Klamath Falls, OR— "Check the Facts" "Lyin' Comey"(Part Five)
There comes a time when all that matters is the truth and now is that time. Republicans were upset with Comey when he came out the third time and said Hillary was not going to be charged.
Top Republicans are questioning FBI Director James Comey’s decision to notify Congress that the bureau is investigating new emails that may or may not be relevant to Hillary Clinton’s handling of sensitive information while she led the State Department.
Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, head of the House Freedom Caucus ― a far-right faction of House Republicans that have been the most vocal in labeling Clinton persona non grata ― doubted Comey’s judgment.
Trump says Hillary Clinton 'would be going to trial' if FBI Director James Comey hadn't 'saved' her – and he says it's not too late to fire nation's top cop
*President says Hillary Clinton would have faced criminal charges if Comey hadn't let her off the hook
*Clinton faced a legal nightmare over claims that she mishandled classified information
*Comey listen a litany of her alleged legal lapses last year during a campaign-season press conference, only to declare that she wouldn't face prosecution
*'Don't forget when Jim Comey came out, he saved Hillary Clinton,' Trump said
“I think this was probably not the right thing for Comey to do — the protocol here — to come out this close to an election,” Jordan told Fox News in an interview.
He added that Comey mishandled the investigation from the beginning, which left him no choice but to send a letter to Congress.
In a letter to Comey, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) defended the decision to alert Congress, but in the same breath criticized the director for not going far enough in his disclosure.
“Unfortunately, your letter failed to give Congress and the American people enough context to evaluate the significance or full meaning of this development,” Grassley, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, wrote to Comey. “Without additional context, your disclosure is not fair to Congress, the American people, or Secretary Clinton.”
Grassley requested in the letter that Comey answer by Nov. 4, 2016 whether the new emails have been read by the FBI or contain any information pertinent to the investigation. He previously called on the FBI to release more information about the Clinton probe.
Today he stands at the center of the raging storm of rumors, reality, and rancor that was the F.B.I.’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of an unsecure server to send and receive e-mail during her tenure as secretary of state. In early July 2016, after a year-long investigation that reportedly cost more than $20 million, Comey pronounced that “no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case” against her for mishandling classified information. This caused Republicans to erupt in rage.
Four months later—11 days before the 2016 presidential election—Comey sent a letter to Congress saying he was reopening the investigation in light of new information found, but not yet examined, by the F.B.I. It was now the Democrats’ turn to erupt in rage—a rage that only grew when two days before the election Comey announced there was nothing new or incriminating about the purportedly new information.
The “October surprise” dominated the news cycle in the crucial last days of the election, allowing Donald Trump to claim on the campaign trail that Hillary would soon be indicted, and to lead his followers in chanting, “Lock her up!”
Trump said it's not too late to ask Comey to step down – although such a move could end up being explosive given the FBI's investigation into Trump associates' Russia ties. Bartiromo asked Trump whether it was a mistake not to ask Comey to step down at the start of his presidency, asking whether it was too late now.
'No, it's not too late, but, you know, I have confidence in him,' Trump responded. 'We'll see what happens. You know, it's going to be interesting.'
'I want to give everybody a good fair chance. Director Comey was very, very good to Hillary Clinton. That I can tell you. If he weren't, she would be going to trial.'
Trump also dodged a question about whether he might ever appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Clinton.
'I don't want to talk about that,' he said. 'I want to talk about positive.'
Comey had early exposure to the law-enforcement community in that his grandfather, whom he calls one of his heroes, was a beat cop who worked his way up to commissioner of the Yonkers Police Department. Chris Gair, a classmate at the University of Chicago, says, “He didn’t go through law school saying he wanted to be a prosecutor, but we all knew he was determined to be one of the good guys.”
When Rudy Giuliani was the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, he brought the young Comey into the highly prestigious office, where from 1987 to 1993 he was in charge of the case against financier Marc Rich, who had fled the U.S. after being indicted for tax evasion and illegal dealings with Iran. In 1996, Comey served as deputy special counsel for the Senate Whitewater Committee and, later that year, became an assistant U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. In 2002, he was named the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, where his most widely known case resulted in putting lifestyle guru Martha Stewart behind bars for obstruction of justice and making false statements. As U.S. attorney for the Southern District, he also led a criminal investigation into Bill Clinton’s highly controversial pardon of Rich, which resulted in no prosecution. President George W. Bush then appointed him deputy attorney general, in 2003.
But two cases established his reputation in legal and political circles. The first involved obtaining indictments for the 1996 Khobar Towers incident, when 19 American military personnel were killed in a terrorist attack in Saudi Arabia. The career prosecutors at Main Justice had been working on the case for nearly five years, so long that the statute of limitations was about to expire on some of the possible charges. Comey and another prosecutor named John Davis worked on it for about three months, and then, over a weekend, Comey holed up in his office and wrote a detailed indictment of one Lebanese and 13 Saudi suspects.
Even more famous is Comey’s dramatic hospital-room confrontation with members of the Bush administration, in early March of 2004, over the secret warrantless domestic-eavesdropping program, which caused a national furor when the press revealed its existence in late 2005. In what The Washington Post later called “the most riveting 20 minutes of Congressional testimony. Maybe ever,” Comey told the story of how he, as acting attorney general, filled in for his boss, John Ashcroft, who was hospitalized. After refusing to re-authorize the program, which he believed was illegal, Comey discovered that other members of the administration were planning an end run to get an incapacitated Ashcroft to sign off on it in his hospital bed. Comey “ran, literally ran,” up the stairs to prevent that, he testified. The next day he considered resigning.
On November 6, two days before the election, Comey informed Congress that the F.B.I. had seen the e-mails and that the bureau had not changed its conclusion that Clinton should not face charges over her handling of classified information.
The result was predictable: Republicans again insisted the game must be rigged, and Democrats couldn’t believe Comey had re-ignited the issue on the eve of the election.
On January 24, 2017, The New York Times reported that President Trump had asked Comey to remain as F.B.I. director. One close observer speculates that Trump likes the fact that Comey has been weakened, although the politics of removing him would have been terrible, given that Comey will stay in charge of investigating several Trump associates and their potential connections to Russia. Even some of Comey’s fiercest critics say they are glad. As one of them puts it, “If Trump says, ‘Let’s shut down Amazon’ because he doesn’t like something The Washington Post wrote, Comey won’t do it, and in this environment, the country needs someone like that.”
"Check the Facts" new website GOP created as Comey Is Not Credible, Just Ask Democrats "Lyin' Comey" to try and discredit Comey. Trumps’s Long History Of Misstatements And Untruths "Lyin' Comey" (Part Six) Makes you wonder what universe the GOP lives in, doesn't it?
By James Garland of Tulelake News
Send sources on local and national news:
Email: tulelakenews@yahoo.com
Tulelake News
Comments
Post a Comment