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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.
The timing seems a bit odd, doesn't it? Now that it's pretty clear that the endless attacks on Rice and Yates haven't prevented Congress from continuing to investigate the links between his campaign and Russia, it's time to start putting friendly faces in charge of the three letter agencies.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
This is what get you with this guy: used and thrown away. Sounds like Comey wasn't willing to help bury the investigation into the mango-in-chief's ties to Russia. With the way the swamp is being "drained" in DC, I expect the new head of the FBI to be someone from the mob. ;)
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
He doesn't have to sorry about impeachment. It would be a humiliation to the Republican party beyond imagining if that happened - they simply cannot allow it, and they have a majority.
FBI Directors are traditionally non-partisan, and serve a 10 year term that is not at the pleasure of the president, unlike political appointees. This isn't to say that the President doesn't have the power to fire the Director, but it hasn't been done before, and would be a very unusual step. The question then is what is the cited reason for it, because given the current situation and ongoing investigations, it's really really suspicious, on par with the Watergate "midnight massacre" where Nixon fired both the Attorney General and the Deputy AG before getting to someone that would agree to fire the Special Prosecutor that was investigating Watergate.
In other words, it had better be a really damn good reason.
the Senate is wearing the same team jersey as Trump
No, Trump grabbed a T-shirt the same color as the GOP's jersey, spray painted '00' on the back, then snuck into the Team party, and when asked who invited him, pointed to the guy that just left the room to use the can, then scurried away to talk to someone else before anyone could question him. By the end of the night everyone thought everyone else invited him. By the next morning he was already POTUS and everyone wondered what the hell happened.
He lobbed the "voter attention redirection" handgrenade 11 days before the election, which had the effect of making non-committal swing voters think "damn, the person I'm thinking of voting for is probably a criminal - the FBI is investigating her."
From that moment to the election day, the "poll question" became "is Hillary criminal or not?" as opposed to "can we risk that Trump bozo?".
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
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.
Donald Trump publicly complemented Comey's press conferences and other actions related to Hillary's email during his campaign events.
How stupid would you have to be to believe that Donald Trump fired Comey for the actions which he publicly commended him for?
Donald Trump is preparing for his criminal prosecution and impeachment just like Richard Nixon did in the leadup to his resignation in disgrace.
Well, the next director cannot do any worse for you... Comey has found NOTHING after over a year of trying to prove a link between Trump and the Russians.
The Watergate scandal took 26 months from the day the burglars were arrested to the President's resignation. Just because you watched it all in 140 minutes doesn't mean that's how it actually played out.
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
If Barack Obama had fired an FBI director who was investigating him for treason, Fox News would be arming themselves on national television.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The fact is that 99% of the people in the media now "defending" Comey would want his head if he were behaving as a good FBI director under Trump after what they blame him for with Clinton.
It can be perfectly consistent to say that someone should resign and then to object when someone fires them. If you can't imagine a scenario in which that makes sense, then we're not having a conversation; we're just talking at each other.
Look, just because someone is an asshole who doesn't play by the rules doesn't mean that the rules don't apply equally to them. That includes the protections they offer as well as the penalties they impose. James Comey broke the rules by circulating what turned out to be false news about a candidate during an election cycle. He shouldn't have done that. But the President was wrong to fire him, too, because Comey was actively investigating him for alleged corrupt ties to Russia.
So people in the media called foul in the first instance and called foul in the second. They're not defending the man; they're defending the notion that the FBI should be apolitical and independent. It would be inconsistent not to decry both abuses.
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
FBI Directors are traditionally non-partisan, and serve a 10 year term that is not at the pleasure of the President, unlike political appointees. This isn't to say that the President doesn't have the power to fire the Director, but it hasn't been done before, and would be a very unusual step. The question then is what is the cited reason for it, because given the current situation and ongoing investigations, it's really really suspicious, on par with the Watergate "midnight massacre" where Nixon fired both the Attorney General and the Deputy AG before getting to someone that would agree to fire the Special Prosecutor that was investigating Watergate.
In other words, it had better be a really darn good reason.
You are correct
http://nypost.com/2017/03/17/b...
Fired US Attorney Preet Bharara was investigating a key member of President Trumpâ(TM)s cabinet, a new report Friday revealed.
Bharara was looking into allegations that Tom Price, the health and human services secretary and the administrationâ(TM)s point man on efforts to repeal and replace ObamaCare, improperly traded health care stocks while he was a member of the House of Representatives, ProPublica reported.
Price maintained that he broke no laws when he traded health care stocks even as he was involved in legislation relevant to the health care sector. He traded over $300,000 worth of shares of relevant companies during a four-year period in the House.
The issue played a significant role in Priceâ(TM)s confirmation process, and he was asked about it numerous times during his Senate hearing.
The revelation that Bharara was investigating Price comes as many were surprised the US attorney from the Southern District of New York was not retained by the Trump administration.
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Preet was investigating cabinet members of Mr. Trump's administration. And it was in his jurisdiction to investigate Mr. Trump in new york and there were rumors that he might do so about the time he was fired after Mr. Trump had said personally given Preet assurances that would preet be retained.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
They were all just investigating people very close to Trump for committing crimes in support of Trump, so clearly there's no danger to Trump in these investigations and no possibility of him getting dragged into them.
Play Command HQ online
Posting as AC, 'cause I still have a job and a clearance and I don't need the hassle.
Fire_Wraith is right - this is what usually happens with inadvertent disclosure of classified info over an unclassified system. I too have seen this happen exactly as described.
However, once you get beyond "accidental disclosure" and go to deliberately sending this info knowingly over unclassified networks onto unsecured systems - and later destroying the materials yourself instead of reporting it promptly to the appropriate people to cover up the act - that gets into very dangerous territory, from lose your clearance and get fired to throw your ass in jail territory.
I cannot believe anyone who holds a clearance and saw what Clinton did would think for a moment that they could get off so easy too if they did the same thing.