This topic deserves its own place for discussion instead of being buried in the Russia / Trump links topic. It’s a shocking event, one that Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo says is unprecedented in terms of purely political impact. Let’s give it the attention it deserves.
In before the announcement that Eric Trump is the next FBI Director.
He thought it was a prank initially. Fucking cold. Now Sarah Huckabee is on the air saying it it time to wind down the investigation
I like this season’s The Apprentice. Those three words “YOU ARE FIRED” have never been more dramatic.
And I thought that Sally Yates episode was the “high” point of the season.
I honestly wonder if Comey now regrets his October Surprise as much as the rest of us do.
The rumor is that he didn’t have a choice if he wanted to keep investigating trump. The info was going to be leaked by other sources in the NY FBI if he didn’t release it, which would have made him look partisan. Supposedly, that’s part of the case Schneiderman is said to be bringing in NY.
Don’t know if that’s true, but it does seem to neatly explain a bizarre action.
I’m being a bit contrarian here, but having read the assistant Attorney General’s argument for his dismissal, you have to say that there is a question over whether Comey is competent any more. The argument for his dismissal is that he should have never gone public with the FBI recommendation on the Clinton email, rather the Attorney General should have the final say on whether to prosecute. I don’t know the constitutional arrangement or standard practice of the US Justice Department, but previous AGs have also criticised Comey, both Democrats and Republicans. So there is a good reason to take that seriously.
Now of course the dismissal can be handled in more dignified way, but I think there is a clear question of competency with Comey, regarding the early Clinton email investigation. We haven’t even go to Comey’s October surprise. Now how can Comey oversees the Russian investigation without people questioning the integrity of the investigation.
Sure, it is possible Trump is using the dismissal to derail the Russian/Trump investigation, nonetheless I think there are plenty of legitimate reasons for Comey to go.
While the FBI has been polarized since the election, Trump’s decision will likely cause a “significant amount of backlash” within the bureau’s rank and file, said David Gomez, a former FBI agent who led the Seattle field office until his 2011 retirement.
“They’re going to view this as a political decision that impugns not only the integrity of director Comey but of the entire FBI itself,” he said.
“It’s ill advised,” Gomez added of Trump’s firing. “It’s a political thing that is going to, to use the vernacular, come back and bite him in the butt.”
Jeff Sessions was all over TV saying it was Comey’s duty to report the emails on the eve of the election. Give me a break. And now we are to believe he’s so upset over that he fired him so suddenly Comey found out from the television first.
Ok, let’s roll with that for a moment. Why now, months after the fact? Right after he testified (and he is said to be doing so again in closed session with the HPSCI tomorrow)? Right as it has become common knowledge that three federal grand juries have been empaneled? How does that not seem like the flimsiest excuse ever, particularly from an administration that blames everything on someone else (like Flynn’s security clearance on Obama)?
There’s literally nothing we’ve seen in his words or actions so far to support the idea that Trump gives a shit about the careful, impartial administration of the rule of law. Just the opposite.
There’s literally nothing we’ve seen so far to suggest that Trump would ever voluntarily admit that Clinton was wronged in any way by Comey or anyone else during the election. Just the opposite. That he would do so in this letter suggests its the price he had to pay in order to get Comey out of the way.
As Josh Marshall puts it (much more eloquently than I could):
In criminal trials there are certain actions defendants can take from which judges will tell juries they can infer guilt. In a political context, this is one of those moments. We are now hearing word from White House officials that the White House is stunned at the backlash at Comey’s firing. Didn’t Democrats think he was doing a bad job? We’re even hearing commentators speculate that maybe this may have been a huge miscalculation. The White House didn’t realize how big a deal this was. In the final analysis I think this will be judged a major miscalculation – just not in the sense they mean. Frankly, no one is that naive. It doesn’t wash.
There is only one reasonable conclusion that can be drawn from the decision to fire Comey: that there is grave wrongdoing at the center of the Russia scandal and that it implicates the President. As I write this, I have a difficult time believing that last sentence myself. But sometimes you have to step back from your assumptions and simply look at what the available evidence is telling you. It’s speaking clearly: the only reasonable explanation is that the President has something immense to hide and needs someone in charge of the FBI who he believes is loyal.
The idea that anyone believes the trump official reasoning on this that he was fired because of his handling of Clinton’s emails before the election is simply laughable. As everyone on the planet knows, if that was true, he would have been fired long ago. Not to mention Trump has come out many times to support what Comey did.
Trump is simply a fucking idiot. If he was anything but that he would have come up with a more believable reason, like maybe Comey is secretly an alien from mars trying to take over the earth or maybe Comey and Hillary Clinton are the same person.
I have to wonder if perhaps there is more meat to the Russian connection than is commonly thought.
Hannity is on Fox News right now praising the Comey firing and saying it’s “the right move from President Trump” and that we should all be grateful for his leadership.
The basic argument is, Comey is incompetent. Not that he favours Democrats or Republicans.
The Trump/Russian connection investigation, by all accounts, is still on. It is just that Comey isn’t there to screw it up, like he did with Clinton’s email investigation, twice. This is the contrarian argument for his dismissal.
I’m sure Trump fired Comey to make sure the Russian and Trump connection is completely on the up and up because we’re talking about the man who has been so transparent and honest in the past.
The Trumpists were playing up the mistaken information Comey gave to Congress in his most recent testimony about the Abedin emails. Of course that information came from the NY office-- the same office that was probably feeding information to the Trump campaign through Giuliani before the election. Comey was totally set up. The Trump team is lying, transparently lying, about their reasons for firing him. The nature of the lie reallly makes it seem they have something serious to hide from the Russian investigations.
David Frum is alarmed.
Now comes the hour of testing. Will the American system resist? Or will it be suborned?
The question has to be asked searchingly of the Republican members of Congress: Will you allow a president of your party to attack the integrity of the FBI? You impeached Bill Clinton for lying about sex. Will you now condone and protect a Republican administration lying about espionage?