Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Does This Pose Make Me Look Guilty?
Replace the book he’s holding with a mug shot sign.
So … the James Comey Book Tour has had its first week. An extremely rocky voyage so far. It seems to this observer that it is about to hit an iceberg, a la the Titanic.
Just today, we have Kim Strassel at the WSJ [paywall] with 11 questions (her column had space restrictions for adding more) that an honest interviewer would ask the former head of the FBI. We have Jim Geraghty at NR [link] echoing Mike Wallace about the catty gossipiness and pointing out the yuge blanks that need filling about Hillary, McCabe, and Lynch. At The Hill … Jonathan Turley appropriately titles his article … FBI A House Of Lies In Comey Era.
And at The Federalist, we have the esteemed Mollie Hemingway [Comey’s memos indicate the dossier briefing of Trump was a setup] who takes apart the now recently published memos of this disgrace of a man and a former head of the FBI. Sad.
Ms. Hemingway makes a very effective case that this man set up the incoming President of the United States for the public reporting of the most salacious details of what Comey also testified to Congress was “unverified,” and that although he intentionally omitted it from his testimony, he knew it was produced by the Hillary Clinton campaign as “opposition research.”
Here’s Mollie’s concluding paragraph:
That [Comey’s firing by Trump] led to Comey leaking multiple memos in order to get a special counsel appointed out of revenge. That special counsel has utterly distracted multiple agencies and embroiled all three branches of government at the highest levels. All over a document that was secretly funded by Hillary Clinton and the DNC, contracted by a Democrat research firm with ties to the Kremlin, and authored by a shady foreign spy whose relationship with the FBI was terminated because he lied to them.
Treason, by any other name, is still treason.
Published in General
Go think Comey is laying the groundwork for an insanely plea. BTW it is not possible to give his book less than 4 stars on Amazon.
Ah the 4 star comic Columbo that I know. Your first joke in the OP gets my “Funny of the Month” award. I knew when i saw that photo of Comey standing there that it was vaguely familiar. And how right you are – that book and its cover should be replaced with the mugshot info.
If he was only making a fool of himself it would be one thing, but he is making life harder for those at the FBI. Then again, that could be a blessing.
LOL good one.
The background should read, Barnes and Nobler, since Comey’s there….
I heard about that on Rush’s show Friday. I’m an amazon prime member, so I went to try posting a one star rating. No, I didn’t buy his book–just read enough excerpts to know I don’t want to buy it. I got a two line message saying I couldn’t post a review, because of possibly causing a negative skewing of the result. So I tried a 5 star rating—same answer. Called Amazon, was told since I didn’t buy the book FROM THEM, I couldn’t post a review. Not buying it just so I can trash it!
Covering one’s genitals is a sign of feeling vulnerable.
Mollie’s message needs to be trumpeted (pun intended) from the mouth of every Republican running for office. They should highlight all this turmoil we have today is due to the work of the Democrat-Mainstream Media machine, which should be touted as a single organization hell-bent on turning this nation into a third-world has-been (seen all the homeless pictures from California lately?) . . .
Our message should be a simple choice: more economic prosperity or endless political investigations that find nothing? You choose, America.
The list of real journalists whom I can trust has gotten very small. I’ll look to you @columbo to keep us current!
Sharyl Attkisson, Peter Schweitzer, …..
Jonathan Chait rebuts Mollie’s absurd conspiratorial premise:
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/04/republicans-believe-comey-used-pee-tape-to-trap-trump.html
Chait provides an alternative perspective that should be read to those of both Hemingway and York. Fine. But that’s all it is. I wish that you’d taken the time to to discuss Hemingway’s “absurd conspiratorial premise” in the thread devoted to it.
C
Chait:
Chait seems to be asking what Comey should have done with the dossier. The answer is when the FBI asked Steele to provide evidence of the credibility of his sources and instead of doing so went to the press with his uncorroborated allegations, Comey should have done what he did: cut off contact with Steele.
Then, he should have independently corroborated the allegations, or failing that, thrown the dossier in the trash as the unreliable Democrat oppo research that he should have known it was.
Chait seems to be arguing that the fact that instead of doing these things, the hyper-political Obama security apparatus briefed Pres. Obama and congress on the unreliable political oppo research, somehow legitimates the dossier.
I guess Chait is right that the dossier was already newsworthy enough without the Comey briefing of Trump. However, I would argue that the story was the Obama administration’s shameful use of political oppo research to investigate political opponents, not the fact of the briefing itself.
Agreed, and I’d like to take the time to rebut Chait point by point, because he is guilty of what he accuses Mollie Hemingway of doing: leaving out context, but I’d rather take a nap.
It was newsworthy but was it newsworthy enough? We’ve certainly learned that nothing is more newsworthy in the eyes of CNN than something even more negative about Trump.
And Chait’s treatment of York’s piece strikes me as rather simplistic, so that has to figure into evaluating his perspective as well.
Factually Mollies premise is absurd given that CNN already had multiple “hooks”. Mollies conspiracy theory is that Comey’s informing Trump about the dossier was an operation intended to give CNN a news hook to report on it. CNN already knew that multiple areas of government had been briefed on the document.
This is a fine answer to a question Chait didn’t ask.
Comey seemed to have intimate knowledge of CNN’s motives at the time. I will defer to his expertise.
As I noted above, it’s a matter of perspective whether one last juicy hook was even better. Mollie is advancing a theory and it certainly should be taken as such. But, if nothing else, the CNN story following Comey’s first meeting with Trump makes it less than absurd.
That, and that the CNN reporter covering the DOJ was Valerie Jarrett’s daughter.
I have to admit some ignorance here: is it customary for the president and the congressional intelligence agencies to be briefed on uncorroborated, raw intelligence? I mean, at that point the dossier was little more than rumor and innuendo. If that’s the kind of intelligence that POTUS and the intel committees usually hear from the intel chiefs, then the fact that they were briefed on the dossier was not newsworthy. But I tend to assume that congressional and presidential briefing materials are made of stronger stuff than this.
Yes, Chait totally glosses over York’s point and ignores the context of the loyalty demands. In the full context of Comey’s memo, the conversation basically went like this:
Here’s some context that Chait ignores: the content of the last meeting with Comey (Jan. 6, 2017) did leak to the press, so Trump had reason to be suspicious of Comey.
In the context, Trump’s words can easily be interpreted as indirectly asking Comey if he leaked the Russia pee thing to the media. It’s possible that Comey misinterpreted and/or misrepresented that intent in his memo and later in the media. It’s also possible that Trump transitioned from the topic of FBI leaking to some sort of medieval/mafia demand for loyalty, but that just doesn’t make any sense to me in the context. Furthermore, Chait neither addresses the contextual aspect of York’s interpretation, nor makes an argument for his interpretation with regard to the immediate context of the conversation.
If that’s all it is then why didn’t POTUS just say so? Instead he denied even asking for Comeys loyalty in the first place.
I believe he denied asking for “personal loyalty”. Maybe, in the context of the conversation, he believes that both he and Comey understood that he was asking for something more akin to confidentiality. It’s very believable that Trump did not choose the optimal word to convey his meaning. It’s possible that Trump is denying Comey’s interpretation.
Furthermore, Comey has made this demand out to be a mafia-type loyalty pledge, when in fact the context of the conversation doesn’t support that interpretation.
From NPR:
I’m not sure what POTUS is denying here, and I’m not sure he knows.
I haven’t even gotten to the point of understanding what’s wrong with asking for loyalty. It appears to me that Trump critics can’t come up with clear evidence of obstruction, so this word has to be spun both expansively and negatively.
I tend towards Occam’s razor. Trump has a history of demanding and favoring loyalty of his subordinates.
Personal loyalty to a politicians over loyalty to ones oath of office? One has a place in a Republic the other does not.
Maybe he did demand loyalty, didn’t get it, fired Comey, had two scoops of Rocky Road, and then put more money in my paycheck. Hillary’s right: