Friday, April 13, 2018

Turns out Comey gave Hillary a pass on emails because he thought she would win

Turns out Comey gave Hillary a pass on emails because he thought she would win




James Comey's memoir, pompously titled A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership, set for release on April 17, is out from the reviewer class, and all but one seems to have missed the bombshell in it: that Comey neglected to prosecute Hillary Clinton for her refusal to properly handle the nation's top secrets through her illegal private bathtub server, and exposed those secrets to  our nation's enemies, because he thought she would win the 2016 election.  Some Boy Scout, as he and his allies portray him.
Quite a few of the reviewers focus on Comey's descriptive powers, something that could make anyone look negative if the view is biased enough, which Comey's is.  He natters on about Trump's hand size, the bags under his eyes, his tie being too long, and other stylistics that mark Comey as a vain little man obsessed with looks, little different from David Brooks and his fascination with the crease of President Obama's pant legs.  Sounds about par for a preening fop, which I guess Comey is.  I didn't know there were guys who did this.

There also is focus on he-said, she-said exchanges, which, given Comey's penchant for lying, raises questions as to the accuracy of the supposed recollections.  Supposedly, Gen. John Kelly was all broken up about Comey's firing.  Well, maybe – he's a swamp thing, after all, and he's said to be a nice person, very empathetic, but who knows?
Then there are the pointless anecdotes, which the Daily Wire rightly classifies as "nothingburgers."  Are we supposed to be surprised that President Trump didn't like the "pee tape" about himself, in a dossier put together by his enemies and their Kremlin "sources"?  Or to think it unnatural that President Trump wouldn't want his wife to believe it?  It all seems natural and predictable.  Comey just wants to bring private business to the fore to embarrass Trump.  Comey is again being Comey.
Lastly, there is the elaborate Comey description of President Trump being "a mafia don."  What comes off here is that Comey is projecting his past experiences onto Trump, particularly with the stylistics he considers so important, and can't break from his past.  He can see no difference between a mobster and a New York businessman, yet at the same time, he considers President Obama with all his dirty-trick tactics above reproach.  Talk about a guy who can't discern.  Color me unimpressed.

Here's what the reviewers, all but one, seem to have missed: that Comey, after playing Boy Scout all through his memoirs, admits he neglected to prosecute Hillary Clinton for her email and server violations and let her off the hook because he thought she would win the election.  I found it buried in the best written of the reviews, the one done by a lefty at the New York Times, which goes beyond the bullet-point takeaways for a more interesting piece.  Put these three paragraphs from it together here (with my boldface of the money quotes):
There are some methodical explanations in these pages of the reasoning behind the momentous decisions Comey made regarding Hillary Clinton's emails during the 2016 campaign – explanations that attest to his nonpartisan and well-intentioned efforts to protect the independence of the F.B.I., but that will leave at least some readers still questioning the judgment calls he made, including the different approaches he took in handling the bureau's investigation into Clinton (which was made public) and its investigation into the Trump campaign (which was handled with traditional F.B.I. secrecy).
...and...
Those characteristics can sometimes be seen in Comey's account of his handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation, wherein he seems to have felt a moral imperative to address, in a July 2016 press conference, what he described as her "extremely careless" handling of "very sensitive, highly classified information," even though he went on to conclude that the bureau recommend no charges be filed against her.  His announcement marked a departure from precedent in that it was done without coordination with Department of Justice leadership and offered more detail about the bureau's evaluation of the case than usual.
As for his controversial disclosure on Oct. 28, 2016, 11 days before the election, that the F.B.I. was reviewing more Clinton emails that might be pertinent to its earlier investigation, Comey notes here that he had assumed from media polling that Clinton was going to win.  He has repeatedly asked himself, he writes, whether he was influenced by that assumption: "It is entirely possible that, because I was making decisions in an environment where Hillary Clinton was sure to be the next president, my concern about making her an illegitimate president by concealing the restarted investigation bore greater weight than it would have if the election appeared closer or if Donald Trump were ahead in all polls.  But I don't know."
In other words, Comey was watching the elections closely and very concerned as to their impact on the Clinton email investigation.  When he thought Hillary had it in the bag, he announced his re-opening of the case in the last week of October, following pressure from the New York cops who had found that the classified emails had spread to Anthony Weiner's pervert-filled computer, where his proclivities for little girls eventually put him in the can.  The information from the cops was going to spill out anyway.  And the fix was in that Hillary would be let off the hook, by Comey, as he conspired with Attorney General Loretta Lynch, as emails uncovered by Sharyl Attkisson revealed last January.

The implication is that he gave her the initial pass on the emails because he wanted her to win.  He was focused on her "legitimacy."  Busting sailors for careless photos was all fine with him, but he had no problem with Hillary opening a private server illegally in some guy's bathroom because it was all about her winning.  He'd give her a stern warning instead of an arrest warrant in the name of his "integrity," yet there was no way he wouldn't protect her "legitimacy," which wasn't his job.  It's always OK if the person in power does it, the person he wants to  win does it, right, James?  Laws are for little people.
What we learn here is that Comey was as political an animal as it was possible to be in his decisions about investigating both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.  He didn't succeed with this philosophy, so now he's doing his memoirs.  Let's hope they make a quick trip to the remainder bins.
James Comey's memoir, pompously titled A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership, set for release on April 17, is out from the reviewer class, and all but one seems to have missed the bombshell in it: that Comey neglected to prosecute Hillary Clinton for her refusal to properly handle the nation's top secrets through her illegal private bathtub server, and exposed those secrets to  our nation's enemies, because he thought she would win the 2016 election.  Some Boy Scout, as he and his allies portray him.
Quite a few of the reviewers focus on Comey's descriptive powers, something that could make anyone look negative if the view is biased enough, which Comey's is.  He natters on about Trump's hand size, the bags under his eyes, his tie being too long, and other stylistics that mark Comey as a vain little man obsessed with looks, little different from David Brooks and his fascination with the crease of President Obama's pant legs.  Sounds about par for a preening fop, which I guess Comey is.  I didn't know there were guys who did this.
There also is focus on he-said, she-said exchanges, which, given Comey's penchant for lying, raises questions as to the accuracy of the supposed recollections.  Supposedly, Gen. John Kelly was all broken up about Comey's firing.  Well, maybe – he's a swamp thing, after all, and he's said to be a nice person, very empathetic, but who knows?
Then there are the pointless anecdotes, which the Daily Wire rightly classifies as "nothingburgers."  Are we supposed to be surprised that President Trump didn't like the "pee tape" about himself, in a dossier put together by his enemies and their Kremlin "sources"?  Or to think it unnatural that President Trump wouldn't want his wife to believe it?  It all seems natural and predictable.  Comey just wants to bring private business to the fore to embarrass Trump.  Comey is again being Comey.
Lastly, there is the elaborate Comey description of President Trump being "a mafia don."  What comes off here is that Comey is projecting his past experiences onto Trump, particularly with the stylistics he considers so important, and can't break from his past.  He can see no difference between a mobster and a New York businessman, yet at the same time, he considers President Obama with all his dirty-trick tactics above reproach.  Talk about a guy who can't


discern.  Color me unimpressed.
Here's what the reviewers, all but one, seem to have missed: that Comey, after playing Boy Scout all through his memoirs, admits he neglected to prosecute Hillary Clinton for her email and server violations and let her off the hook because he thought she would win the election.  I found it buried in the best written of the reviews, the one done by a lefty at the New York Times, which goes beyond the bullet-point takeaways for a more interesting piece.  Put these three paragraphs from it together here (with my boldface of the money quotes):
There are some methodical explanations in these pages of the reasoning behind the momentous decisions Comey made regarding Hillary Clinton's emails during the 2016 campaign – explanations that attest to his nonpartisan and well-intentioned efforts to protect the independence of the F.B.I., but that will leave at least some readers still questioning the judgment calls he made, including the different approaches he took in handling the bureau's investigation into Clinton (which was made public) and its investigation into the Trump campaign (which was handled with traditional F.B.I. secrecy).
...and...
Those characteristics can sometimes be seen in Comey's account of his handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation, wherein he seems to have felt a moral imperative to address, in a July 2016 press conference, what he described as her "extremely careless" handling of "very sensitive, highly classified information," even though he went on to conclude that the bureau recommend no charges be filed against her.  His announcement marked a departure from precedent in that it was done without coordination with Department of Justice leadership and offered more detail about the bureau's evaluation of the case than usual.
As for his controversial disclosure on Oct. 28, 2016, 11 days before the election, that the F.B.I. was reviewing more Clinton emails that might be pertinent to its earlier investigation, Comey notes here that he had assumed from media polling that Clinton was going to win.  He has repeatedly asked himself, he writes, whether he was influenced by that assumption: "It is entirely possible that, because I was making decisions in an environment where Hillary Clinton was sure to be the next president, my concern about making her an illegitimate president by concealing the restarted investigation bore greater weight than it would have if the election appeared closer or if Donald Trump were ahead in all polls.  But I don't know."
In other words, Comey was watching the elections closely and very concerned as to their impact on the Clinton email investigation.  When he thought Hillary had it in the bag, he announced his re-opening of the case in the last week of October, following pressure from the New York cops who had found that the classified emails had spread to Anthony Weiner's pervert-filled computer, where his proclivities for little girls eventually put him in the can.  The information from the cops was going to spill out anyway.  And the fix was in that Hillary would be let off the hook, by Comey, as he conspired with Attorney General Loretta Lynch, as emails uncovered by Sharyl Attkisson revealed last January.
The implication is that he gave her the initial pass on the emails because he wanted her to win.  He was focused on her "legitimacy."  Busting sailors for careless photos was all fine with him, but he had no problem with Hillary opening a private server illegally in some guy's bathroom because it was all about her winning.  He'd give her a stern warning instead of an arrest warrant in the name of his "integrity," yet there was no way he wouldn't protect her "legitimacy," which wasn't his job.  It's always OK if the person in power does it, the person he wants to  win does it, right, James?  Laws are for little people.
What we learn here is that Comey was as political an animal as it was possible to be in his decisions about investigating both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.  He didn't succeed with this philosophy, so now he's doing his memoirs.  Let's hope they make a quick trip to the remainder bins.

No comments: