The Comey Roadshow Fizzles -- There Is No Case for Collusion or Obstruction of Justice

ATTORNEY GENERAL LORETTA LYNCH TO FBI DIRECTOR JAMES COMEY : DON'T CALL IT AN INVESTIGATION, CALL IT A "MATTER." And that, dear readers, is the REAL NEWS TODAY -- OBAMA'S AG TRIED TO PLAY DOWN THE CLINTON CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION AND DIRECTOR COMEY FOLLOWED HER ORDER. Why is Congress worried about Trump's non-existent "collusion" with Russia or with his non-existent obstruction of justice??? Why is Congress not investigating Obama, Lynch, and Hillary for the cover-up and burial of Hillary's crimes as Secretary of State??? • • • ALL COMPASSES POINT TO OBAMA, LYNCH AND HILLARY. Former FBI Director James Comey revealed in Senate testimony Thursday that then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch directed him to describe the Hillary Clinton email probe as a "matter" and not an "investigation." He said under oath that Lynch's directive, combined with Lynch's unusual Arizona tarmac meeting with former President Bill Clinton, led him to make his independent announcement regarding the Clinton email probe last July. In his widely watched Senate Intelligence Committee testimony purportedly devoted to discussing the circumstances of his firing, Comey said that the tarmac meeting was a "deciding factor" in his decision to act alone to inform the public about the Clinton probe -- and protect the FBI's reputation. "There were other things, significant items," he added, citing how "the Attorney General directed me not to call it an investigation and call it a matter -- which confused me. That was one of the bricks in the load that I needed to step away from the department,” Comey said, adding that he was concerned Lynch was trying to align the DOJ’s comments with the way the campaign was talking about the probe. “That gave me a queasy feeling,” he said. • Lynch and former President Bill Clinton met on a tarmac in Phoenix, Ariz. on June 27, 2016, which immediately raised questions about whether she -- or the Justice Department -- could be impartial in the Hillary Clinton email investigation. Days later, Comey called Hillary Clinton’s actions “extremely careless” but declined to recommend charges. Comey’s sworn statements before the Senate Intelligence Committee could not only damage Lynch’s reputation as an impartial law enforcement leader, but re-open the entire Hillary investigation. It certainly is new evidence not heard before, even though Comey said he would still not change his decision not to prosecute Hillary. Committe chariman Senator Burr asked Comey : “You have been criticized on your Clinton email decision. Did you learn anything that would have changed how you chose to inform the American people?” Comey's answer clearly put the FBI and DOJ before the criminal acts of Hillary Clinton : “Honestly, no. It caused a lot of personal pain for me -- I think it was the best way to protect the justice institution -- including the FBI.” • • • COMEY ELIMINATES OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE CASE AGAINST TRUMP. Comey began his testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee by suggesting that the question of whether President Trump had committed obstruction of justice was one for Special Counsel Robert Mueller to investigate. BUT, under questioning by GOP Senator James Risch of Idaho, Comey all but destroyed any hope Democrats had for bringing a case of obstruction of justice against President Donald Trump. Here is their exchange : "RISCH: I want to drill right down, as my time is limited, to the most recent dust-up regarding, allegations that the President of the United States obstructed justice. And, boy, you nailed this down on page page five, paragraph three, you put this in quotes. Words matter, you wrote down the words so we can all have the words in front of us now. There’s 28 words that are in quotes, and it says, quote: “I hope” -- this is the President speaking -- “I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.” Now, those are his exact words; is that correct? COMEY: Correct. RISCH: And you wrote them here and you put them in quotes. COMEY: Correct. RISCH: Thank you for that. He did not direct you to let it go. COMEY: Not in his words, no. RISCH: He did not order you to let it go. COMEY: Again, those words are not in order. RISCH: No. He said, “I hope.” Now, like me, you probably did hundreds of cases, maybe thousands of cases, charging people with criminal offenses. And of course you have knowledge of the thousands of cases out there where people have been charged. Do you know of any case where a person has been charged for obstruction of justice or for that matter any other criminal offense where they said or thought they hoped for an outcome? COMEY: I don’t know well enough to answer. And the reason I keep saying his words is, I took it as a direction. RISCH: Right. COMEY: I mean, it’s the President of the United States with me alone, saying, “I hope this.” I took it as this is what he wants me to do. I didn’t obey that, but that’s the way I took it. RISCH: You may have taken it as a direction, but that’s not what he said. COMEY: Correct. RISCH: He said, “I hope.” COMEY: Those are exact words, correct. RISCH: You don’t know of anyone that’s been charged for hoping something? COMEY: I don’t, as I sit here. RISCH: Thank you, Mr. Chairman." • That is as fine a cross examination as we will ever see from a US Senator. Democrats have pinned their hopes for impeachment -- and overturning the 2016 elections -- on the idea that Trump committed obstruction of justice, which is an impeachable offense, if proven. That case has now been destroyed. • • • OTHER COMEY ADMISSIONS TO THE SENATE UNDER OATH. Comey told the Senate Intelligence Committee he did not tell Attorney General Jeff Sessions President Trump pressured him over Russia probe because he assumed Sessions would recuse himself from the matter two weeks later -- that is a convenient way to wriggle out of the fact that Comey told NO ONE up the chain of command about his suspicions regarding Trump's motives...he wrote memos to himself instead. One Senator even pointed out to Comey that he may have voiolated the law in not telling his superiors. Comey answered that he had had a moral obligation to inform them but didn't. • However, Comey did have what seems to have been a CYA moment about his conversations with Trump. Comey told the Senate Intelligence Committee he asked a friend to disclose to The New York Times a memo he wrote after a meeting with President Trump in the hope it would spur appointment of a special counsel. Comey asked his friend, a Columbia law professor, to leak the memo to the New York Times. BUT, in unwitting proof of just how incompetent he is, while Comey turned all his copies of his memos over to Special Counsel Mueller, conveniently making them unavailable to the Senate Intelligence Committee -- it seems he forgot to ask his friend to destroy his copy, and a Republican Senator was quick to jump on that error, asking Copmey to provide his friend's copy to the Committee. • Comey admitted that he pushed back against a request from President Trump to possibly investigate the origins of “salacious material” that the FBI possessed in the course of its investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign. The detail was included in Comey’s prepared remarks delivered to the US Senate Intelligence Committee and released ahead of Comey’s appearance. The “salacious material” is clearly a reference to claims made inside the controversial, partially discredited and unverified 35-page dossier that reportedly served as a “roadmap” for the FBI’s investigation into unsubstantiated charges of coordination between Moscow and members of Trump’s presidential campaign. The dossier also reportedly served as the FBI’s justification for seeking court approval to clandestinely monitor Carter Page, who was for a time tangentially involved with Trump’s campaign. In Comey’s prepared remarks, Comey says that following a January 6 Oval Office meeting with intelligence community leaders, Comey 'remained alone with the President Elect to brief him on some personally sensitive aspects of the information assembled during the assessment.’ " In his statement summarizing his conversation with Trump, Comey refers to Russian prostitutes, a key element of the dossier and Trump replied that he had nothing to do with Russia, had not been involved with hookers in Russia, and had always assumed he was being recorded when in Russia. In a private White House dinner with Trump on January 27, Comey says the topic of the “salacious material” again came up and he revealed that Trump was considering asking the FBI to investigate the origins of the claims. Comey pushed back against that idea. Comey wrote : "During the dinner, the President returned to the salacious material I had briefed him about on January 6, and, as he had done previously, expressed his disgust for the allegations and strongly denied them. He said he was considering ordering me to investigate the alleged incident to prove it didn’t happen. I replied that he should give that careful thought because it might create a narrative that we were investigating him personally, which we weren’t, and because it was very difficult to prove a negative. He said he would think about it and asked me to think about it." The "salacious" dossier was produced by former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele, who was reportedly paid by Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans to investigate Trump, raising questions about Steele's partiality. Last month, Steele conceded in court filings that part of his work still needed to be verified. • And, Comey AT LAST admitted during his appearance before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday that the New York Times report on President Trump colluding with the Russians during the 2016 presidential campaign was “not true.” It was Senator Jim Risch who asked Comey about the reporting : “Okay, so again,” Risch said. “So the American people can understand this, that report by the New York Times was not true, is that a fair statement?” Comey answered : “It was not true. Again, all of you know this, maybe the American people don’t. The challenge -- I’m not picking on reporters about writing stories about classified information...[the challenge is] that people talking about it often don’t really now what’s going on and those of us who actually know what’s going on are not talking about it. And we don’t call the press to say, hey, you got that thing wrong about this sensitive topic. We just have to leave it there.” So-o-oo, Comey rushed to tell Trump about a soon-to-be-published story about discredited and unverified salacious rumors but saw no need to tell President Trump that the NYT story that has been the red flag of all MSM attacks on Trump was untrue. As GOP Senator Rubio put it, the only leak NOT made to the media was that Trump was not in collusion with Russia. • Comey affirmed that Trump is NOT under investigation by the FBI. Zero Hedge reported that CNN had reported on Tuesday that CNN reported that “Comey is expected to explain to Senators that those were much more nuanced conversations from which Trump concluded that he was not under investigation.” Zero Hedge added that CNN’s chief political analyst Gloria Borger, said : “Comey is going to dispute the President on this point if he’s asked about it by Senators, and we have to assume that he will be. He will say he never assured Donald Trump that he was not under investigation, that that would have been improper for him to do so.” GUESS WHAT?? CNN got it wrong, as usual. Comey's prepared written testimony supports President Trump’s claim that he was told three times that he was not under investigation. At the same time, the Comey testimony refutes reports by CNN and other outlets that Comey would dispute that claim. When Trump fired Comey, he wrote: “While I greatly appreciate you informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation, I nevertheless concur with the judgment of the Department of Justice that you are not able to effectively lead the Bureau.” CNN has now added a correction at the top of its story : "CORRECTION AND UPDATE: This article was published before Comey released his prepared opening statement. The article and headline have been corrected to reflect that Comey does not directly dispute that Trump was told multiple times he was not under investigation in his prepared testimony released after this story was published." Even on the often-quoted rumor that Trump was somehow wrong in asking for Comey's loyalty, Comey testified that he promised to give the President his "honest loyalty." • And, finally, Comey said flatly that President Trump did not tell him to drop his investigation into Russia's meddling in the 2016 election, and that Trump did not try to obstruct justice in his opinion. • • • INTEL CHIEFS TALK TO CONGRESS. Comey was echoing the Wednesday testimony of Trump's top intel advisors. Real Clear Politics reporter By James Arkin says : "Two of the nation’s top intelligence officials refused to answer questions Wednesday about whether President Trump asked them to interfere in or push back on current Russian investigations, but said that they had felt no pressure to do so at any point." • Half of that report is right -- both Dan Coats, the director of National Intelligence, or Admiral Mike Rogers, the National Security Agency director, told the Senate Intelligence committee that they never felt pressure to intervene or interfere in ongoing investigations. Rogers said : “In the three-plus years that I have been the director of the National Security Agency, to the best of my recollection I have never been directed to do anything I believe to be illegal, immoral, unethical or inappropriate. To the best of my recollection, during the same period of service, I do not recall ever feeling pressured to do so.” Coats said he had “never felt pressured to intervene or interfere in any way with shaping intelligence in a political way to an ongoing investigation.” • What the mainstream media and Real Clear Politics reported wrongly was about the "refusals" of the two intel chiefs to answer questions. Coats said it was “not appropriate” to discuss his conversations with President Trump in an open hearing at the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is investigating Russian influence in the 2016 election. Rogers declined to address any specifics regarding his conversations with Trump." That is not refusing to answer questions -- it is refusing to answer questions in a public forum about areas of presidential action that may be classified or subject to the confidentiality of executive privilege. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe also declined to answer questions from Senators that they said could fall under the purview of the special counsel appointed to oversee the Russia investigation. • And, that standard, when it was invoked by FBI Director Comey or DNI James Clapper or CIA Director Brennan, was accepted by both Senate and House committee Democrats without pushback. But, on Wednesday, ProgDem Senators weren’t satisfied with those responses. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the panel, said their hesitation to respond in a public setting should be weighed against “the public’s absolute need to know. They’re wondering what’s going on.” -- oh yes, we are wondering what's going on, but it has more to do with Congress's rampage at Trump than with anything either Coats or Rogers said. • The Wednesday hearing was supposed to be a discussion of the potential reauthorization of a key portion of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act [FISA] due to expire later this year. But many lawmakers on the panel focused instead MSM reports related to the Russia probe, and reported attempts by Trump to ask officials to intervene or push back on the investigations. • Progressive-Democrat-in-Independent-Clothing Senator Angus King gave proof positive of the anti-Trump rant now reaching epidemic proportions in Congress. He pressed Rogers and Coats to provide legal justification for their refusal to answer questions about Trump. Rogers told King he is not aware of an invocation of executive privilege preventing him from answering the questions, and King pressed him on why he wouldn’t respond. “Because I feel it is inappropriate, Senator,” Rogers replied. “What you feel isn’t relevant, admiral,” King shot back. “I am not satisfied with ‘I do not believe it’s appropriate’ or ‘I do not feel I should answer,’” King later told Coats. “I want to understand a legal basis. You swore that oath to tell us the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth and today you are refusing to do so. What is the legal basis for your refusal to testify before this committee?” Coats replied that he wasn’t sure he had a legal basis, but that he was “more than willing to sit before this committee during its investigative process in a closed session and answer your questions.” -- Isn't impartial senatorial search for truth a glorious thing to behold??? • • • COMEY AND SPECIAL COUNSEL MUELLER COORDINATED COMEY TESTIMONY. Fox News reports that Comey's written statement and subsequent testimony during Thursday’s question-and-answer session were discussed with former FBI Director Mueller. A source told Fox News that, as can be seen in Comey’s opening statement, the fired FBI director will not come to any legal conclusions about whether there was “obstruction of justice” on the part of President Trump. By contrast, Comey did make a legal judgment on whether he thought Hillary Clinton should have been charged in the email scandal during the 2016 presidential election campaign. In his infamous July 2016 press conference, Comey said the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee had been “extremely careless,” but her conduct did not rise to the level of criminal charges. Legal experts told Fox News it is not uncommon for investigators, such as a special counsel, to be in contact with someone who is a party to their investigation. Fox legal expert Judge Andrew Napolitano said : "It would be unheard of for a prosecutor to allow his star witness to testify before Congress without heavy coordination," • We might ask this question -- if Comey is the best Mueller can do as his "star" witness, why bother to continue in this waste of taxpayer money. The cases of collusion with Russia and obstruction of justice against President Trump do not exist -- there is No Evidence. • The President’s outside counsel, Marc Kasowitz, in a written statement, said : “The President feels completely and totally vindicated,” noting Comey “finally publicly confirmed his private reports that the President was not under investigation in any Russian probe.” Kasowitz also raised the question whether Comey's leak amounts to a legal problem for him because he leaked a "privileged" conversation : “We will leave it to the appropriate authorities to determine whether this leak should be investigated along with all those others being investigated.” • • • DEAR READERS, if the Senate's Progressive Democrats want to talk about obstruction of justice, here is the best set of facts I've heard about. One of Comey's closest friends told political author Ed Klein about pressure brought to bear on FBI Director Comey from a President -- in this case, Barack Obama. Klein says : "It turns out that the Obama White House contacted Comey in early June 2016 and invited him to have a beer with the President on the White House lawn. 'When Jim's appointments secretary read him the message, he told me he was taken by complete surprise,' Comey’s friend said. 'The request wasn't proper, and Jim told his secretary to tell the White House he was too busy to have a casual beer with the President.' Jim didn’t think more about it for a few weeks, until the President himself called. Obama was his charming self and made small talk and said he’d like to have a one-on-one basketball game with Jim. He said he'd heard that Jim had a hoop at home. Jim is a lifelong cop and prosecutor and his mind always goes to motive. What did the President really want to talk about? Jim suspected that Obama wanted to put pressure on him regarding the investigation of Hillary’s private email server. 'Jim told Obama that he’d love to have a one-on-one with him, but he begged off saying his schedule was a killer and he couldn’t justify taking the time away from his job. Jim told me that Obama sounded really annoyed. He was surprised that Obama -- Mr. Cool -- had stepped over the line.' " That is a pretty good story, and it is much more transparent as an effort to obstruct justice than the "I hope you can find a way..." comment of President Trump to Comey. We will never know what Obama's motives were because the beer-on-the-lawn-and-hoops never happened -- and that makes us wonder why Comey could say "no" to Obama but not to Trump -- was he trying to "save" Obama but had no problem with hanging Trump out to dry?? • And, if we want to talk "collusion" -- there is no doubt Obama has the best track record on colluding with the Russians. Mark Alexander recently wrote : "As for collusion with Russia, while there is absolutely no evidence of collusion between Trump and Putin, there is clear and substantiated evidence of such collusion between Obama, Clinton and Putin....Vladimir Putin, a hardened communist KGB aggressor, who said famously that the 'greatest geopolitical catastrophe' of the 20th century was the disintegration of Russia's Soviet empire, knew that Obama was a milquetoast President, and an ideological socialist sympathizer at that. Putin is a chess player, while Obama struggled with checkers. And Clinton, Obama's understudy, set the tone for relations with Russia as his Secretary of State, when, as you recall, she presented Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov with a giant "reset" button prop with 'Peregruzka' stamped on the front. 'We worked hard to get the right Russian word,' said Clinton, asking 'Do you think we got it?' Lavrov replied, 'No,' and informed her that 'Peregruzka' didn't translate as 'reset' but 'overcharged.'....And if there was ever conclusive evidence of treasonous election collusion between Obama and Putin, it would be Obama's 2012 hot mike assurance to then-Russian President Dmitri Medvedev that he would surrender NATO's plans for anti-ballistic missile defenses in Poland, the Czech Republic, Romania, Turkey and Bulgaria after his re-election. He told Medvedev, 'On all these issues, but particularly missile defense, this -- this can be solved, but it's important for [incoming Russian President Vladimir Putin] to give me space. This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility.' Medvedev replied, 'I understand. I will transmit this information to Vladimir.' He added, 'I stand with you.' " • As for Clinton, Alexander wrote that the benefit of collusion with Russia prior to her 2016 campaign was "much more personally enriching," noting that she approved the back-channel sale of 20% of our uranium reserves to Putin's cronies at Rosatom; and, she and her campaign chairman John Podesta lied about that deal until emails hacked from her secret communications server exposed their collusion. The Clinton Foundation received $145 million in connection with that deal, and millions more from other Putin oligarchs. And Podesta certainly profited handsomely, his company receiving millions from a fund established by Putin, while Podesta's brother Tony was also on the Putin payroll. And all this while Bill Clinton picked up a $500,000 check for a speech in Russia." • Collusion??? There it is. And there is another collusion going on now, concocted by the Progressive Democrats and their MSM propagandists. Their goal is to keep the agenda of Donald Trump and congressional Republicans on the ropes, to impeach Trump is they can dupe a sufficient number of #Never Trump Republicans to join them, and to sucker in enough low-information American voters to win in 2018 and 2020. To paraphrase the late NRA president Charlton Heston -- from our cold, dead hands.