"As close to treason as it gets!"

Jack Murphy reports in Neon Nettle,

...President Donald Trump's personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, has predicted that Attorney General William Barr will prosecute former FBI Director James Comey with treason. Giuliani said Barr is preparing to bring charges against Comey for his role in the recently dropped case against former national security adviser Michael Flynn. Appearing on The Cats Roundtable radio show, Giuliani told John Catsimatidis: “I think they have Comey."

...Giuliani described Comey’s actions as “close to treason as you can get."

...He also claimed former CIA Director John Brennan "orchestrated" the effort.“They wanted to take out the lawfully elected president of the United States. And they wanted to do it by lying," Giuliani said."Submitting false affidavits. Using phony witnesses. In other words, they wanted to do it by illegal means," he added."What is overthrowing the government by illegal means? … It’s treason,” he said.

Read more here.

"the FBI is slowly being forced to acknowledge its terrible mistakes while James Comey and his crew ran the bureau."

The Editorial Board of the Wall Street Journal writes,

Well, what do you know. The Justice Department now believes that at least two of its four secret surveillance warrants against former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page lacked probable cause.

That striking admission was disclosed in a Jan. 7 judicial order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that was declassified Thursday. Presiding FISA Judge James Boasberg wrote that “DOJ assesses that with respect to the applications in Docket Numbers 17-375 and 17-679, ‘if not earlier, there was insufficient predication to establish probable cause to believe that [Carter] Page was acting as an agent of a foreign power.’”

Those were warrants sought by the FBI that we now know, thanks to reporting by our Kimberley Strassel and Inspector General Michael Horowitz, were based in major part on false information ginned up by Christopher Steele, who was financed by Democrats. Judge Boasberg’s order says Justice doesn’t “take a position” on the other two FISA warrants on Mr. Page, which could mean they are still being investigated by U.S. Attorney John Durham.

Recall that the fourth warrant was approved in June 2017, after Robert Mueller was named special counsel. That could affect the legality of information he collected under the order and may have used in prosecutions. Recall, too, the media sneers at anyone who questioned the provenance of the warrants.

This is good news for Mr. Page and the country. The former adviser is getting his reputation back after three years of smears, and the FBI is slowly being forced to acknowledge its terrible mistakes while James Comey and his crew ran the bureau. Let’s hope there is more transparency and accountability to come, including the public release of much more information related to the FISA warrants and the genesis of the counterintelligence probe of the Trump campaign.

Read more here.

"The scandal hiding in plain sight is our intelligence establishment’s misuse of its authority to muck around in the 2016 election."

Holman Jenkins writes in the Wall Street Journal,

The scandal hiding in plain sight is our intelligence establishment’s misuse of its authority to muck around in the 2016 election.

...Let’s call a spade a spade. The media is a big part of the coverup. When the Justice Department inspector general issued his damning report on Mr. Comey, not one media outlet in the Factiva database told its readers about the existence of its classified appendix except this column and Britain’s Daily Mail tabloid.

...And while flogging fake revelations from the nonexistent Trump-Russia conspiracy, the mainstream press ignored a public plea, uttered before Congress, by the Justice Department’s own inspector general that the secret Comey information be declassified so the people and their representatives can know the truth about 2016.

...The mainstream media has been uncharacteristically silent about all this for too long—and you’re about to find out why. Whether from design or myopia, it allowed itself to be instrumental in suppressing real news in favor of a fairy tale about Mr. Trump and the Russians. That’s the deeper message of the Times’s weirdly conflicted handling of its scoop about Mr. Comey.

...Leaking secret intelligence, if that’s what Mr. Comey did, is a crime. But even more palpable is something else: The information remains officially classified not to protect national security but to protect the national-security establishment from embarrassment.

The story here truly contains something for everybody. If you think Mr. Trump never should have been president, blame Mr. Comey. If you think the “deep state” is running amok, here’s your evidence. If you think the intelligence establishment is incompetent and needs a Trumpian kick in the derrière, even more so.

Alas, every revelation about this matter turns out to be a revelation also about the deviousness and expediency of Mr. Comey, the nation’s former FBI director. What should happen now? More than ever, Attorney General William Barr should act on the authority Mr. Trump has given him and declassify the inspector general’s report as well any material describing the role of other agencies including John Brennan’s CIA in Mr. Comey’s election-meddling escapades.

Read more here.

"The walls are closing in, not on Trump, but on James Comey."

Daniel John Sobieski writes in the American Thinker,

The walls are closing in, not on Trump, but on James Comey.

He lists some of the many lies of James Comey, who, after meeting with Obama on January 5, 2017, met with president-elect Trump the next day. Andrew McCarthy wrote in National Review,

The plan on January 6 (i.e., the day after Director Comey met with President Obama about next steps in the Russia investigation) was for Comey to hit the president-elect with a Steele-dossier allegation: the salacious and unverified claim that Trump had cavorted with prostitutes at a Moscow hotel in 2013, and been covertly recorded doing so by Russian intelligence.

That’s not a briefing. It is Criminal Investigations 101: Get the suspect talking so a comfort level is established, then zing him with something that will rock his world. Thus confronted, a suspect will often blurt out either an implicit admission of guilt or a false exculpatory statement. Either one is a home run for the investigator.

And make no mistake: Comey was the investigator. The zing was elaborately planned, and so was the post-mortem. A bureau car equipped with a secure computer would be at the ready. While Trump’s words were still ringing in Comey’s ears, the then-director would begin typing out the then-president-elect’s reaction to the ambush -- his responsive statements, his reasoning if he had tried to justify himself, his demeanor.

Read more here.

"The decisions that keep Comey from being indicted were made by Strzok and Paige!"

"Horowitz is giving cover!"

"Will you apologize?" "What temperature is it in Hell right now?" "Is it snowing?"

"You're not under investigation!"

Jim Jordan is on fire throughout this video. Jason Chaffetz follows up by saying, "In my 8 years in Congress one of my biggest disappointments was the fact that the mainstream media is absolutely asleep at the wheel. I think they are actually complicent...partners in this."

Laura: "They lied to President Trump and told him he was not a target."

"The worst director in the history of the FBI!"

Rudy Giuliani on Comey: "He leaked, he lied, he violated every rule! Comey disgraced the FBI. Brennan is the brains, Clapper is the idiot! It was a clear entrapment of Trump by Comey. He was going to extort the president of the United States!"

The definition of dirty cop

Hubris and arrogance

Sundance and his commenters take a look at the Comey news here.

"Comey was willing to break any rule in the book to target Trump!'

Lou Dobbs and Tom Fitton talk "transparency."

Two of the classified memos Comey illegally leaked have "gone missing."

Ace of Spades reports,

The FBI Tried to Recover the Classified Memos that James Comey Illegally Leaked, But, Get This, Two "Went Missing," Per Comey's Claim
—Ace of Spades
Gee, evidence of his own criminality "went missing"?

What would Comey say about that, if a target he was investigating (most likely for purely political reasons) claimed that key documents proving his guilt had "gone missing"?

Anyone think that an obstruction of justice charge for destroying material evidence would soon follow?

...Quick, let's get Comey the super-easy, barely an inconvenience immunity deal the Obama DOJ gave to Hillary Clinton and her corrupt attorneys.

So Hillary Clinton created the illegal server to avoid public scrutiny of official records, and part of the DOJ deal to get the hidden official records was a promise to continue hiding them and to "severely limit" any searches of them.

Read more here, including links to the stories Ace is referencing.

Nice try, James!

Now that he is being investigated for his roles in the Coup Cucks Clan Spygate, James Comey tweets this:

Political candidates and elected officials should not talk about the future prosecution of any individual. Law enforcement decisions must be apolitical.

— James Comey (@Comey) June 15, 2019

No coincidence

How the hell did Brennan and Comey, who both admitted previous support of communism, ever make it to the top of CIA and FBI respectively?

Something very wrong there https://t.co/kjn9keDdTy

— John Cardillo (@johncardillo) May 27, 2019

"And this mirthless narcissistic neo-Puritan remains outraged that he was fired."

Ace of Spades had this and more here to say about James Comey Friday.

...And this mirthless narcissistic neo-Puritan remains outraged that he was fired.

Hey, he just lied to, and set up, the president. How dare the president fire him over that! James Comey was just doing what Archangel Michael told him to do over Twitter!

"I am embarrassed to be a member of Congress!"

"The Democrats are in a panic," says the highly respected member of the House Judiciary Committee, John Ratcliffe of Texas. "I believe there will be accountability on all fronts!" Within one month the Inspector General's report will be issued. Looking at leaking, looking at lying, and looking at FISA abuse, I think the Inspector General is going to say that Jim Comey did not perform as the law required." Brennan, Clapper, and Comey: none of them were telling the truth, and I think there will be accountability to an Attorney General who has promised to get to the bottom of this."

"Totally normal" to plant undercover sources in a political campaign

.@Comey: "Reasonable," "totally normal step" to plant undercover sources in a political campaign pic.twitter.com/IAL4iso2O6

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) May 10, 2019

"A transparent effort at preemptive defense."

In American Greatness, Victor Davis Hanson puts the spotlight on James Comey.

One can say a number of things about the timing of Comey’s latest sermon and his characteristic projection of his own sins on to others.

First, Comey’s unprofessionalism was home-grown and certainly did not need any help from President Trump. His schizophrenic behavior both as a prosecutor and investigator in the Hillary Clinton email matter was marked by exempting Clinton aides Cheryl Mills and Huma Abedin from indictment, despite their lying to his own federal officials about their knowledge of a private Clinton email server. Comey wrote his summation of the Clinton email investigation before he had even interviewed the former secretary of state. He was hardly independent from a recused Attorney General Loretta Lynch in the Clinton email investigation. As her rubbery courier, he bent to her directives on all key decisions that led to the de facto exoneration of likely next president Hillary Clinton.

Second, Attorney General William Barr is soon to receive a number of criminal referrals from Congress, inspectors general, and perhaps other prosecutors. He won’t allow collusion hysteria to cause him to recuse himself in the manner in which Jeff Sessions sidelined himself and elevated Rod Rosenstein.

In anticipation of that bleak reality, Comey seems to be prepping his own defense by a transparent preemptive attack on the very official who may soon calibrate Comey’s own legal exposure.

...How ironic that Comey who used to lecture the nation on “obstruction” and the impropriety of Trump’s editorializing about the Mueller prosecutorial team, is now attacking—or perhaps “obstructing”—the Attorney General before he has even issued a single indictment.

Three, Comey somehow remains seriously delusional about the abyss between his sermonizing and his own unethical and likely illegal behavior.

Remember, James Comey assured the nation that the Steele dossier, contra the testimony of his subordinate Andrew McCabe (already facing criminal referrals) was not the chief evidence presented to a FISA court. That is likely untrue. And if it is not, Comey’s other evidence he presented is likely to be just as compromised.

Comey also misled a FISA judge by not admitting 1) that his submitted dossier evidence was compiled by a contractor paid by Hillary Clinton; 2) that ex-British spy Christopher Steele’s work was unverified; 3) that Steele’s relationship with Comey’s FBI has already been severed due to Steele’s unprofessional behavior; and 4) that submitted news accounts of “collusion” were in circular fashion based on the dossier itself. Had Comey’s behavior ever become standard procedure in FISA applications, there could be no longer a FISA court.

Comey also misled about his meetings with President Trump, as memorialized in his now infamous memos. He briefed the president on the Steele dossier—without telling Trump that it had been paid for by Hillary Clinton.

Comey likely also lied in telling Trump he wanted to brief him on the dossier in worries that the press might otherwise report on it first. In fact, his meeting with Trump by design was the necessary imprimatur the press had been waiting for to leak information from the dossier, which shortly followed.

Comey likely misled the president into thinking both that he was not under investigation by the FBI and that the FBI hierarchy did not leak confidential information to the press. In fact, neither assertion was true; both his deputy Andrew McCabe and Comey himself were chronic leakers. Comey swore under oath that he had never authorized anyone in the FBI to leak to the press, while his deputy McCabe swore in contrast that Comey was well aware that his subordinates were talking freely with the press in order to leak information selectively.

When he was no longer a U.S. government employee, Comey illegally took personal possession of at least seven confidential memos of presidential conversations, written on FBI time and equipment and thus still government property. He leaked at least three memos that were likely classified, apparently to seed his narratives to the media and to prompt the appointment of a special prosecutor as payback for his own firing.

That trick worked out well since his friend Robert Mueller was soon appointed special counsel amid the general Russian “collusion” hysteria that Comey himself had long ago helped ignite. If any lower echelon employee had leaked in a similar manner to Comey, he would face an array of felony indictments.

Comey, remember, on more than 240 occasions reportedly claimed under oath he could not remember or did not know the answers to questions from Congressional inquirers. If a private citizen tried that with the IRS, he would likely face perjury charges.

Comey has never adequately explained his role in inserting FBI informants into a presidential campaign, and the degree to which his decision might have been taken in conjunction with other intelligence agencies or with the knowledge of the then-attorney general or President Obama. The New York Times of all publications is apparently investigating the use of FBI informants to sandbag the Trump campaign—during Comey’s directorship. To my knowledge, no previous FBI director—perhaps not even J. Edgar Hoover—had unilaterally placed FBI informants into a presidential campaign during the general election.

One way of looking at John Brennan’s and James Clapper’s nonstop cable news announcements of Trump’s “treason,” the Comey-McCabe whirlwind book tours and television confessionals, the Adam Schiff furrowed-brow predictions of huge bombshells soon to go off, and the general progressive media hysteria over the last two years or so is to appreciate a transparent effort at preemptive defense.

That is, Russian “collusion” and its bastard child “obstruction,” sought to divert attention from massive Obama Administration efforts at the CIA, FBI, Justice Department, and National Security Council to use the powers of government to first ensure that Trump was not elected and then, failing that, to distort and ruin his transition and presidency.

The effort initially was so easily green-lighted, because none of these Washington fixtures had any idea of the nature of the “smelly” Walmart folks or the supposedly toothless sorts who live apart from the two coasts, and thus they bet on the wrong horse—convinced that Hillary Clinton was a sure landslide winner, and their own skullduggery would be rewarded as loyalty in extremis by someone who trumped them all in skullduggery.

The only remaining mystery of this entire sordid mess is how the rotten onion will be peeled away. When indictments come down, will the likes of Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson or James Baker or Bruce and Nellie Ohr be leveraged to inform on the likes of the Brennan, Clapper, Comey, and McCabe high stratum—that in turn will provide clarity about still higher officials to learn what Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Loretta Lynch, Susan Rice, Samantha Power, and Sally Yates knew and when they knew it?

Read more here.

Comey's spying clarification

From the Babylon Bee:

WASHINGTON, D.C.—After Attorney General Barr suggested that the FBI and other agencies spied on Donald Trump's 2016 campaign, former FBI director James Comey fired back.

"We did not spy," he told reporters as he stretched for his morning yoga class. "We just observed and reported secretly without the subject's knowledge or consent."

"See, I've never considered that spying," he added as he formed the "downward dog" pose. "That's just kind of secret watching. It's definitely not the same thing. When you spy, you watch someone without their knowledge. When you secret-watch, you just kind of secretly watch them."

"If we redefined spying to include all secret watching, we would have to include all the watching of American citizens on a daily basis as spying, and that probably wouldn't be good for our public image."

He then asked reporters if they would take a picture of him looking pensively up at the trees.

"I have never thought of electronic surveillance as spying!"

That is what James Comey told CNN!

James @Comey: "I've never thought of" electronic surveillance as "spying" pic.twitter.com/OMspnuD8MN

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) April 11, 2019