wolves,” or as part of ancillary, independent conspiracies. Such hearings would subpoena the likes of Barack “Obama,” Loretta Lynch, Bill “Tarmac” Clinton, a whole host of Obama administration apparatchiki, George W. Bush, Bush’s “ethics” gunsel Richard W. Painter, and scores of members of the media.

Turnabout is fair play—especially, when the other guys are crooks and traitors.