The Great Stonewaller

In American Greatness, Victor Davis Hanson explains how James Comey continues to display his lack of credibility.

Last week, Comey testified before members of the House Judiciary Committee and the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. In a single appearance, Comey, on 245 separate occasions, while under oath, stonewalled questions with “I don’t know,” “I don’t remember” or “I don’t recall,” according to a congressional interrogator, Rep. Jim Jordan. (R-Ohio).

If any private citizen tried Comey’s gambit with federal IRS auditors or FBI investigators, he would likely be indicted for perjury or obstruction.

Why did Comey, the nation’s former top-ranking federal investigator, avoid telling “the whole truth and nothing but the truth” while under oath?The answer is, unfortunately, obvious. Comey has been called to testify before members of Congress on numerous occasions. He has written a long book and gone on an extensive book tour, and his paper trail is long.

He tweets almost daily and is often on television—and in those venues never seems to admit to any memory lapse. And Comey has been at the center of every major scandal involving the 2016 election.

In other words, Comey is realizing that almost anything he might say will likely be at odds with something he has said, done or written prior—and could potentially subject him to perjury charges.

So, Comey dodges and hedges.

...What is odd about the professed ethics of the sanctimonious Comey is that his assertions are belied by his own often-unethical conduct.

The Justice Department’s inspector general criticized Comey in a report for acting unprofessionally in his investigation of Hillary Clinton’s illicit private email server, improperly assuming the role of both investigator and prosecutor.

Comey’s testimony about FBI leaks to the press is at odds with his sworn statements from his former deputy, Andrew McCabe.

Comey met with President Trump on several occasions and ensured him that he was not the subject of an FBI investigation—amid mysterious leaks to the press that Trump was, in fact, part of the probe.

...Comey’s sanctimoniousness and misdeeds pose lots of questions. Is Comey a mere hypocrite? Or in guilt does he project his sins onto others? Or does he by design pose as a moralist to help insulate himself from future legal jeopardy?

Or all of the above?

Read more here.

A letter from Carter Page to James Comey Sept 25, 2016

hat tip Nick Short on Twitter

Just obeying her

Comey's revelations

Circa News reports that there are 7 revelations from former FBI Director James Comey in his prepared testimony released ahead of tomorrow's hearings in the Senate.

1. Trump isn't under investigation

President Trump is NOT under investigation in the Russia matter. Comey assured the president three times he was not under investigation and also informed Congress of that once.

2. Trump and Comey had nine private conversations

Nonetheless, Trump had nine private one-on-one conversations with his former FBI to discuss concerns about the Russia investigation, and expressed concerns the controversy was creating a “cloud” hurting his political ability to get things done. Comey says he had only two one-on-one conversations ever with former President Obama.

3. Trump asked Comey to drop the Flynn investigation

Trump asked the FBI director if he could drop the investigation into former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn because he was a “good guy.”

4. Trump did not ask Comey to drop the Russia investigation

Comey insists Trump never asked him to drop the “the broader investigation into Russia or possible links to his campaign.”

5. Trump denied wrongdoing

Trump assured the FBI he had done nothing wrong on Russia.

6. Trump told Comey 'I expect loyalty'

Trump told Comey “I expect loyalty. I need loyalty.” Comey promised he’d give the president “honest loyalty.”

7. Trump asked Comey about 'satellite associates'

Trump wanted to know if any “satellite” associates had done anything wrong in the Russia matter.

Read more here.

Benjamin Wittes talks about his friend James Comey

Here is what James Comey's friend Benjamin Wittes has to say.

The Clinton email "matter"

Did you know that FBI Director Jim Comey is 6'8" and his former boss Loretta Lynch is 5' tall? That is one of the details in a report in yesterday's New York Times by Matt Apuzzo, Michael S. Schmidt, Adam Goldman, and Eric Lichtblau. The report takes a look at the ways in which the decisions made by Comey may have influenced the November election (like Putin?).

On other issues, Mr. Comey bucked the administration but won praise from his agents, who saw him as someone who did what he believed was right, regardless of the political ramifications.

The 6-foot-8 Mr. Comey commanded a room and the spotlight. Ms. Lynch, 5 feet tall, was known for being cautious and relentlessly on message. In her five months as attorney general, she had shown no sign of changing her style.

At the meeting, everyone agreed that Mr. Comey should not reveal details about the Clinton investigation. But Ms. Lynch told him to be even more circumspect: Do not even call it an investigation, she said, according to three people who attended the meeting. Call it a “matter.”

Ms. Lynch reasoned that the word “investigation” would raise other questions: What charges were being investigated? Who was the target? But most important, she believed that the department should stick by its policy of not confirming investigations.

It was a by-the-book decision. But Mr. Comey and other F.B.I. officials regarded it as disingenuous in an investigation that was so widely known. And Mr. Comey was concerned that a Democratic attorney general was asking him to be misleading and line up his talking points with Mrs. Clinton’s campaign, according to people who spoke with him afterward.

...As the Clinton investigation headed into its final months, there were two very different ideas about how the case would end. Ms. Lynch and her advisers thought a short statement would suffice, probably on behalf of both the Justice Department and the F.B.I.

Mr. Comey was making his own plans.

A chance encounter set those plans in motion.

In late June, Ms. Lynch’s plane touched down at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport as part of her nationwide tour of police departments. Former President Bill Clinton was also in Phoenix that day, leaving from the same tarmac.

Ms. Lynch’s staff loaded into vans, leaving the attorney general and her husband on board. Mr. Clinton’s Secret Service agents mingled with her security team. When the former president learned who was on the plane, his aides say, he asked to say hello.

Mr. Clinton’s aides say he intended only to greet Ms. Lynch as she disembarked. But Ms. Lynch later told colleagues that the message she received — relayed from one security team to another — was that Mr. Clinton wanted to come aboard, and she agreed.

When Ms. Lynch’s staff members noticed Mr. Clinton boarding the plane, a press aide hurriedly called the Justice Department’s communications director, Melanie Newman, who said to break up the meeting immediately. A staff member rushed to stop it, but by the time the conversation ended, Mr. Clinton had been on the plane for about 20 minutes.

The meeting made the local news the next day and was soon the talk of Washington. Ms. Lynch said they had only exchanged pleasantries about golf and grandchildren, but Republicans called for her to recuse herself and appoint a special prosecutor.

Ms. Lynch said she would not step aside but would accept whatever career prosecutors and the F.B.I. recommended on the Clinton case — something she had planned to do all along.

Mr. Comey never suggested that she recuse herself. But at that moment, he knew for sure that when there was something to say about the case, he alone would say it.

...Two days later, on the morning of July 5, Mr. Comey called Ms. Lynch to say that he was about to hold a news conference. He did not tell her what he planned to say, and Ms. Lynch did not demand to know.

On short notice, the F.B.I. summoned reporters to its headquarters for the briefing.

...With a black binder in hand, Mr. Comey walked into a large room on the ground floor of the F.B.I.’s headquarters. Standing in front of two American flags and two royal-blue F.B.I. flags, he read from a script.

He said the F.B.I. had reviewed 30,000 emails and discovered 110 that contained classified information. He said computer hackers may have compromised Mrs. Clinton’s emails. And he criticized the State Department’s lax security culture and Mrs. Clinton directly.

“Any reasonable person in Secretary Clinton’s position” should have known better, Mr. Comey said. He called her “extremely careless.”

The criticism was so blistering that it sounded as if he were recommending criminal charges. Only in the final two minutes did Mr. Comey say that “no charges are appropriate in this case.”

...The Daily Mail, a British tabloid, was first with the salacious story: Anthony D. Weiner, the former New York congressman, had exchanged sexually charged messages with a 15-year-old girl.

The article, appearing in late September, raised the possibility that Mr. Weiner had violated child pornography laws. Within days, prosecutors in Manhattan sought a search warrant for Mr. Weiner’s computer.

Even with his notoriety, this would have had little impact on national politics but for one coincidence. Mr. Weiner’s wife, Huma Abedin, was one of Mrs. Clinton’s closest confidantes, and had used an email account on her server.

F.B.I. agents in New York seized Mr. Weiner’s laptop in early October. The investigation was just one of many in the New York office and was not treated with great urgency, officials said. Further slowing the investigation, the F.B.I. software used to catalog the computer files kept crashing.

Eventually, investigators realized that they had hundreds of thousands of emails, many of which belonged to Ms. Abedin and had been backed up to her husband’s computer.

Neither Mr. Comey nor Ms. Lynch was concerned. Agents had discovered devices before in the Clinton investigation (old cellphones, for example) that turned up no new evidence.

Then, agents in New York who were searching image files on Mr. Weiner’s computer discovered a State Department document containing the initials H.R.C. — Hillary Rodham Clinton. They found messages linked to Mrs. Clinton’s home server.

And they made another surprising discovery: evidence that some of the emails had moved through Mrs. Clinton’s old BlackBerry server, the one she used before moving to her home server. If Mrs. Clinton had intended to conceal something, agents had always believed, the evidence might be in those emails. But reading them would require another search warrant, essentially reopening the Clinton investigation.

The election was two weeks away.

Mr. Comey learned of the Clinton emails on the evening of Oct. 26 and gathered his team the next morning to discuss the development.

Seeking a new warrant was an easy decision. He had a thornier issue on his mind.

Back in July, he told Congress that the Clinton investigation was closed. What was his obligation, he asked, to acknowledge that this was no longer true?

It was a perilous idea. It would push the F.B.I. back into the political arena, weeks after refusing to confirm the active investigation of the Trump campaign and declining to accuse Russia of hacking.

The question consumed hours of conference calls and meetings. Agents felt they had two options: Tell Congress about the search, which everyone acknowledged would create a political furor, or keep it quiet, which followed policy and tradition but carried its own risk, especially if the F.B.I. found new evidence in the emails.

...The next morning, Friday, Oct. 28, Mr. Comey wrote to Congress, “In connection with an unrelated case, the F.B.I. has learned of the existence of emails that appear to be pertinent to the investigation.”

His letter became public within minutes. Representative Jason Chaffetz of Utah, a Republican and a leading antagonist of Mrs. Clinton’s, jubilantly announced on Twitter, “Case reopened.”

...Mr. Trump immediately mentioned it on the campaign trail. “As you might have heard,” Mr. Trump told supporters in Maine, “earlier today, the F.B.I. … ” The crowd interrupted with a roar. Everyone had heard.

Polls almost immediately showed Mrs. Clinton’s support declining. Presidential races nearly always tighten in the final days, but some political scientists reported a measurable “Comey effect.”

“This changes everything,” Mr. Trump said.

...A few hours later, Mr. Strzok and his team were back in Mr. Comey’s conference room for a final briefing: Only about 3,000 emails had been potentially work-related. A dozen or so email chains contained classified information, but the F.B.I. had already seen it.

And agents had found no emails from the BlackBerry server during the crucial period when Mrs. Clinton was at the State Department.

Nothing had changed what Mr. Comey had said in July.

That conclusion was met with a mixture of relief and angst. Everyone at the meeting knew that the question would quickly turn to whether Mr. Comey’s letter had been necessary.

That afternoon, Mr. Comey sent a second letter to Congress. “Based on our review,” he wrote, “we have not changed our conclusions.”

...Many factors explained Mr. Trump’s success, but Mrs. Clinton blamed just one. “Our analysis is that Comey’s letter — raising doubts that were groundless, baseless, proven to be — stopped our momentum,” she told donors a few days after the election. She pointed to polling data showing that late-deciding voters chose Mr. Trump in unusually large numbers.

Read more here.

"He divulged the evidence and stepped away, like the action hero who doesn’t look back at the explosion.

Scott Adams writes,

...The Persuasion Filter says there is no preferred reality. We all see our own movies. In my movie, Comey’s has a consistent personality from start to finish. He starts out his career as a smart, competent patriot and he later proves it by taking two bullets for the Republic. If your movie script has Comey suddenly changing his basic character for this election season, don’t expect an Oscar.

Scott believes James Comey is a patriot and a man of integrity, who has taken two bullets for his country. What do you believe?
Read more here.

"How do you sleep at night?"

At American Thinker a retired FBI agent named Hugh W. Galyean writes this letter to FBI Director James Comey. Excerpts:

Sorry, but NO SIR, MS Clinton was not merely careless or extremely careless. She was not even negligent or grossly negligent (as the statute requires). Hillary Clinton was knowingly purposeful in her decisions and actions to set up a server under her exclusive control and possession in order to control what information was available to the American public and Congress regarding her actions as Secretary of State. Furthermore, she took those government owned communications into her personal possession after leaving her position and knowingly and willingly attempted to destroy them so her nefarious actions could never be known or used as evidence of her corrupt moral character against her.

Sir, what possessed you? Did you cave in to political pressure to unilaterally come to this decision? I fear that is the case, and Rule of Law be damned. I am embarrassed for and ashamed of you. You have set a precedent that can never be rectified… and certainly not justified. Shame on you, Sir. You ought to resign right now in disgrace for what you have done to tarnish the reputation of the finest Law Enforcement Agency in the world… for entirely political reasons.

Normally, an investigation will be assigned to an agent, or team of agents with one being the Case agent, or the lead investigator. When the investigation is complete, an investigative report will be presented to the U.S. Attorney for the Federal District involved. It would be the U.S. Attorney who decides whether to decline prosecution for that investigation... NOT the FBI agent. But in the Clinton investigation, YOU (unilaterally) decided not to forward the investigation to the U.S. Attorney or the Attorney General of the U.S., but instead personally made the decision not to prosecute her or even provide the information to a Federal Grand Jury. You were wrong to take this upon yourself.

Sir, in order to indict a subject, only a preponderance of evidence, or 51% is needed for probable cause to exist. You did not think even that level of probability existed? Who do you think you are fooling? What judicial proceeding did you think you were following?

Throughout my years with the FBI, I (along with my fellow agents) took great pride in conducting each investigation in an unbiased manner regardless of the subject’s position or standing in the community.

All were treated equally under the law. But you, Sir, decided to allow this corrupt, evil and nasty human being to go free and unchallenged for her treasonous actions (yes, treasonous, in my opinion) which threatened the security of this nation. Furthermore, you stopped short of investigating the Clinton Foundation as a RICO case (Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organization. This is a RICO case if

there ever were one. Even an untrained person can tell from the communications which were recovered that Hillary Clinton spent more time working for the Clinton Foundation while Secretary of State than on State Business. It may be argued that Hillary did not do any State business UNLESS the Clinton Foundation benefitted. You decided to just let this uncomfortable truth alone without addressing it.

I will conclude with this: Following my retirement from the FBI, I volunteered for a 12 month tour of duty in Afghanistan as a Law Enforcement Professional, embedded with U.S. forces as a subject matter expert in counter-terrorism investigations. For most of that year I operated “outside the wire” patrolling with the troops, interviewing witnesses to IED incidents and gathering evidence on the bad guys. The results of my work would then be reported through secure channels to the Commanding Officer. All reports and communications were required to be transmitted via secure and encrypted devices. Occasionally my remote location in the mountains of Afghanistan made transmission impossible and I would have to fly back to Bagram Air Base in order to securely report to the Commander of the battle space. It would have been convenient if I could have just called the Commander on my personal cell phone or written him an email on my personal laptop. But, had I done so I would have been reporting classified information via an unsecured device and it could have been compromised. These were, relative to Secretary of State communications, low level classifications of Secret. Had I ever sent even one in such a manner I would have been prosecuted and sent to Federal Prison for 20 years or so. That is how serious this violation is considered.

Now, because of you, Hillary Clinton is allowed to continue her RICO activities and is running for President of the United States, the most powerful position in the world. You have trampled on the Rule of Law and destroyed the trust of the American people in the FBI and in unbiased enforcement of the law. How do you sleep at night? It is time for you to go and work for the Clinton Foundation.

Read more here.

Washington-shrunken-soul

Austin Bay writes this to James Comey,

I carried a Top Secret clearance for three decades so I got all the briefings and I signed all the papers and I know damn well that Hillary’s grossly negligent handling of classified information—which your investigation documented—is criminal. And somewhere in your Washington-shrunken-soul, you do, too.

What we’ll call the revelation of the BleachBit Timeline gives you a shot at redemption. The BleachBit Timeline documents obstruction of justice that you cannot ignore.

...Jim, I see you as a man in a responsibility-heavy government security position who has acted irresponsibly. Obstruction of justice is an indictable crime—that’s the crime Richard Nixon and his aides committed in the Watergate Scandal. You remember Watergate, don’t you? The scandal that made The Washington Post famous? Turns out the Deep Throat source on whom WaPo reporters relied was the FBI’s Number Two Boss. Back in 1974 our country couldn’t stomach a criminal in the White House. So, Comey, why the hell in 2016 should you help get a criminal elected?

Mr. Director, it’s time for you to admit you erred in early July. You’ve got the evidence. Call a press conference. Recommend Hillary Clinton be indicted and, this time, let Attorney General Loretta Lynch make the decision. She’s the prosecutor—not you.

Recommend indictment for three reasons, Mr. Director. First and foremost recommend she face legal consequences because her actions were criminal. Recommend indictment in order to re-establish the integrity of your agency, whose reputation has been tarnished by your cowardly July decision. You know it. You face internal dissent as well as external criticism, and somewhere in your previously mentioned Washington-shrunken-soul you know the dissent and criticism is righteous, hence your prickly little memo.

Finally, sir, do it for the dead, the Americans who died at Benghazi.

If you lack the character and guts to recommend indictment, then resign, sir. Resign.

Read much more here.

It would be a great act of patriotism

Roger L. Simon writes in PJ Media,

Hillary Clinton, who had told us she had one cellphone, turned out to have had thirteen such phones and five iPads, all of which have mysteriously disappeared, two having been smashed by hammers -- this, although the information on all of them was legally government property. Was she arrested for this or even cited? Did the FBI even ask why she did this or why she had so many phones? Some wag on television said she must have been a crack dealer.

More importantly, did the FBI even ask her the most obvious of questions: why in the world did she put ALL her government emails on a private home-brew server (and then have them deleted with the most advanced data eradication software available -- five stars on CNET -- two days after these emails came under subpoena)? Was that because the equally obvious answer -- to avoid any possible public scrutiny of her actions (for a variety of suspicious reasons) -- is itself felonious?

Of course, Comey knew this. He is the one who did not want these obvious questions and many others asked. He is the one who allowed Clinton to testify without being under oath. He is the one who de facto allowed her to assert she did not "recall" the most well known and common things like the circle "c" insignia for classified email without being questioned, further allowing her to do this a staggering 37 times. Clinton didn't even have to take the Fifth. (And this woman is running for president of the United States.)

Yes, the FBI has had, shall we say, a variegated past, but in recent years many of us had come to trust it, although the organization has been severely hampered in its internal battle against radical Islam by the nauseating political correctness of the current administration. Nevertheless, most of us suspected it was still there in a pinch and its operatives understood the political correctness was nonsense and could finally be ignored. Now I am not so sure.

I am hugely angry at Comey, as you can see, but he still could perform a great service. He actually could resign and shine a light of truth on this horrific situation before it is too late. The Democratic Party, unlike the Republicans under Nixon, apparently doesn't have the courage to face what they have wrought. Perhaps, just perhaps, Comey does. It would be a great act of patriotism.

Read more here.

Get Out of Jail Free card

Debate prep? All Donald Trump needs to do is read some of my favorite blogs. For example, here is Ace of Spades recommending James Comey be impeached:

Does James Comey believe it's plausible that the CEO of the State Department did not know that "NOFORN" meant "NO FOReigN exposure"? Or that "(C)" means classified?

And she's claiming she can't remember the details of her security briefings, which covered all this, because of a convenient patch of brain damage which arrives to grant her an alibi but then departs in time to permit her to be Commander in Chief?

That is not plausible. That is a clear lie.

...Second: The safekeeping of foreign intelligence is so critical to this nation's security that the law itself specifically removes the "I didn't know the most basic things about the law" defense. That's the whole point of the charge only requiring a showing of negligence in handling secret information -- not intent.

The law forbids such a defense -- by not requiring the government to prove intent -- because it is so easy to claim "Oh I didn't know," and concommitantly so hard for the government to prove the contrary.

...Congress therefore specifically made the charge provable without proof of intent -- it only requires mere negligence.

But James Comey, to finagel a Get Out of Jail Free card for Mrs. Clinton, read such a demand into the law anyway, on his own alleged authority.

James Comey and his minions must be forced to testify, under oath, whether they believe this "I didn't know breaking the law is illegal" is a valid defense for the average corporate CEO, or if this is just a special favor to the apparently Brain Damaged Smartest Woman in the World.

(C)orrection: A commenter who seems to know the ins and outs of clasification tells me "C" is a type of classification, but it does not stand for classified -- it stands for (C)onfidential, the lowest level of classification.

So while (C) means classified, it does not stand for classified, as I claimed. It stands for (C)onfidential.

I apologize for the frequently-made error.

But it's not my fault.

See, I had brain damage when I was writing these posts.

But I'm all better now, and ready to take a job as Director of the CIA's Clandestine Service.

Read more here.

"Felony - ten years in prison!"

Comey is putting Hillary Clinton above the law.

Paul Ryan gets busy

Paul Ryan was a busy guy yesterday. Fox News reports that he sent a couple of letters. One was to James Clapper, Director of National Security, asking Clapper to

deny presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton access to classified information.

...“I firmly believe this is necessary to reassure the public that our nation’s secrets are secure,” he adds.

...Ryan also sent a letter to Comey requesting that he release all of the unclassified findings from the agency’s investigation into Clinton.

Read more here.

Will FBI Director James Comey give up his job if the Justice Department fails to prosecute Hillary Clinton?

Is there a scenario in which the FBI could force the Department of Justice to prosecute Hillary Clinton? Jim Geraghty from National Review thinks so.

Ken Cuccinelli, the former attorney general of Virginia, knows the laws regarding classified information firsthand. In his private practice, Cuccinelli defended a Marine lieutenant colonel court martialed on charges of possessing such information outside a secure facility. He says Clinton’s actions in the e-mail scandal clearly satisfy all five requirements necessary to sustain charges of mishandling classified material, and constitute a breach perhaps even more glaring than the one for which General David Petraeus was convicted.

Like Petraeus, Clinton was clearly “an employee of the United States government.”

Like Petraeus, Clinton obtained and created “documents and materials containing classified information” through her work at the State Department.

...Like Petraeus, Clinton “knowingly removed such documents or materials.” Cuccinelli points out that she actually committed this crime on a significant scale three separate times: First, by setting up her e-mail system to route messages to and through her unsecured server, then by moving the server to Platte River Networks, a private company, in June of 2013, and then by transferring the server’s contents to her private lawyers in 2014.

As FBI Director, Comey was completely in the loop on the decision to bring charges against Petraeus, so Clinton’s case is familiar territory for him. Cuccinelli says that if the FBI’s handling of Petraeus is any guide, Comey’s agents are likely to recommend a Clinton indictment to the Department of Justice.

Then, the issue becomes really high-stakes.

There is no time limit on how long Attorney General Loretta Lynch and the DOJ can take in reviewing the FBI’s recommendation and the evidence on which it’s based. But if the Department of Justice gives the signal that they’re going to ignore the FBI’s investigations, or drag out their own review past election day, Cuccinelli — along with Judge Andrew Napolitano, Roger Stone, Charles Krauthammer, and other observers — predicts that Comey will resign in protest, and other high-level FBI officials could follow him out the door.

Is Comey still prepared to give up the job rather than be part of something he feels is fundamentally wrong? If so, as those who know him suspect, it will much harder for the Department of Justice to ignore what his bureau has to say about Clinton’s dangerous misconduct.
Read more here.

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/430343/hillary-clinton-email-scandal-fbi-director-james-comey-resign-protest

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/430343/hillary-clinton-email-scandal-fbi-director-james-comey-resign-protest

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/430343/hillary-clinton-email-scandal-fbi-director-james-comey-resign-protest

Like Petraeus, Clinton did not have the authority to remove classified information from secure locations.

...And like Petraeus, Clinton demonstrated the “intent to retain such documents or materials at an unauthorized location.”

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/430343/hillary-clinton-email-scandal-fbi-director-james-comey-resign-protest

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/430343/hillary-clinton-email-scandal-fbi-director-james-comey-resign-protest

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/430343/hillary-clinton-email-scandal-fbi-director-james-comey-resign-protest

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/430343/hillary-clinton-email-scandal-fbi-director-james-comey-resign-protest

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/430343/hillary-clinton-email-scandal-fbi-director-james-comey-resign-protest

The president may be getting more than he bargained for

Photo by Cameron Lancaster
Cory Bennett and Julian Hattem report in The Hill,

The aggressive posture of the FBI under Director James Comey is becoming a political problem for the White House.

The FBI’s demand that Apple help unlock an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino killers has outraged Silicon Valley, a significant source of political support for President Obama and Democrats.

Comey, meanwhile, has stirred tensions by linking rising violent crime rates to the Black Lives Matter movement’s focus on police violence and by warning about “gaps” in the screening process for Syrian refugees.
Then there’s the biggest issue of all: the FBI’s investigation into the private email server used by Hillary Clinton, Obama’s former secretary of State and the leading contender to win the Democratic presidential nomination.

A decision by the FBI to charge Clinton or her top aides for mishandling classified information would be a shock to the political system.

...Comey has a reputation for speaking truth to power, dating back to a dramatic confrontation in 2004 when he rushed to a hospital to stop the Bush White House from renewing a warrantless wiretapping program while Attorney General John Ashcroft was gravely ill. Comey was Ashcroft’s deputy at the time.

That showdown won Comey plaudits from both sides of the aisle and made him an attractive pick to lead the FBI. But now that he’s in charge of the agency, the president might be getting more than he bargained for.

Read more here.