Tag: James Comey

James Comey obliterates Bill Barr’s reputation in brutal op-ed: ‘Trump has eaten your soul’

Former FBI Director James Comey on Wednesday published a brutal op-ed in the New York Times dissecting how people such as current Attorney General Bill Barr and former deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein have found themselves corrupted by President Donald Trump.

In his op-ed, Comey explains that being in constant contact with an “amoral leader” such as Trump inevitably tests officials’ ethics — even when those officials see themselves as guardrails against Trump’s worst behavior.

In the cases of both Rosenstein and Barr, he argues, the two men have shown that they lack the needed “inner strength” to defy the president, which has led to the destruction of their reputations as law enforcement officials.

View the complete May 1 article by Brad Reed on the Raw Story website here.

Graham Urges Appointment Of Special Counsel To ‘Look At’ Clinton, Comey

South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham, one of Trump’s most vociferous defenders in the Senate, has declared that he will use his power as chair of the Judiciary Committee to pursue his greatest obsession: Hillary Clinton’s emails. But that’s not enough for the senator. He wants Trump’s attorney general, William Barr, to join in his obsession.

“I know Bill Barr pretty well, and he’s pretty upset about the way all this was handled,” Graham said in a Sunday interview on Fox News. “I don’t know if he’s going to have a special prosecutor to look at the probability of criminal misbehavior.”

Graham’s “evidence” of suspicious behavior is that “nobody in the Clinton investigation went to jail for lying about the process because there was no process.” That doesn’t suggest to Graham that Clinton and her campaign were innocent, as the exhaustive investigations of her concluded.

View the complete April 1 article by Kaili Joy Gray on the National Memo website here.

Comey: Mueller findings show Trump lied about FBI, his attempt to destroy the agency failed

The former FBI director spoke to NBC News in his first on TV interview since the special counsel ended his investigation.

Former FBI Director James Comey, in his first television interview since special counsel Robert Mueller concluded his investigation, said the principal findings of the probe show President Donald Trump’s blistering criticism of the FBI were lies and his attempt to destroy the agency had failed.

Comey, in an exclusive interview with NBC News, told “Nightly News” anchor Lester Holt that the release of Attorney General William Barr’s summary of Mueller’s investigation“establishes, I hope, to all people no matter where they are on the spectrum, that the FBI is not corrupt, not a nest of vipers, of spies, but an honest group of people trying to find out what is true.”

Responding to Holt’s question about whether the “damage to the reputation of the justice system, FBI in particular, been worth it,” Comey replied that “on balance” it had.

View the complete March 27 article along with video of the interview on the NBC News website here.

Trump blasts former FBI official McCabe after explosive interview

President Trump on Thursday lashed out at Andrew McCabe after the former FBI deputy director revealed he opened a probe into whether Trump obstructed justice when the president fired James Comey as FBI chief in 2017 amid the Russia investigation.

In a string of morning tweets, Trump wrote that the “disgraced” McCabe “pretends to be a ‘poor little Angel’ when in fact he was a big part of the Crooked Hillary Scandal & the Russia Hoax” and “a puppet for Leakin’ James Comey.”

The president added that an internal watchdog report that was used to justify McCabe’s ouster was “devastating.”

View the complete February 14 article by Jordan Fabian on The Hill website here.

Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein said Trump ordered him to write the memo justifying James Comey’s firing, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe writes

Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein Credit: Mary Turner, Reuters

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein did not choose to write the heavily scrutinized memo explaining former FBI Director James Comey’s firing, but did it under order from President Donald Trump, an upcoming book says.

Behind closed doors, Rosenstein complained about having to create the document used to justify the former FBI chief’s ouster in May 2017, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe writes, according to the Guardian. Trump’s removal of Comey, which came during the bureau’s probe into Russian efforts to influence the 2016 election and whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Kremlin, is part of a probe into whether the president obstructed justice.

“He said it wasn’t his idea. The president had ordered him to write the memo justifying the firing,” McCabe wrote of remarks Rosenstein made at a May 2017 meeting, according to the Guardian.

View the complete February 8 article on the CNBC website here.

F.B.I. Opened Inquiry Into Whether Trump Was Secretly Working on Behalf of Russia

Breaking Overnight in The New York Times

Credit: Sarah Silbiger, The New York Times

WASHINGTON — In the days after President Trump fired James B. Comey as F.B.I. director, law enforcement officials became so concerned by the president’s behavior that they began investigating whether he had been working on behalf of Russia against American interests, according to former law enforcement officials and others familiar with the investigation.

The inquiry carried explosive implications. Counterintelligence investigators had to consider whether the president’s own actions constituted a possible threat to national security. Agents also sought to determine whether Mr. Trump was knowingly working for Russia or had unwittingly fallen under Moscow’s influence.

The investigation the F.B.I. opened into Mr. Trump also had a criminal aspect, which has long been publicly known: whether his firing of Mr. Comey constituted obstruction of justice.

 

The White House lost its narrative on Michael Flynn. So it made up some stuff about James Comey instead.

From the very start of Tuesday’s White House press briefing, press secretary Sarah Sanders had no real answers on former national security adviser Michael Flynn. White House hopes that a judge would rebuke the FBI for its treatment of Flynn quickly and rather spectacularly fell apart. Flynn himself told the judge that he didn’t feel duped into lying, as his and Trump’s supporters have alleged. It all rendered Sanders’s argument earlier in the day that Flynn had been “ambushed” pretty well undercut.

So she changed the subject to James B. Comey — and butchered what Comey actually said.

Flynn didn’t make the case the White House desired, so Sanders suggested Comey had. Here’s what she said about Comey, who was FBI director when Flynn lied repeatedly as he was interviewed in January 2017 (emphasis added):

View the complete December 18 article by Aaron Blake on The Washington Post website here.

Sarah Sanders just launched a delusional attack on James Comey from her official government account

The White House press secretary let loose a bizarre attack on the former FBI director on social media.

On Monday, former FBI director James Comey finally lost his patience

Credit: Chip Somodevilla, Getty Images

with House Republicans, who had hauled him in for closed-door testimony in a partisan stunt last week. “So another day of Hillary Clinton emails and the Steele Dossier,” Comey complained to reporters. “This while the President of the United States is lying about the FBI, attacking the FBI and attacking the rule of law in this country. How does that make any sense at all?”

This comment evidently did not sit well with White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who took to Twitter to attack Comey with a Gish Gallop of nonsense:

Sarah Sanders

✔@PressSec

Republicans should stand up to Comey and his tremendous corruption – from the fake Hillary Clinton investigation, to lying and leaking, to FISA abuse, and a list too long to name. The President did the country a service by firing him and exposing him for the shameless fraud he is

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There are a lot of things to unpack there, from the fact that Comey’s “fake Hillary Clinton investigation” is probably the reason Sanders has a job at the White House, to the fact that there is no evidence Comey ever leaked classified information, to the fact that the idea Comey’s investigators abused the FISA process to go after the Trump campaign has been repeatedly debunked. This is an absolutely insane thing to tweet from an official government account.

View the complete December 17 article by Matthew Chapman on the AlterNet.org website here.

Comey rips Trump, GOP over ‘lying’

Former FBI Director James Comey on Monday railed against President Trump and his Republican allies in Congress, arguing their attacks on the FBI made no sense.

Comey slammed GOP lawmakers for remaining silent while he said Trump disregarded the rule of law.

“So another day of Hillary Clinton’s emails and the Steele dossier,” Comey told reporters after he was interviewed for roughly six hours behind closed doors. “This while the president of the United States is lying about the FBI, attacking the FBI and attacking the rule of law in this country. How does that make any sense?”

Comey defends FBI and himself in interview with House panels

ormer FBI director James B. Comey arrives for a closed-door session with House lawmakers Friday on Capitol Hill. Credit: Drew Angerer, Getty Images

Former FBI director James B. Comey’s closed-door interview with House lawmakers on Friday was largely a repetition of themes and facts that have emerged in previous public sessions, according to a transcript of the six-hour session that panel leaders released on Saturday.

Republicans from the House Judiciary and Oversight and Government Reform committees peppered Comey with questions about the FBI’s investigation into former secretary of state Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server, including whether Comey would have dismissed former officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page from the probe had he known they were exchanging texts disparaging then-presidential candidate Donald Trump.

Comey said he probably would have. However, the former director repeatedly declined to answer questions seeking detailed answers about elements of the FBI’s Russia investigation, which Comey either could not recall — such as who prepared the document launching the bureau’s counterintelligence investigation of individuals affiliated with Trump — or thought came too close to special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s ongoing investigation of Russian interference.

View the complete December 8 article by Karoun Demirjian and Matt Zapotosky on The Washington Post website here.