Some portion of the reading public is eagerly awaiting A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership, the aptly titled exercise in self-serving historical revisionism by James Comey, the disgraced former FBI director who was fired last May by President Trump.
The reading material in which I am most interested at the moment is the report by Michael Horowitz, the Obama-appointed inspector general of the Department of Justice who has been toiling away for the last year investigating the DOJ and the FBI for its handling of the Hillary Clinton email scandal.
Comey’s aria, currently swaddled with embargoes, is due out April 17. Horowitz has said he aims to release his report “in the March, April time period.”
So there is a lot to look forward to. Chris Swecker, a former FBI assistant director, said that the report will contain “some pure TNT.” I have no doubt that’s true.
Adventures in “Ethical Leadership”
On Saturday, in the aftermath of former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe’s sacking, Comey tweeted:
Mr. President, the American people will hear my story very soon. And they can judge for themselves who is honorable and who is not.
— James Comey (@Comey) March 17, 2018
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Well, yes. Comey’s Twitter profile informs the world that these days he is “writing and speaking about ethical leadership.” It also notes that he is “taller and funnier in person.” I hope so.
As for “ethical leadership,” we needn’t even wait for his book to understand exactly how he embodies ethical leadership. When the College of William and Mary announced last month that Comey would be coming to teach a class on the subject, the announcement was accompanied by a statement from Comey. “Ethical leaders,” he said, “lead by seeing above the short term, above the urgent or the partisan, and with a higher loyalty to lasting values, most importantly the truth.” The Wall Street Journal, digesting this declaration, published a useful classroom aid for students struggling with the question of ethical leadership.
Week One case study: The FBI is investigating a presidential candidate for mishandling classified emails as Secretary of State. The director decides on his own to violate Justice Department rules and exonerate that candidate in a public statement to the media, letting an aide replace the legally potent phrase “grossly negligent” in a draft of his statement with “extremely careless” in the final version.
Possible test question: When and under what circumstance may a federal official decide that the rules that bind others do not apply to him?
The Journal also offers a topic for a breakout session:
Having exonerated that candidate, the FBI director intervenes in the campaign again only days before Election Day, saying new evidence has required him to reopen the email case. Two days before the polls open he says that the new evidence turned out to be nothing of consequence. Was the FBI director protecting the rule of law, or his own reputation?
Presumably, Comey will talk not only about his favorite topic, himself, but will also provide other examples of ethical leadership. The Journal has some good advice about that as well. Consider, for example, Mr. Comey’s good friend Robert Mueller. Long before he embarked on his quest for the Holy Grail—i.e., the destruction of Donald Trump—Robert Mueller was involved in other high profile cases. The Journal suggestion for Week Three focuses on one of those.
FBI Director Robert Mueller and the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York are convinced that the man behind the 2001 anthrax mail attacks is a government virologist. They spend years pursuing him and destroying his reputation through the media, only to concede years later that they had fingered the wrong man.
Students will examine the ethics of trial-by-media and the risks to the fair administration of justice from prosecutors who ignore contrary evidence.
The Journal has other illuminating exercises that prospective readers of Comey’s book and students for his class will find useful.
About the McCabe Firing
For my part, I am more interested in seeing what Michael Horowitz’s report has to say. We can glean a little about it by noting that some of its contents provided the basis for the recommendation from the FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility that Andrew McCabe be fired. On Friday, Attorney General Jeff Sessions took time off from his recusal and did just that.
It is worth noting who did what to whom. The Left and its NeverTrump Chihuahua enablers exploded in a frenzy of vituperation at the news that Andrew McCabe had been fired just a day before he was eligible for his full pension. His bitter statement following his firing was full of recriminations. “It is part of this Administration’s ongoing war on the FBI and the efforts of the Special Counsel investigation,” he said.
But the bad cop in this scenario was not Donald Trump—though the president did, understandably, take pleasure in the news. Nope, McCabe’s downfall was the result of his own actions: unauthorized leaks to the media, “lack of candor” under oath (a fireable offense), not to mention his failure to disclose the $700,000 contribution to his wife’s political campaign from the Clinton ally Terry McAuliffe.
Writing at the Lawfare blog, Quinta Jurecic Benjamin Wittes outline the process:
[A]lthough Sessions made the ultimate call to fire McCabe, the public record shows that the process resulting in the FBI deputy director’s dismissal involved career Justice Department and FBI officials—rather than political appointees selected by President Trump—at crucial points along the way. To begin with, the charges against McCabe arose out of the broader Justice Department Office of Inspector General (OIG) investigation into the FBI’s handling of the Clinton email investigation.
One of the most interesting details to emerge from the Comey-McCabe Affair is the . . . er, tension between what McCabe has just said about who said what to whom and with what authority and the testimony of Comey before Congress under oath. In his post-firing statement, McCabe said “I chose to share [information about the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server] with a reporter through my public affairs officer and a legal counselor. As deputy director, I was one of only a few people who had the authority to do that. It was not a secret, it took place over several days, and others, including the director, were aware of the interaction with the reporter” (my emphasis).
But as Jonathan Turley reports at The Hill, “If the ‘interaction’ means leaking the information, then McCabe’s statement would seem to directly contradict statements Comey made in a May 2017 congressional hearing.”
Asked if he had “ever been an anonymous source in news reports about matters relating to the Trump investigation or the Clinton investigation” or whether he had “ever authorized someone else at the FBI to be an anonymous source in news reports about the Trump investigation or the Clinton investigation,” Comey replied “never” and “no.”
What, never? Well, hardly ever.
Things are happening very fast in the Swamp Drama surrounding Robert Mueller’s Galaxy Quest. We’ll have to wait on the inspector general’s report to fill out some details about Andrew McCabe’s activities. Already, though, a lot of unsavory allegations are swirling about. The investigative journalist Sara Carter, for example, just told Fox News “I have been told tonight by a number of sources . . . that McCabe may have asked FBI agents to actually change their 302s”—that is, the forms that FBI agents are required to complete after interviewing a subject to memorialize the contents of their interview.
The level of hysteria that greeted McCabe’s firing is instructive. Many people, friends as well as opponents, criticize President Trump for his freewheeling tweets. But how about this tweet emitted by former CIA Director John Brennan after McCabe’s firing:
When the full extent of your venality, moral turpitude, and political corruption becomes known, you will take your rightful place as a disgraced demagogue in the dustbin of history. You may scapegoat Andy McCabe, but you will not destroy America…America will triumph over you. https://t.co/uKppoDbduj
— John O. Brennan (@JohnBrennan) March 17, 2018
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There’s a lot to be said about John Brennan. Lee Smith has some of the unsavory details in a recent essay in Tablet. At the end of the day, Brennan is the fons et origo of the whole Trump-Russian collusion fantasy. Although that narrative is unraveling before our eyes, the principle of inertia assures that Mueller’s team of 17 pro-Clinton prosecutors will toil on. Will they, I wonder, have anything to say about John Brennan’s lying to Congress about whether or not the CIA spied on them under his direction (they did). And surely the public should be reminded that Barack Obama’s director of our premier foreign intelligence service voted for Gus Hall, general secretary of the Communist Party of the United States, in 1976.
J. Edgar Hoover described Hall as “a powerful, deceitful, dangerous foe of Americanism.” He was that. But Brennan voted for that despicable representative of a monstrous ideology anyway. He was “unhappy with the system,” he had what James Comey calls “a higher loyalty”—not to the boring rule of law but to the projection of his own self-infatuated idea of virtue. It was ever thus with “idealists,” which is one thing that makes them so dangerous to our republic.
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It all makes perfect sense!
If openly seditious administrators can blatantly lie while taking their Oath of Office when sworn in to their new capacity, and create conditions that promote more of their traitorous companions to be nurtured and advanced in their official capacities, then it’s no wonder a serious security threat like Obama could be granted a security clearance on such a disreputable, shady, past performance and background.
The United States has not only become the new Soviets, We have surpassed the old Soviets.
Openly seditious? You need to look up the meaning the word “sedition.” And nobody “granted” Obama a security clearance because the POTUS doesn’t NEED a security clearance.
Edit – No one granted Trump a security clearance either. Do you think he would have qualified?
Manchurian Brennan
Should be a fun baseball season coming. Baseball and Treason. How appetizing.
Do you really “lead by seeing ABOVE the short term, ABOVE the urgent or the partisan” or do you lead by seeing BEYOND those things?
Because if you see “above” them and not BEYOND, isn’t your nose just too far in the sky and your eyes not that good?
Methinks these people just are not as smart as they think they are.
That describes most politicians, I think. They’ve ‘optimized’ their skill set to get elected – which includes being able to ‘sincerely’ promise everything while never delivering.
Inside the Beltway it’s particularly bad – they’ve convinced themselves they’re elite, and I don’t think there’s anything that’ll bust them off that particular mindset.
When you are an ambitious, yet mediocre, young man and are faced with choosing a career, is it wiser to enter the corporate world where your career progression is determined by highly successful businessmen and eventually wealthy stockholders who scrutinize your every move, or to enter politics where your career progression is determined by people who barely monitor your actions at all and suffer a severe information asymmetry?
I think the mediocre man chooses politics.
You don’t even have to be mediocre to inherit a fortune and then mismanage it. Do you think Trump has ever had to face wealthy stockholders? If he had he would have been fired in a millisecond.
Just read any of the recent op-eds in the NY times all talking about elites – the authors and most of the commenters are totally convinced that only they know what’s best for our nation and that the rest of us are little more than knuckle-dragging Neanderthals.
The Tablet link is wrong – here is the link to the Lee Smith article http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/256899/left-right-russiagate.
Good article.
You read SF and you’ll come across plenty of dystopian societies where the ‘elite’ rule with no consideration to the actual conditions the people have to endure. And you wonder just how an ostensibly ‘good and just’ society could end up massively dysfunctional like that.
Well, we’re seeing such a thing play out. The ‘Beltway Culture’ is doing what it can to protect itself from a hostile interloper. The chain of succession was clear – the nominal Republican (who was likely going to Jeb Bush) was supposed to lose gracefully to the nominal Democrat, Hillary. Things would stay the same, with plenty of promises of change and improvement but no real action ever taken.
However, both Sanders and Trump messed that up. Sanders didn’t have a real chance – but Trump proved a lot more savvy than anyone expected. I voted for him because he wasn’t Hillary, but I won’t have a problem voting for him in 2020 at all. And he’s setting a political standard of actually DOING something instead of making promises with no intention of fulfilling them.
It’s a turn away from establishing a dystopia. Will our ‘political elite’ (who’ve shown they’re corrupt and are practically daring us to do anything about it) learn from this, or double down? Guess we’ll see this November…
Practically? The politicians are smart enough to keep their mouths shut but their activist lackeys make it quite clear what they plan on doing. Using any and all means short of state sanctioned violence to crush American Conservatism once and for all and establish Nationally what California is today. A single party tyranny.
California’s looking to go the way of Venezuela. Here’s hoping you aren’t there for the collapse…
People can see things now that the media refused to cover. Maybe CA can pull back from the brink?
And here’s hoping the rest of us taxpayers don’t have to pay to bail them out when they inevitably can’t keep their monetary commitments. Ditto for Illinois, New Jersey and New York.
“I voted for him because he wasn’t Hillary, but I won’t have a problem voting for him in 2020 at all. ”
Indeed. I held my nose in 2016, but have been pleasantly surprised. Don’t get me wrong, he’s done some stuff as President I don’t like, but then they all do. . .and as you say, he’s pursuing his platform promises with vigor. . . .and I can’t recall the last time I saw that happen.
I’ve never seen it happen like this. Usually they promise, but never do anything because of ‘good reasons’.
no wall, no ‘repeal and replace’ (with something tremendous and beautiful and cheaper, and on DAY ONE!), no real tax “reform” and no swamp draining…
even if he wasn’t as corrupt a human being as he is, he’d have some respect if he’d actually implemented these or used the bully pulpit against what you call the ‘beltway culture’…
why did he sign tax “reform”? that alone pretty much contradicts all that you have posted… seems the only one doing something is mueller…
Hmm. He’s doing what he can in accordance with the law – where Obama just signed executive orders. So… should I trust you, or trust my own evaluation of what he’s gotten done…
Let’s see… I’ll trust my own, thanks. You’ve got an upclick rate of 0.18 – seems other people don’t seem too impressed with your evaluations either.
>>> Obama just signed executive orders
too funny… so you missed all of president yer daddy’s EO signing parties? btw, the gop is in charge so why does president yer daddy need to be signing any? and does that make him the dictator you all declared Obama to be?
there’s a reason president yer daddy loves the poorly educated, especially the upclick counters like you…
Here’s just a few of dear leaders lawlessness!! http://www.trueactivist.com/criminal-in-chief-78-times-president-obama-broke-the-law-during-presidency/
“there’s a reason president yer daddy loves the poorly educated,”
Could it be that there are ALOT more of what delusional Progs call the “poorly educated”, than “educated” voters? Which is why Trump WON the election! By the way, being a professor myself, I can tell you that what passes for “educated” in Prog colleges these days (save the LGBT whales studies), isn’t anything to write home about……
do you get ta carry a concealed gun too? to protect the snowflakes.. i seriously doubt you teach any subject that matters.. and since teachers barely get paid you must be a loser too…
To protect you? I suppose I could! But I don’t need to get paid for teaching (I did well during the genomics revolution, so I have what I need already), I do it because I like to help kids succeed.
One POS gop McStain stop repeal & replace – he’s gotten little to no support from either side of the aisle and yet he’s gotten over 50% of what he promised done. Get a grip
but but but Obama! Obama used EOs! hey, was the ACA an EO? cause if so it sure lasted more bigly than president yer daddy could strike it down… and why couldn’t the greatest dealmaker ever make a deal w/ his own party about the AHCA? cause “wynning”! and over 50% done? really? all i heard him promising was a wall and repeal and replace – oh and some ‘de-regulatin’ too… wall street is partying like it’s 2005 again… yeeehaw! and that slurping sound must be the swamp draining going on… 50%… and i’m the one who needs a grip… ONE piece of schit legislation – in complete contradiction to what he promised in his campaign and when promoting it too… too funny, but then he does love him some poorly educated peeps too, and has betty devos to propagate the ignorance…
Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son….
I’m older and shorter than Comey…I bet I could beat him one-on-one.
and so we are waiting for you and your ilk to make your exits….
You have at LEAST 6 more years! Boy, are you ever going to LOVE this!
8 years of glorious Trump. Get used to it.
please be goose-stepping when you chant that…
DOH!! https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/629a400dc4ef402e21e27f782075ba97bdb5387f690df381fdcf1d7f80a07499.jpg
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ab20299872c73ab060f6307d04e40b16aa2f7ee7d7982e355b871372412ad5e8.jpg
Great line from everyone’s favorite liberal pedophile Woody Allen – in Love & Death where he’s talking to some villagers and they point out some guy – He’s the Village Idiot – Woody’s reply
What did you do? Place?
0bozo had to bribe people to pass 0bozoKare. People were paid off and 9 out of 10 lost their seat in the very next election. We have to pass it before we can know what’s in it? Only liberal idiots sign a contract without knowing what’s in it. No one kept their doctors if you had 0bozoKare. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/191f8ed8b7a036799822de73b5cd40591f8da56bd6e4d72d7764d0737d7843df.jpg
bribes! omg! the govt NEVER did any horse trading before BHO! and the ‘corker kickbacks’ in the gop tax “reform” (15 of them or so?) aren’t real cause we don’t know what all they are! what all is in this tax “reform” anyway and why is the gop saying it needs to be fixed? did no one read it? oh wait, how could they since it was crafted in backrooms w/ out any hearings and w/ hand scribblings to it at the 12th hour… now feel free to go on back to yer babblings, “but but but Obama!”
No, the “nominal” Republican was supposed to WIN. There is no way on God’s green earth that HRC could have beaten Jeb.
She would have mopped the floor with JEB!
Yeb!
Eh. It was supposed to be Hillary’s turn, I think. But… I think we dodged a nuke.
According to the DNC, but NOT according to the voters.
Another Trump troll pushing a Trump/Sanders alliance. Has anyone asked Bernie about how he feels about this alliance?
If you won’t have any problem voting for Trump in 2020 then it is very unlikely that you had any problem voting for him in 2016. Trump has done nothing to change anyone’s mind and to say otherwise is pure Trumpian propaganda.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/71c1bdc54afa4fb03da060fbf74a25d80b91a4237c03877983b519faa2a82f68.jpg
He’s being held up by the do nothing types in Congress. It takes more than a president to fix things in our country, just as it took more than a president to break them.
The self-justifying spiels from Comey, McCabe et al are just like the shrieks and whines from the NeverTrump ‘conservatives’.
Their self-righteous postures and ululations have nothing whatever to do with even their own concepts of republican virtue or other righteousness. These performances are all about damage-control for their careers: in the case of the NeverTrump ‘conservatives’ loss of their jobs in journals, think-tanks and their gigs in broadcasting; in the case of the Swamp-dwellers (Comey, McCabe et al) staying out of jail.
A cabal made up of such men ran the DOJ, the FBI and the Deep State Intelligence Services for years and perpetrated quite a number of outrageous offences: crimes unethical and unlawful.
So long as RINOs could win the White House and most of the Republican seats in Congress, they had little to fear. RINOs would not rock the boat when taking office in an Administration because they would not want their own Swamp-doings to come under scrutiny – e.g. all that collusion with check-waving lobbyists for their personal gain.
But when a rank outsider is elected President (a man who has never even run for a place on a school board) and with the declared campaign agendum of ‘Draining The Swamp!’, all bets are off; and these scoundrels who have lived lives of big protected privilege hitherto have a cold dread climbing up their spines: the real possibility that if, and now AS, more and more comes out, which the Donald has no personal interest to suppress or obscure, they could end up like Bernie Madoff.
Dr Johnson observed, ‘Depend upon it, sir. If a man knows he is to be hanged in the morning, it concentrates his mind wonderfully’.
It is therefore no surprise that the Establishment is howling blue murder at the wholly independent recommendation of the wholly independent Inspector General that McCabe should be sacked for lying. This provides a thread which compulsively opens the way into the labyrinth of Establishment Wrongdoing in DC these past 20-30 years. In fact it is both such an Ariadne’s thread for the route to the Minotaur and also a dynamite fuse for blowing the monster up.
They do not know whom the jails will not accommodate before all dust settles.
One has to remember, regarding Comey’s handling of Hillary’s email, he was certain Hillary was going to be elected president, so he felt he would be better off under her administration by assisting her, by not letting the information go through standard procedure, to a grand jury. He did say she was guilty but she didn’t mean to be. If Comey had passed the information on to a grand jury, Comey knew his career would be over. Hillary WOULD CERTAINLY FIRE HIM! Comey did this only to help himself.
His point was, even though Hillary knew what she was doing was in violation of law, (she was a lawyer for a short period), she was going to be president! I’ll repeat COMEY DID THIS ONLY TO HELP HIMSELF in the coming Clinton presidency!
Bottom line is that Comey might have gotten Trump elected by talking for the second time about an ongoing Clinton investigation, against rules. McCabe also said to the WSJ that the FBI was justified in continuing their investigation of the Clinton Foundation. Yet, conservatives deduce theses lifelong Republicans were in the high and for Clinton. No wonder GDP continues to shift to blue states.
That all sounds very damaging. And yet, the Republicans in the Senate continue to march in lockstep in support of the putsch. No matter how much damaging and damming evidence comes to light about the malfeasance of the DOJ and FBI, their lips are sealed. In fact it seems that the release of bad news for the Deep State generally prompts the typical Congressional Republican to issue threats to Trump to not interfere with the criminal actors.
.. the principle of inertia assures that Mueller’s team of 17 pro-Clinton prosecutors will toil on.
They’ll toil on because they have the explicit backing of the entirety of the GOP Senate, including such erstwhile champions of conservatism as Mike Lee and Ted Cruz.
Some in the senate. Self-interest is a much more powerful justification than virtue. Often virtue is only in the eyes of those professing their virtue like most progressives and democrats have a wont to do.
“Erstwhile” champions of conservatism? Since when are champions of conservatism supposed to throw away their principles to support an orange dictator who isn’t even that conservative?
I thank Roger Kimball for this article but i think it is superficial and misses the mark. Comey justifies his actions as FBI Director as “dirty hands” morality: meaning that nothing good can be done without getting one’s hands dirty (there is some truth to this). Comey frequently cites Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr in order to legitimatize his actions. What is not stated is that ALL presidents have apparently used and expected the intelligence services to do their political bidding. The way Comey, Mueller, Rosenstein and McCabe perceived their actions is that they should not be punished for doing such bidding for politicians. It’s part of their unwritten job description.
The FBI are cops and cops have a culture of silence to “protect their own”. This is why high FBI officials appointed by Republicans (Rosenstein, Comey, Mueller) are trying to fight Trump: because they believe they shouldn’t be punished for doing the political dirty work of the prior administration.
It was Niccolo Machiavelli who purportedly advocated dirty hands morality in order to do the lesser evil. But this “evil” image of Machiavelli is a creation of Hollywood, liberal academia and cheap novels. What Machiavelli wrote is: You “cannot under cover of good, do evil” (Discourses I:46). What Machiavelli wrote is that in an emergency where the state is threatened for its existence, it is often imperative to do evil such as Truman dropping A-bombs on Japan or Churchill failing to warn the City of Coventry during WWII that it was to be bombed by the German air force because to do so would have been to reveal that the British had broken the German secret codes. Machiavelli made a distinction between doing evil in an emergency, civil insurrection or to fight corruption and doing gratuitous evil. Examples of gratuitous, self serving evil would be selling the country out for the Clinton Foundation, “wagging the dog” of distraction by Bill Clinton when he bombed a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan to divert attention from his sex scandals, and the corruption of the FBI by Obama and Hillary for political purposes.
IOW – Comey and his inner circle of conspirators had to do evil things, but their intentions were honorable and that’s what really matters.
Comey claims he played both sides of the fence when he was FBI Director by antagonizing both presidential candidates during the 2016 election. He closed, then re-opened, the Hillary email issue. But underneath his administration were agents such as McCabe, Strzok, Page and others doing very politicized things to undermine the election of Trump. And, of course, Comey’s wife received a $675,000 contribution from Hillary Clinton associates and the Democratic Party for her campaign to be a state senator in Virginia (she lost). It is difficult to see such actions as anything but politicized, weaponized and gratuitously self serving rather than “doing evil” in the best interests of the nation. And when Trump came into office he met with Comey to ask him if he could be loyal to his administration and the country, to which Comey responded by taking notes of the meeting and handing them to a very liberal law professor confidante (no doubt with a self serving and self protective spin in the notes). Comey put on a public face of impartiality and good intentions but professionally he had knowledge that his agents were conducting activities that were un-Constitutional and threatened the separation of powers. Repeat Machiavelli: “You cannot under cover of good, do evil”. Even if evil actions were done in the higher interests of the nation, that doesn’t make evil, good. Evil is evil but can be justified but only in a national emergency, a civil rebellion or to fight internal corruption; none of which were involved in Comey’s actions that I can discern.
Pretty sure every democrat and independent in the country wants to see an inflation of virtue.
We have a president who admits to lying to heads of state. Bangs pornstars. Attacks his own government. Refuses to defend us against Russian cyber attacks.
Lets inflate American virtues. For gods sake before its too late.
Bill Clinton has not been in office for nearly 20 years. Why bring him up?
What pornstar did Trump bang as President?
Well, he certainly isn’t getting any from Melania.
That’s a dodge.
I doubt he’s up to it anymore. He and his “wife” sleep in separate bedrooms.
There is so much of what you write that you wish was true but simply is not.
Clinton: Pay for play at the CF, Sells U1 to Russian oligarch-owned Rosatom and gets 145 M in ‘gifts’, colludes with DoJ and FBI to pay for ‘salatious and unverified’ garbage which then is used to obtain FISA warrants, uses unsercured server to handle highly classified docs… etc etc.
All of this and more in now under investigation. We will learn about the collapse of virtue under the Obama/Clinton era.
The Uranium One story is a lie.
Two committees (Oversight and Intel) are investigating “why the Obama administration allowed a Russian company to acquire U.S. uranium mines”, despite their being convictions made against the Russian principles of Rosatom in the US.
Stay tuned. They don’t usually investigate ‘lies’.
Well actually they DO investigate lies – it’s politics after all. But they won’t find anything. And why doesn’t Trump just shut down the mine if it is such a threat to our national security?
Right, Uranium One. Try to keep up, Bob. https://www.snopes.com/news/2018/02/07/doj-contradicts-republican-claims/ I hope you understand that since the GOP controls the House, their chairpersons can investigate whatever they want (recall the nothingburger that was “Benghazi!”).
It is far from over. The GOP is not whitewashing these investigations for political ends, as did the Obama era folks. Lots of new evidence recently presented in the U1 scandal. I do keep up. Let me help you:
https://saraacarter.com/fbi-informant-uranium-one-breaks-silence-today/
The fact that Victoria Toensing is the “informant’s” attorney speaks volumes.
OIG report is released the same day as Comey’s sanctimonious, self-aggrandizing screed.
Poetic justice.
Veritas.
Most of the significant claims in this article have already been shown to be false: and Comey’s book is now top of the Amazon best seller list. People seem to be buying into the idea that Comey is the good guy here. And Mueller. Not to mention that most of the leaders of the FBI involved were Republican appointees and themselves registered Republicans. But hey, we Democrats love to watch Republicans shoot themselves in the foot. They do it all the time.
“People seem to be buying into the idea that Comey is the good guy here. And Mueller. ”
Well you are, obviously. But the continuing decline in viewer/readership of the media outlets pushing that idea indicates you may be rather off-base about what people in general are buying into.
Hillary clinton writes bad books too.
Nobody beleives.
Leftists are buying the book because it supports their belief that Trump is a totally worthless person.
Even if it’s true though that Trump is a totally worthless person he’s still infinitely better than anything on the hate whitey, open borders ( the border state of California is now a “Sanctuary State” ) ever more insane left.
No, leftists are buying this book. https://www.amazon.com/Day-Life-Marlon-Bundo/dp/B07BFJF8PP/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1521495938&sr=8-3&keywords=marlon+bundo+book
Drump is TOTALLY correct. Close down Mueller. There was no Russian collusion…the investigation is a Cold Coup to nullify the election cooked up with foreign agents (Steele and Downer) colluding with Obama DoJ execs.
I detest Drump but don’t support nullifying elections and assaulting the
Constitution. Shut it down now. Prosecute the perps at DoJ, starting with
McCabe.
Comey and McCabe aren’t just criminals.
They’re traitors.
Anyone who supports Trump is a traitor.
So half the nation are traitors? People still mad about the election are wimps.
I got ethics pounded into me in college by a prof I liked and respected, and I can tell you right now Comey is not ethical. He overlooked Hillary’s gross misdeeds for supposedly the greater good. She and her crew should have been indicted, and he knows it. Intent was not needed in cases of national security violations.
I said it often while Mr. Obama was in the Oval Office, and I will say it again: there is nothing more dangerous than a man with high ideals and no principles.
You think Trump has principles? Trump’s fans are absolute morons!
I would contest that opinion… I contend that the most dangerous man in office is an unbalanced narcissist… with no ideals and no principles.
HB
“Two days before the polls open he says that the new evidence turned out to be nothing of consequence.”
This was a clear case of trying to whitewash Clinton and swing the election her way, by Comey. If he hadn’t “reopened” and then closed the case, the drip-drip-drip public perception of a possible bombshell in the new evidence would’ve been devastating to Clinton. As it turned out it was impossible to salvage her candidacy. Not even the collusion between media, FBI/DoJ, DNC and Kremlin could do it.
When Seven Days In May was published 54 years and one month ago, the author envisioned a military coup.
Little did he know how close he was to the truth; only the deep state DOJ, FBI, CIA, State Dept. and NSA as villains is different. But the “holier than thou” attitude is the same. So is the treachery and traitorship.
There is no deep state. Take medication for that paranoia.
how can you say this? Blindness…
Of course there is a deep state, and it needs to be drained.
Take a gander at this, then say that!!
https://disqus.com/home/discussion/channel-whatswrongwithpeople/the_big_picture_in_video_summary/
Sadly, you have it exactly backwards. Trump, Sessions, et al. are engaged in a slo-mo Saturday Night Massacre: Yates, Comey, McCabe. Meanwhile, Sessions is doing everything he can to stay out of the line of fire (good luck with that, dude; when push comes to shove, you are completely expendable). https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a19479621/mccabe-firing/?src=nl&mag=esq&list=nl_enl_news&date=031918
Why is it the current fashion for leftists to begin every argument with “sadly”? I do not get it. There is nothing sad about hardball politics. Our nation is in a cool civil war, trying to keep it from becoming a real one. You leftists have perverted just about everything, and do not have the grace of historical underpinning to your “educations” to know that you have. The Sat. Nite Massacre involved the firing of the Spec. Invest. team to cover up. Yates was fired for rank insubordination; she flatly refused a lawful order from her boss, the President. Comey was fired due to his untruthful testimony and lack of candor; he will most likely now be charged with perjury and obstruction of justice. McCabe was fired after the DOJ Office of Inspector General and the FBI OPR found him to have illegally leaked to the news media and worse, lied under oath. Read the report for yourself. Trump did not fire McCabe; he merely gloated that McCabe is gone. Given McCabe’s effort to prevent Trump’s election and his efforts to unseat him after election, few blame his gloating. AND, quoting ANYTHING from a former soft-porn-turned leftist rag publication such as Esquire only erodes your image to strangers.
When the OIG report comes out late this month or April, will you say that IG Horowitz was in cahoots with Trump? You’d better read his background first, so you do not publicly embarrass yourself further.
First, you say “Read the report for yourself.” You don’t link to it. Where is this report?
Then, you tell me the IG’s report is not yet available. Is that the report you want me to read? Do you have an advance copy?
I realize that Horowitz was appointed by Obama. So?
Look at this!!
https://disqus.com/home/discussion/channel-whatswrongwithpeople/the_big_picture_in_video_summary/
I’m not your mom; get your own breakfast. Read the WSJ account for now, the official report later in a couple of weeks. I do not link. If you are involved in discussing politics, you must learn the adult habit of reading all points of view, and turning off Maddow or Hannity. Try Realclearpolitics.com; it puts out all POVs. Horowitz is the IG’s IG. Speaking of Obama: he is the ONLY President to EVER, since the IG oversight act in 1978, to say that the IG does not hold purview over ALL branches of government, and he lost, when Horowitz sued him. BO hid so many illegal and unscrupulous acts that he is only now beginning to be found out. He was a legacy-hunter, a communist out to “fundamentally transform” the US. But he is an amateur. Pros realize a legacy is only as good as the next few admins do not tear it down.
Your mother should wash your mouth out with soap for lying. You don’t have the report, so don’t act like you do. The WSJ, owned by the Murdochs, cants to the right.
You’ll do better concentrating on the malfeasance of the current occupant of the oval, then dumping on HRC or Obama. Those ships have sailed.
You are an idiot. You cannot argue, only attempt flaccid insults and spew platitudes in an attempt to prop up your fallen traitor leaders. Good luck with special needs classes and then later, prison. No matter what you read, or where you read it, you will always find a way to denigrate facts you choose to not admit. The very first sign of a weak intellect. Having a keyboard in mom’s basement is not a prerequsite to knowledge, as you have proven in front of the whole world. What next? Going to toilet paper my house, chubby?
You criticize people for hurling insults, yet that’s all you do.
Since you have diagnosed me as having a weak intellect, I wonder if you will answer a few questions in hopes of enlightening me. Basically, I am curious to know if there’s a line that if Trump crosses it you will agree it’s time for him to go.
For example, if Stormy Daniels releases Trump dick pics, will that cause you to abandon him?
If a few more bimbos come forward with claims of Trumpian infidelities that appear to be valid, will that be enough?
If Trump promotes and signs off on another tax cut for the wealthy, will that be enough?
If Trump promotes and signs off on cuts to Social Security and Medicare, will that cause you to abandon him?
If Trump fires Rod Rosenstein, will that suffice?
If he fires Jeff Sessions, will that be enough?
If he fires Robert Mueller, will that be the last straw?
If he starts a nuclear war in the Middle East, will that be it?
If he starts a nuclear war in North Korea, will that do it?
Are you simply a Forever Trumper who will stand by him regardless and continue to blame HRC and Obama for the problems Trump is creating?
Weak intellects want to know.
You are attempting cross examination. Courts require leading questions for cross. Neither your questions, nor their content qualify.
Ask similar questions of yourself of what offenses any of the Clintons, Comey, Rosenstein, McCabe, Clapper, and Brennan would make you abandon them. Oops, they have already been shown to have broken the law.
But you will not abandon your idols, as you subscribe to cults of personality, like all leftists, except perhaps Trotsky. Look what that did for him.
Your last self-description is fully correct, indeed.
I’m concerned oldpoliscimajor! I came to you seeking your wisdom and you evaded my questions. Instead you lashed out at me and others. This is not good oldpoliscimajor. You need help. I suggest you visit the church of your choice and confer with your minister, priest or rabbi. I think he may be able to help you get help.
P.S. Courts do not require leading questions on cross-examination. Not at all. Courts generally don’t allow leading questions on direct examination. They permit leading questions on cross but do not require them.
Sadly…..you.
When they’re both in jail who’s going to be on top
Trump will be the top, and Sessions will be the bottom.
Poor baby your gerbils escape?
Do you like DATO? If so, give my brown spider a DFK and I release the gerbils into your mouth.
That would be your liberal types – normal people don’t do the homosexual thing only the weirdo’s and whack jobs normally seen in their pirrus’s eating tofu. But enjoy your fantasy Bruce – and make sure you share your sheep dip
I replied to RickQPublic, not you. Be gone.
I look forward to seeing your efforts to rationalize the findings of Horowitz’ report. I doubt it’s going to say what you want, Mr. Kimball.
Meanwhile, let’s get back to the big picture. https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-opening-argument-in-the-trial-of-donald-j-trump
TNT causes big explosions. The IG report is why McCabe is not longer being paid by your tax dollars. I am sure it is not going to say what you wish it to.
Drain the swamp.
So how does Sessions know the IG report justifies firing McCabe? The report is not being issued until later this month or next. If the report already exists, then why isn’t it released now? Is this another Nunes Memo gambit? If it doesn’t exist, then isn’t Sessions jumping the gun? Shouldn’t he dismiss McCabe in concert with the report’s release? Recall how the Rosenstein memo was supposed to justify Comey’s firing–until it didn’t?
Here’s another view. https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2018/03/andrew-mccabe-is-completely-innocent-of-wrongdoing/
Part of it was released to Session. pay attention.
So he gets to see it and we don’t? Which part? If it’s good enough for him, why can’t we see the part he saw? Because it’s largely irrelevant to the firing that Trump wanted.
The FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility had recommended that McCabe be fired, citing findings from the Justice Department’s inspector general’s report, which is expected to be released within weeks.
Do try to keep up.
Oh, but I am keeping up. Sessions violated his recusal by terminating McCabe, but he was so eager to save his own butt he could not resist Trump’s insistence that McCabe be terminated. In an ethical White House, McCabe might have been reprimanded or terminated after release of the IG’s full report. Certainly, there would not have been a rush to deprive McCabe of medical and pension benefits. This is just a redux of the Comey firing. https://lawfareblog.com/president-and-his-lawyers-part-ii-attorney-general-and-saturday-night-pre-massacre
Remember who recommended this firing: The FBI itself, who is doing their own seperate investigation.
Right, and the FBI supposedly recommended Comey’s firing. Only not really.
The FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility had recommended that McCabe be fired, citing findings from the Justice Department’s inspector general’s report, which is expected to be released within weeks.
Read more.
Trump fans are total idiots.
If I were a leftist I’d be embarrassed to have something as stupid as you on my side.
If you were a leftist you would think he was the second smartest fool after Obama.
it amazes me how blind and partisan the anti-Trumpers can be. You seem to approve of the weaponization of the agency’s of state for political ends. This must be corrected, and now is. Yet your response is to villify the law abiders, and applaud the criminals. Shame on you.
Blind?
Trump says he will never play golf like Obama .. the sycophants scream and cheer…
Trump golfs every weekend and not a peep..
I could list 86 things trump said and was wildly praised for amid screams and cheers and then IMMEDIATELY did the exact opposite once he was sworn in ..
and not one fucking peep from the CON servatives..
“Trump golfs EVERY weekend…”
Lie. You now have zero credibility.
“Donald Trump Has Spent Nearly a Quarter of His Days as President at His Golf Courses
At least he’s consistent (at something).”
“With his appearance Saturday at his Palm Beach County, Florida, golf course, the president hit a new milestone: 100 days of golfing at his own properties, according to CNN. It’s a remarkable feat for a man who’s been president for 407 days. ”
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/03/donald-trump-spends-a-lot-of-time-golfing-for-a-president/
You lied.
Period.
Here is trump telling his supporters he will be to busy gold
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SItU_PMMeA
“Trump golfs every weekend and not a peep..”
LIE
You mean like candidate Obama opposing the Patriot Act and President Obama expanding it?
Or candidate Obama promising to reject public campaign funding before he accepted it?
Or candidate Obama opposing rendition and President Obama expanding it?
Or candidate Obama promising to hold ACA hearings on live TV and President Obama locking the door?
Or candidate Obama promising to end the Bush tax cuts and President Obama confirming them?
Or candidate Obama promising not to hire lobbyists and President Obama hiring them?
Or candidate Obama promising to close Gitmo while President Obama kept it open?
Things like that? Not one peep from the left.
Trump is not the anti-Obama.
LOL .. Is Obama President? How long you going to drag that dead horse out and ignore the SELF ADMITTING sex offender and draft dodging coward and criminal trump?
Indictments under Obama by republicans? 0
Indictments under trump by republicans? 14
LOL you keep talking about obama and clinton as the orange cheeto fires more staffers, more staffers flee in terror and staffers indicted..
Just report him for impersonating others
fans? its way past fan. hes their idol of hate and stupidity
Remember when the Rosenstein memo was supposed to justify the Comey firing–until it didn’t? It may be the same with the IG’s report. https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2018/03/andrew-mccabe-is-completely-innocent-of-wrongdoing/
I don’t think I have an inflated sense of virtue. I’m not super virtuous. That said, I am not a murderer. I am not a pedophile. I do not steal. I do not vandalize. I do not assault. I do not beat my wife or child. And I do not support Donald Trump. It’s not that I am super virtuous, I am simply not that low.
not super aware of what is happening, are you.
Drain the swamp
Well said. Thanks.
Your room temperature IQ must dazzle at parties.
Virtue is an indispensable character trait in those we elect. No constitutional separation of powers and checks and balances can fully protect the republic from the ill effects of corrupt politicians and bureaucrats. Elect virtuous representatives, appoint virtuous bureaucrats.
Unfortunately, Comey, Brennan, McCabe et al are not amongst those numbered as virtuous..
Trump is virtuous??? Hahahaha!!!!
Liberal lying sacks of sh1t, Comey and Brennan, are laughable at pontificating on “ethics” and “honesty”.
Both are graduates of the “Felonia von Pantsuit school of honesty and trustworthiness”.
“McCabe said “I chose to share [information about the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server] with a reporter through my public affairs officer and a legal counselor. As deputy director, I was one of only a few people who had the authority to do that. It was not a secret, it took place over several days, and others, including the director, were aware of the interaction with the reporter” (my emphasis).”
Here McCabe says he has the authority to do this..
“Asked if he had “ever been an anonymous source in news reports about matters relating to the Trump investigation or the Clinton investigation” or whether he had “ever authorized someone else at the FBI to be an anonymous source in news reports about the Trump investigation or the Clinton investigation,” Comey replied “never” and “no.””
To which Rodger Kimball responds with “What, never? Well, hardly ever.”
Comey was asked if HE released info .. he said no then he was asked if he AUTHORIZED he said No.
McCabe did NOT need to be authorized .. he already had the authority it came with his job title.
Well, Mr. Editor and Publisher of The New Criterion and President and Publisher of Encounter Books, you’re nothing but a pimp. The problem is not who John Brennan voted for in 1976, believe it or not. The problem is the dimwitted, ignorant sleazeball in the White House now. Try to focus on that.
hey lets all join trump university..
opps that was closed down as a fraud and trump had to pay 25 million .. I wonder if he started trump univ. when he was banging that porn star while married to melenia or was he banging that playboy model while he married to Marla .. oh wait he was banging melenia when he was married to marla..
sheesh it is hard to keep up with the evangelical christians pick as mister morality and family values man
can you just imagine what the right wing would have did if there was even a HINT that President Obama had had an affair?
So much butthurt, comrade. Put some vodka on that red ass.
why is it that conservative men are ALWAYS and FOREVER worried about other men’s butts? It is like an unending tirade from conservative men .. butt hurt butt hurt butt hurt…
is that ALL that is ever on the minds of conservative men? Other men’s butts and if they are hurting?
Trump will die in jail
And if he doesn’t, there’s always the Brooklyn Bridge for you.
Well if there is one thing Trump supporters know nothing and care even less about its virtue. It’s downright hilarious to see any Trump supporter criticize anyone about ethics.
Christopher Wray knew of McCabe’s wrongdoing in January.
Why didn’t HE fire McCabe?
What a bunch of pansies! Afraid to do their darn job.
that’s what I was wondering
Too many misstatements in this article to name them all. Kimball must have studied McCarthy.
Mueller has spent his life in service of his country. Kimball isn’t worth of licking his boots.
you apparently know nothing about him….check out article on Mueller by Ashman linked on Drudge….comments are also very informative….that is The Federalist
So to prove a point in one conservative opinion website I need to check comments on another conservative opinion website. That’s like fact checking Pravda with Tass.
So Trump can be forgiven for multiple bankruptcies of every complex business he has run, and Mueller is incompetent, as well as being a Clinton conspirator.
Maybe it’s because Mueller is investigating Trump, and doing it leak free and professionally, and the way Trump is acting, he can’t let that continue to the end. I wonder why.
You’re running out of cliches. Go back to your media for a refill.
What, people can gracefully admit to being wrong? Don’t tell NT.
If Hillary had won she’d be using the federal government to grind working class whites, the “deplorables”, into the dirt and the hate whitey msm would be cheering her on for doing so.
Regardless of his flaws, Trump is still infinitely better than anything on the left. Just imagine all federal agencies being run by partisan hacks like Lois Lerner or a leftist fanatic like her being appointed to the Supreme Court.
Hillary totally agreed with BLM that white racism was oppressing blacks which means the hate whitey fanaticism being promoted in our universities would also be taught in our high schools, elementary schools and no doubt even in our kindergartens.
“Inside a Public School Social Justice Factory”
http://www.weeklystandard.com/inside-a-public-school-social-justice-factory/article/2011402
“Controversial ‘Problem of Whiteness’ course reintroduced at UW-Madison”
http://www.thecollegefix.com/post/40421/
The race obsessed left is insane. That’s what we’d have if Hillary had won.
I don’t care if Trump is a criminal or if he’s working for Putin. At least Trump and Putin are bright enough to realize that without borders we have no country and at least Trump and Putin don’t despise me for being white as does the hate whitey left. Does America even still exist as a country?
Max. Trump is deranged ( cause he is nervous about what they will find) and is acting like a king. Firing people left and right ,commenting on cases for his own cause!! I thought you so called republicans ( unlike me a real republican) like limited government and not a monarch. You want King trump. You right wingers are the danger to our democracy. There will always be some deep state beaurocracy under any government so talk of getting rid of the boogey man swamp is fodder for the gullible.
And you are most likely a Russian troll.
Nope, he’s just another USA citizen who has come to realize our lives and perception of same are run by and dictated by the likes of career politicians, bureaucrats who have come to view themselves as our governors and a self-impotent (sic), immature MSM. We are taking the “shake up” we can get.
Dave is a fool, impossible to reason with. All white leftists are way beyond simply stupid. They are flat out insane. California, a border state, is now a Sanctuary State which tells people that once they make it across the border they’ll be safe and protected from deportation. What do dummies like Dave and his fellow white leftists think of this? Some think it’s wonderful, most just shrug it off.
Our universities are now teaching courses like “The Problem of Whiteness.” What do dummies like Dave and his fellow white leftists think of this? Some think it’s wonderful, most just shrug it off.
Dummy Dave and his fellow leftists love to squeak about how conservative whites are racist and antisemitic. So what did they think of Farrakhan preaching his usual hate against white people in general and Jews in particular last February in Chicago? As always, our wonderfully progressive left has no problem with bigotry when it comes from blacks or their fellow leftists.
The left is insane. I’ve always liked reading history and when I’d read of countries like Germany, Japan, Russia and China which became quite insane for periods of time during the dreadful twentieth century I’d wonder what it would feel like to live in a society that had become insane. Now I know what it feels like.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/kass/ct-met-anti-semitism-democrats-farrakhan-20180306-story.html
Give my regards to Vlad.
Do you know Max personally? He fits the profile of a Russian troll perfectly. They are not that hard to spot. And the fact that he likes Putin clinches it.
First you are ill, that notwithstanding however, if he’s a troll then you are the trolley to hell because at least he makes sense.
All of these people must be jailed, or otherwise removed.
Muellar is working on it.
It’s remarkable how well the morality of this sanctimonious bunch has so well suited its members’ self-interest at every turn. Who would have noticed? Well, the Trump voters knew because they bore the brunt of our elites’ campaign for national suicide. And the insiders of both parties, deep in their stony hearts, knew what their own scam was. Our media befuddled the rest too much to catch on.
If only we could find a way to get rid of Lois Lerner’s pension too. These people NEED to be, and to feel, punished. They are, frankly, scum. And if they had had their way, the Wicked Witch of the West would now occupy the Oval Office. We would ALL be suffering and the world would be MORE dangerous. Misguided people like Lerner and McCabe are not only ignorant, they are treasonous.
I think this is the correct link to the referenced Tablet article about Brennan. http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/255020/how-cia-director-john-brennan-targeted-james-comey
comey did indeed exercise a higher loyalty – to the demicrat party over the United States constitution.
“Those who know what’s best for us, must RISE and save us from ourselves”. N.P.
Who ever said people like Comey, Brennan, McCabe, etc. weren’t supposed to be political?
Triggered by POTUS’ tweets, these supposedly non-political disgraced public servants respond by confirming what political hacks they really are.
What Mr. Kimball nails here is a truth conservatives so easily and so often let slip by: the opposite of conservative is not liberal, it is ideology. Whether of the sanctimonious narcissistic kind or the the formulaic platonic kind, ideology tries to mold human behavior into service to a higher law that always turns out to be the opposite of reality, and a horror. Ideologues must be dealt with harshly sometimes, like common criminals. Often it is better to make fun of them and let them implode from self-righteous indignation. But the Comeys and Brennans of the world have no sense of humor, and probably will have to be thrown in jail.
And venal. A big part of their attitude is that they’re comfortable sharing the fruits of power at the public trough with the Dems, and don’t want thei seats taken away from them. Another good agument for term limits, imho.
Don’t feel ashamed, feel happy. Can you imagine how bad it would have been had you been right?
COMEY AND BRENNAN WRITING ABOUT INTEGRITY AND A HIGHER CALLING. WOW! AND THEY SAY THE LEFT DOESN’T HAVE A SENSE OF HUMOR. COME ON, YOU CAN’T MAKE THIS KIND OF HUMOR UP. NEXT THING YOU KNOW DAN RATHER WILL BE TEACHING A COLLEGE COURSE CALLED “INTEGRITY IN JOURNALISM”. OH! THATS RIGHT HE ALREADY DOES. HAHAHAHAHAHA https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b644ea8c26aeb1f317d3328eb85bf6a2d97e4b76502c077a5eb4e69f8e4a6321.jpg