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Trump Fires FBI Director James Comey (washingtonpost.com)
The White House said today that President Trump has fired FBI director James Comey. Press Secretary Sean Spicer said in a statement: "President Donald J. Trump informed FBI Director James Comey that he has been terminated and removed from office. President Trump acted based on the clear recommendations of both Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Attorney General Jeff Sessions. 'The FBI is one of our Nation's most cherished and respected institutions and today will mark a new beginning for our crown jewel of law enforcement,' said President Trump. A search for a new permanent FBI Director will begin immediately."
The Washington Post reports: Earlier in the day, the FBI notified Congress that Comey misstated key findings involving the Hillary Clinton email investigation during testimony last week, saying that only a "small number" of emails had been forwarded to disgraced congressman Anthony Weiner, not the "hundreds and thousands" he'd claimed in his testimony. The letter was sent to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, more than a week after Comey testified for hours in defense of his handling of the Clinton probe. In defending the probe at last week's hearing, Comey offered seemingly new details to underscore the seriousness of the situation FBI agents faced last fall when they discovered thousands of Clinton aide Huma Abedin's emails on the computer of her husband, Anthony Weiner. "Somehow, her emails were being forwarded to Anthony Weiner, including classified information," Comey said, adding later, "His then-spouse Huma Abedin appears to have had a regular practice of forwarding emails to him for him I think to print out for her so she could then deliver them to the secretary of state." At another point in the testimony, Comey said Abedin "forwarded hundreds and thousands of emails, some of which contain classified information." Neither of those statements is accurate, said people close to the investigation. Tuesday's letter said "most of the emails found on Mr. Weiner's laptop computer related to the Clinton investigation occurred as a result of a backup of personal electronic devices, with a small number a result of manual forwarding by Ms. Abedin to Mr. Weiner." The letter also corrected the impression Mr. Comey's testimony had left with some listeners that 12 classified emails were among those forwarded by Abedin to Weiner.
After all it was Comey who got him elected.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0... Good luck, Secretary Clinton.
Actually, I've seen at least two people do it in the time I was in the government, holding a clearance. I'm not talking about hearing a rumor second or third hand, I'm talking about a guy who sat two desks over, that I knew on a first name basis, and worked with daily. Neither were anyone of remote importance, just average joes, and these were in two separate offices/commands, separated both by hundreds of miles and several years.
Both of them did exactly that - they sent classified information via an unclassified email system. In one case, I was one of the recipients. Want to know what happened? There was an investigation to determine just what happened, and when. The investigators then wiped all the unclassified systems that touched those emails, including the servers they passed through. The guys who sent the email? They received a reprimand (I'm not sure if it was verbal or something more formal), and had to retake the security training on handling classified material.
That was it.
Neither was fired. If they did it again, they might have been, or if they violated security procedures some other way (bringing a cellphone into the secure area, or leaving a vault door unlocked or something). They sure as sh*t weren't sent to court, let alone jail over it.
Now, if the unclassified email was their own system? They might have gotten fired/lost their clearances, sure, but unless the investigators determined that there was intent to leak classified information, a la Manning/Snowden/etc, or worse, sell it to someone a la Ames/Hansen/etc, that's almost certainly all that would happen to them.
This quote is interesting:
"While I greatly appreciate your informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation, I nevertheless concur with the judgment of the Department of Justice that you are unable to effectively lead the Bureau."
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
Stop being misleading. He's fired a lot more than those three.
Comey has found NOTHING after over a year of trying to prove a link between Trump and the Russians.
It hasn't been a year yet (July or August of 2016 is when the investigation started) so it hasn't been over a year.
There are plenty of links between Trump and Russia when you look at the folks on his campaign and their own connections. Roger Stone bragged on several occasions he was in communication with Guccifer 2.0 and knew when the next batch of emails was going to be released. Guccifer 2.0 is part of the Russian intelligence services.
Flynn, well, we know about his numerous ties to Russia and that he lied about not having any.
Carter Page, who at first said he never helped the Russians with classified or other such materials, then changed his tune to "no comment" when asked about the investigation into his dealings with Russia, and now is saying, "No I'm not going to hand over evidence of my dealings with the Russians so you can hang me with it."
As we saw a day or so ago, Eric Trump bragged that it was Russians who were financing his father's golf courses during the Bush recession. This on top of other financial dealings Trump has with Russia.
Then today, the Senate committee investigating collusion between Trump and Russia during the campaign has asked the Treasury Department's criminal division to hand over any and all documents related to Trump, his campaign and campaign aides.
That doesn't sound like "nothing important".
Yes, but the point is misleading.
This would be literally anyone in the country. Comey already said, on national television, that the FBI has proof of every single element of the felony of mishandling classified material, as Congress wrote the law.
He declined to refer the case for prosecution because he couldn't find evidence of criminal intent. This was an error, because the standard, as written by Congress, is gross negligence.
Either he gets bounced out now and replaced, or all of our strict liability laws are not only null and void, but also irrepairable. I'm fine either way - I detest 99% of strict liability laws.
Quick and crude summary: negligence is when you weren't successful at executing a duty, gross negligence is when you don't even try, knowingly is when you aware that you are committing a felony, and willfully is when the felony is the point.
See that "Preview" button?
Sally Yates was not investigating Trump. She also refused to follow the orders of her boss, so of course she was fired.
Preet Bharara was not investigating Trump. He was one of the politically appointed DoJ attorneys that EVERY president replaces. He refused to resign when asked like every other attorney, and so was fired.
James Comey was not investigating Trump. He's the Directory of the FBI, not an agent, detective, or attorney.
Last week, Democrats wanted his head, too. After his bizarre performance before Congress, he seems to have run out of support, and Trump fired him. Then, suddenly! Democrats love him again. Even though 4 of the last 5 Attorney Generals of the US agreed that Comey should have been fired after last June and October, as soon as he is fired, it's an 'evil Republican' thing.
They have some evidence now. At the time of Flynn's firing, Trump said that he'd just learned about Flynn's problems, but now that appears to have been a lie. If so, Trump is implicated in the cover up at least.
Play Command HQ online
[...] but it hasn't been done before, and would be a very unusual step.
Bill Clinton fired an Attorney General William Sessions but that guy was under investigation for ethical issues that made his firing a foregone conclusion. The attorney general that came after him was the one who appointed the Whitewater special prosecutor that caused Clinton all kinds of trouble.
Well, yes. Kind of like not wanting to pay for a woman's abortion "qualifies as" denying her the right to control her own body, or how not wanting to pay for other people's college education "qualifies as" denying access to education, or opposing the presence of illegal Mexicans in the US "qualifies as" racism, or opposing "gay marriage" qualifies as homophobia.
You people are really good playing word games.
As if that's the only law or statute on classified information.
Cough espionage act cough. Intent is irrelevant - ask any of the whisteblowers prosecuted for mishandling classified evidence. I have yet to see any of the "nothing to see here, move along" partisans come up for an explanation for why Kristian Saucier is serving hard time for having classified information on his unsecured, unauthorized cell phone - despite zero intent to distribute them - while Hillary remains free. Despite having a vastly larger amount of classified information on her unsecured, authorized email server.
Nice avoidance.
Uh huh. Were they Original Classification Authorities? Did they also destroy evidence without authorization, or set up their own unsecured, unauthorized email servers at their homes which they used for all electronic correspondence?
When Donald Trump claimed that Comey "has publicly said on at least three different occasions..." he apparently hadn't seen the news.
https://www.theatlantic.com/po...
https://www.theguardian.com/us...
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0...
All three of those citations have links to video of Comey stating, in English, that Trump is indeed under investigation. If you need a Russian translation, we can probably find one for you.
You are welcome on my lawn.
From your first link:
See that "Preview" button?
And how about if he fired a FBI director that has publicly said on at least three different occasions that he isn't under investigation for anything at all?
Comey never publicly said that, Trump just said that he said it.
He called out the Espionage Act. That's the classified information section of the Espionage Act. Is there another Espionage Act?
It's called "moving the goalposts." You've just done it.
That IS the Espionage Act. Tell you what, why don't you specify the section of the U.S. code that you're referring to and we'll test that claim as well.
The FBI director isn't supposed to play kingmaker in DC.
Seems like Trump is firing the FBI director not for playing kingmaker but not for backing up Trump's false accusation that Obama wiretapping him.
I don't know about Yates, but in the cases of Bharara and Comey, he pretty much implied that he was going to keep them on. In any case, all three were fired very abruptly very soon after new information about the investigation of Trump Administration ties to Russia came to light.
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...