Slashdot Mirror
Former FBI Director Admitted He Was the Source Of At Least One Leak To the Press (theoutline.com)
Shortly after his dismissal as head of the FBI, James Comey authorized "a close friend" to leak the contents of his memos to the press in order to prompt a special counsel investigation, he said today. From a report: Former FBI Director James Comey testified that he asked a friend, a law professor at Columbia University, to leak details of his dinner with the President to The New York Times, including the claim that the President asked Comey to drop the investigation into former national security advisor Michael Flynn's contacts with Russian officials. Comey kept meticulous memos of all of his interactions with Trump, and he gave that memo to a friend to pass it along to the Times in order to spark a special investigation. "You considered this not a document of the government, but your own personal document that you could share with the media as you want to?" Senator Roy Blunt asked Comey. "Correct," Comey replied. "I understood this to be my recollection recorded of my conversation with the President. As a private citizen, I felt free to share that. I thought it very important to get it out." Edward Snowden tweeted, "It seems the [former] FBI Director agrees: sometimes the only moral decision is to break the rules."
That's the headline?! I know that was a big part of the testimony, but the real story is that Comey pretty much confirmed that Trump is a lying, self-serving douche who would joyfully obstruct justice if he thought he could get away with it (all Trump has at this point is a thin veneer of plausible deniability--"I only said that I hoped...it was a wish, not a command."). That's the part that's really worth talking about, not the Comey leak.
By the way, Snowden is wrong. Comey didn't break any rules. It's not like he leaked classified information.
Impeach him for what. First you have to have a crime. Since people like yourself have been crying "Impeach" since ... November, it just comes across as lame hate.
Second, the best thing for Democrats is to leave Trump in office. But the Democrats aren't the brightest people in the world, they tried twice to foist Hillary on us, and that has worked out well now ... twice.
Third, the Democrats hate Pence as much, maybe even worse than Trump.
Fouth, Fifth and Sixth, you have no idea how hard it is to actually impeach a president ... on purpose. House has to bring charges(where's the crime?) (Republican, not likely), the Senate has to have a have the trial (Republican, not likely) and convict (Republican, not likely ).
So, fanciful thinking on your part. Just suck it up cupcake, you can take your shot in 3.5 years. Perhaps with Pocahontas and Bernie.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Comey also just declared under oath that the former head of the DOJ directly interfered in his investigation. On top of that Comey also said there was no investigation into Trump regarding Russia. And the actual testimony didn't say that Trump asked him to drop the Flynn investigation. He asked for it to "go away" he didn't order him to stop it. That wording is the difference, you can try and split hairs however you want but all this actually did was implicate the previous administration in subverting justice and if I was Loretta Lynch, I'd be very worried right now that a special prosecutor is going to be named.
Om, nomnomnom...
How is the US congress not starting impeachment procedures already?
Because saying that you hope the months-long investigation (which turned up zero illegal conduct by Flynn) of a guy that had just exited the stage by being fired is a perfectly reasonable expression of exactly how he felt about the situation. It was going nowhere, and had absolutely no relevance to the "Russians meddling with our democracy!" narrative.
Regardless, Comey did NOT think that the conversation was obstruction of justice. How do we know? Because if he'd though that, and failed to immediately report that to DOJ, he (Comey) committed a felony. And then a few weeks later, in March, when he testified under oath that he had not been asked or pressured to diminish any investigation in which the FBI was involved, he'd have perjured himself. The bar for what qualifies as actual obstruction is quite high. Trump saying, in effect, "This investigation is just a waste of time for everybody involved, I hope you can wrap it up soon," isn't any different than Obama - right in the middle a huge FBI investigation into the partisan corruption in the IRS - telling us and the FBI people working on that whole demonstrably illegal conduct that, no, there wasn't even a "smidgen" of wrongdoing there, and everybody needed to move on. Of course, in THAT scenario, the landscape was littered with immunity deals and pleadings of the fifth because there actually was real wrong doing with lots of victims.
The most interesting thing that came out of this was Comey's noting that the Obama administration told him to lie about the investigation into Hillary Clinton's mishandling of classified information. You know, right from the mouth of Loretta Lynch. She who had a nice meeting with the husband of the person being criminally investigated. Hillaryarious.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.