But I want to focus on something that happened in the end. The interviewer, Chris Wallace, quoted the Inspector General, Michael Horowitz, on the FBI's handling of the Russia/Trump investigation.
We see a video clip, with Horowitz saying: "It's unclear what the motivations were. On the one hand, gross incompetence, negligence. On the other hand, intentionality."
Horowitz doesn't decide. He leaves it open. It was either "gross incompetence" or "intentionality." So which was it? If you were James Comey, who was the director of the FBI, which would you prefer it to have been? Both are terrible, but for different reasons, and — if we knew which one — very different consequences.
Comey tries to avoid choosing. He intones what we already know, that the IG "doesn't conclude that there was intentional misconduct by these career special agents." That's part of the question asked and exactly not what is called for in an answer.
Chris Wallace repeats the question: "Gross negligence or they intended to do it. They intended to lie to the FISA court."
Comey uses the same move he used when the question was asked the first time. He tells us — again! — that the IG "doesn't conclude that there was intentional misconduct by these career special agents." Now, it's obvious that Comey is deliberately avoiding the question. He's supposed to pick. Which is it — "gross incompetence" or "intentionality"?
Wallace increases the pressure. The IG "just says it's one of two things, and he can't decide: gross negligence or it was intentional misconduct."
And Comey does it again! He says that the IG said "we are not concluding that there was intentional misconduct by FBI officials." Comey seems to hope to refocus on the language in the written report, which doesn't sound as either/or as the in-person testimony in the video clip.
Wallace refocuses on the in-person testimony in the video Wallace showed. Wallace says: "Did you hear what he just said here?"
Comey hedges: "I did. I don't know the context of that." Which struck me as ludicrously disingenuous. Suddenly, Comey doesn't understand what the conversation was about? But I guess he has a shred of hope that perhaps the IG was talking about some little subsection of all the things the FBI did wrong.
Chris Wallace says: "He was asked specifically, 'How do you explain it?' And he said, 'Gross negligence or intentionality.'" Pick one! Come on, Comey, it's one or the other. You've got to pick!
James Comey once again repeats the non-answer that the IG "doesn't find intentionality." He tacks on other unresponsive verbiage:
.... that doesn't make it any less important. As director, you are responsible for this. I was responsible for this. And if I were still there, I'd be doing what Chris Wray is doing -- is figuring out, "So, how did this happen? And is it systemic?" Because that's the scariest thought, is that --In other words, he would — only if he were still in charge — just be wondering the same thing Chris Wallace was asking: Was it gross negligence (i.e., the "systemic" bad performance of the FBI) or intentionality (special bad behavior aimed at Trump)? But Comey was in charge when all these things happen, and we're talking to him now to try to find out what happened! He should be a source of the answer, not a person who'd be getting started looking into what happened.
Wallace abandons his either/or question. The idea of Comey still being in charge prompts the question whether, if he were, and all these things had happened on his watch,"would he resign?"
Comey says "No."
Wallace doesn't ask the "gross incompetence"/"intentionality" question again, but he has a second way to try to make Comey choose. He plays a clip of AG Bob Barr saying: "These irregularities, these misstatements, these omissions, were not satisfactorily explained, and I think that leaves open the possibility to infer bad faith."
That is, the IG laid out the evidence, but refrained from making the choice between "gross incompetence"/"intentionality," so it's up to us, hearing the evidence, to do our own thinking about what to infer.
Wallace asks: "Given the repeated errors -- some would say abuses -- of the FISA process, does Attorney General Barr have a point?"
Comey says: "No. He does not have a factual basis as the attorney general of the United States to be speculating that agents acted in bad faith. The facts just aren’t there, full stop. That doesn’t make it any less consequential, any less important, but that’s an irresponsible statement."
It's "irresponsible" to say that it's possible to infer that the answer to the either/or question — the question Comey would not answer — is "intentionality" and not "gross incompetence"?
If so, then has Comey made his choice: the responsible inference from the evidence is gross incompetence? Or is it irresponsible to state that inference too? All responsible persons must forever hang on the cusp? Was it "gross incompetence" or "intentionality"? It was one or the other, but you can never say, you can never even speculate about which one it was?
The answer "intentionality" is horrible for Comey. You can see why he won't go there and why he wants to crush that option when he hears it from Barr. So why not go with "gross incompetence"? It's painful, but it fends off the horrible "intentionality" option?
If the FBI's handling of FISA warrants is — as a systemic matter — grossly incompetent, how many other FBI investigations can be called into question? How many settled cases can be reopened? How many prisoners have new hope? How many lawsuits for damages can be filed? The "gross incompetence" choice is also disastrous.
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211 comments:
1 – 200 of 211 Newer› Newest»"gross incompetence" or "intentionality."
Correct answer: "Both".
AllenS, the latter caused the former.
Holy shit, Ann. How long can you avoid the truth? Comey is a fucking weasel and a liar, and a traitor, and he needs to hang from the neck til dead.
Comey’s only concerns are not providing the justification for his firing by Trump and getting a job in Hillary’s administration at the same or better pay grade. Everything else be dammed...
You can argue Comey didn't supervise closely enough. But there's no argument about his decision not to give the Trump campaign a defensive briefing, which Hillary received concerning her emails. That places Comey in the thick of the conscious conspiracy.
My back of the envelope assessment would be this: If these were random defects - all 17 identified deficiencies - you would expect about half to go in Trump’s favor and half against. But they didn’t; all 17 went in one direction. The chance that these were just random errors is about 7 in a million. They were intentional.
I haven't heard how many manhours the FBI spent sorting through Page & his contacts comms after each FISA warrant. The IG report should have told us how extensive CH was, and that goes to competence or malice. Looks like the FISA court would want to know if there's there there before the extensions.
The fact that Comey didn't have a satisfactory answer ready for an obvious question shows his incompetence, that he didn't claim incompetence or he was deceived shows his malice.
I was struck by his seeming to believe that the IG report is the final result. Durham has called a grand jury to hear evidence on these (and other) very issues! How can he even agree to this interview due to the likely jeopardy that poses for him?
Amazing how Comey’s reputation crumbled when the spotlight was turned on him back in 2016. I wonder how many other respected career civil servants would fair as poorly.
Even Maureen Dowd could see through this shit. Everybody on the principled left sees through it. Moderates see through it.
For Chuck, this is what evidence looks like.
I don't have access to the transcript but I recall Comey saying something along the lines of mistakes being made but when asked if he would have resigned, he said worse mistakes were made when he was in charge? Something along those lines. It struck me that Chris Wallace didn't bat an eye at that comment.
Onr thing we do know: he had no intention of answering that question clearly. And this self proclaimed statesman is the guardian of truth and justice and the constitution? A weasel?
Intentionality or Incompetence?
Comey as Schrodinger's cat. But Barr has let the cat out of the box.
AllenS at the top nails it.
Come on, Ann. You went to Michigan (Wolverines) and are an emeritus professor and Wisconsin (Badgers). Surely you recognize a weasel (Comey) when you see one.
Transcript:
"Chris Wallace: But this isn't some investigation, sir. This is an investigation of the campaign of the man who is the president of the United States. You had just been through a firestorm investigating Hillary Clinton. I would think, if I were in your position, I would have been on that, you know, like a junkyard dog. I would have wanted to know everything they were doing in investigating the Trump campaign.
James Comey: Yeah. That's not the way it works, though. As a director sitting on top of an organization of 38,000 people, you can't run an investigation that's seven layers below you."
Seven layers below?? McCabe was his Deputy Director.
Comey is a lying, dirty cop.
"My back of the envelope assessment would be this: If these were random defects - all 17 identified deficiencies - you would expect about half to go in Trump’s favor and half against. But they didn’t; all 17 went in one direction. The chance that these were just random errors is about 7 in a million. They were intentional."
It's not like the chance in coin-flipping.
You have to consider that other forces made the FBI people always lean in the same direction, such as a bias toward investigating and keeping an investigation going, trying to get something rather than closing it down. That could be the gross negligence, and if so, it is relevant to all the cases that don't involve Trump.
Incompetence is what you get when you have women in charge. It may be intentional too but that's downstream from incompetence.
They're getting their truths from soap opera news, is the incompetence.
It's like women voting.
"Negligence" isn't really the right word for that.
"Incompetence" isn't the right word either. It's competence toward the wrong end. But the end might be something other than getting Trump. It could be toward pursuing investigations too aggressively, with insufficient attention to the harm caused.
Durham has called a grand jury to hear evidence on these (and other) very issues! How can he even agree to this interview due to the likely jeopardy that poses for him?
He's a made man. He's untouchable. At least, that's what he thought.
I think what Ann writes it’s probably closer to the truth. My short experience in working opposite the US attorney’s office is it’s a big prosecuting shredder that grinder on day in and day out, sometimes rather unthinkingly, and you best not get your tie anywhere close to it, because it shreds.
Lordy, what a leaking lying loser.
"Negligence" isn't really the right word for that.
Zealotry.
Incompetence is the right word, but as a cause and not descriptive of the motive. There's a motive too, but that's because of incompetence. The motive is get rid of Trump.
J.L.Austin's "Three Ways of Spilling Ink" is amusing and instructive. Analysis of the right respective times to say intentionally, on purpose and deliberately. Marvelously contrived examples. Killing an elderly relative, quelling a riot in India.
As the worm squirms. And it's only going to get much much worse for Comey from here on out.
AllenS for the TKO in the opening seconds. Almost lost my coffee on that.
If women vote against Trump because he said grab them by the pussy, is that incompetence or malevolence. It's sizeable numbers.
Weasel move by Comey.
"'Incompetence' isn't the right word either. It's competence toward the wrong end. But the end might be something other than getting Trump. It could be toward pursuing investigations too aggressively, with insufficient attention to the harm caused."
Well, yes, and that's why we should all worry, and that includes Chuck, Inga, Ritmo, readering, Howard, sunsong, etc., at what was done here. If the federal government doing it to Donald Trump and Ted Stevens, you should wonder who else--with less power, fame and certainly less money--is being abused. And they did this to Donald Trump. How would a Democrat feel if it was done to Nancy Pelosi, Elizabeth Warren, Mayor Pete? Maybe it is being done to them.
The frustrating thing is, as Barr has pointed out, we went through all this in the aftermath of Watergate, and procedural protections were put in place. We can see how well that is working.
Kudos to lefties like Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi, and Michael Tracey who are actually seeing what is happening here. Boos and hisses to our local trolls, who appear to be defending the police state.
Think of the FBI as a bunch of women who just heard Trump say grab them by the pussy. Then account for the mistakes all going the same way.
I think Comey is answering, or wanting us to think he has, by emphasizing that the IG didn't find intentional conduct. Since the choice offered is one or the other, and he cites the lack of finding for one form of conduct, then presumably the choice is the other form of conduct. He doesn't say that and no one can say he has. But he's allowing for an inference that he did.
Comey is a lawyer, a politician, a bureaucrat. He's skilled in the art of communicating without actually saying what people think he meant.
The news has been broadcasting grab them by the pussy for four years now, and the FBI heard them.
The media drives everything.
The audience drives the media.
All that cuts the causal chain is competence. For which you need people who think grab them by the pussy is just a good joke.
There's still incompetents voting however but what can you do.
The motive is get rid of Trump
Or get enough goods on him to protect themselves ("insurance policy") like Hoover did. They couldn't afford to reveal their bad acts unless they could find a very big smoking gun, which STrzok admitted early on wasn't there. They must have realized Trump, like Bill C, isn't one to go quietly.
Comey claiming, and lying, that he was not involved in the investigation of a sitting President, is him protecting Obama. Nothing more, nothing less. Comey was allowed in on the stream of graft coming from Ukraine. Aide voted out of Congress, to Ukraine. That money was used to hire companies, and consultants, that are US politicians. We see enough of this picture to identify even small details.
Well that was an october surprise aired three years ago. But the fraud went back to the spring of that year where fusion cooked up the narrative.
Comey says "No."
Finally an honest answer. And one the shows Trump was justified in firing the...guy.
This is not Comey's first rodeo - and the smell of sulfur lingers in the air wherever he has been in so many government offices.
It is not that he is a bureaucrat; it is that he is a player.
I'm wondering if someone has already given Trump the "for the good of the country and to prevent further division" speech in regards to investigating the FBI. Because that could lead to Hillary and (gasp!) Obama. And the reason that the disaster of impeachment was pursued is because Trump said no. That people need to be held accountable.
So the next stage is an attempt to blame it all on relatively low level people, and by that I mean anybody who isn't Hillary or Obama.
Trump seems to be the only person in authority in DC that doesn't regard the federal government as a kind of grift.
Yes he was the rosenstein in the plame casse who pulled the trigger on fitz while eickenrode who now works for durham, did strzoks part.
He did answer. By process of elimination, his answer is 'gross incompetence'. So headlines everywhere should read, Comey admits to gross incompetence in FBI handling of the FISA application process.
Spin is getting harder - or easier to see through - than it used to be. Poor Comey was gloating when the IG report came out. I don’t think he was prepared for these questions, because he wasn’t expecting anyone to look deeper than, did not find intentional misconduct.
(Either that or he knew how weak his hand was and decided to play it out boldly.)
peacelovewoodstock:
Seven layers below? I like that. Sort of a “couple of rogues in the Cincinnati office” defense.
Simple incompetence doesn't make any sense. How do you change the contents of an email to reverse its meaning through incompetence?
The correct answer is, it was both. They acted intentionally, but did so incompetently.
The problem for me is that different people were differently motivated. If you want actual intent to deprive American citizens of their Constitutional rights the better place to look is at Comey’s assistant, DD Andy McCabe. Much of the plot was developed with Peter Strzok and Lisa Page around his$70k conference room table. Remember, McCabe had been purchased by the Clintons - his wife had received $700k or so in campaign contributions from long term Clinton bagman, Terry McAwfull.
I don’t think that there were that many active participants in the conspiracy. Rather they were very well placed, able to control the flow of information to the rest of the people at the top of the CD (Counterintelligence Division) and the Bureau. And with their control over the information, they were able to panic the others into doing things that they should have known were wrong. But, The Russia’s Were Coming.
Initially, Strzok was maybe five levels below McCabe, but were communicating through McCabe’s lawyer and Strzok’s lover, Lisa Page. My expectation is that Strzok was involved in every facet of the each of the conspiracies, because he was the one whom McCabe trusted, and it was ultimately McCabe, in day to day operational control of the FBI, as Deputy Director, who repeatedly placed Strzok so conveniently at the heart of the action.
Someone figured out what Lisa Page is up to now. She recently broke her silence, joined with Lawfare, and sued the FBI for violation of her privacy with the release of her text messages. The key here is that many of her text messages remain either hidden or classified, and contain a lot of incriminating information. It was the crowd sourcing of their text messages that really broke the case open. And those remaining text messages, and the redacted portions of the ones that have already been released, that are very likely to further incriminate the central players in the conspiracy. Sure IG Horowitz has access to them, as well as USA Durham, but so far, it has been the crowd sourcing that has put most of the dots together. And, thus, the privacy suit. It doesn’t have to win. It just has to be plausible (remember - she is now openly working with Lawfare). Dir Wray was put in charge of the FBI by compromised former DAG Rosenstein for a reason, and that was to protect the Deep State there, which includes McCabe and Page, because their indictments would hurt the Bureau and Department. And Wray almost immediately promoted two of the people heavily implicated in SpyGate to be his top assistants.
eickenrode who now works for durham
Oh, great.
I dunno, I suspect that "intentionality" isn't necessarily all that bad for the FBI in an election year... "Incompetence" means they'll always, more or less, screw up. "Intentionality" means they'll only "screw up" if the American public elects the wrong person. So vote wisely, you plebs.
It could be toward pursuing investigations too aggressively, with insufficient attention to the harm caused.
Funny it didn't work that way when Hillary was the subject.
You have to dial past the ambient noise, but hes going to prespin that result, eickenrode lost the 302s, so they had to divine libbys intent as with rove.
Comey was at the bottom of the prosecutions of Martha Stewart and Scooter Libby. Someone more knowledgeable of the Washington merry-go-round than I, listed 3-4 other notorious cases where he likewise was the critical link in getting the misbehavior going.
Chris Wallace is really good here. He gets a lot of flak for being "neverTrump", but his questions and followups cause Comey to shred his own credibility. Comey is lying and expecting Wallace and his audience to be gulled by his evasions. Wallace lets Comey speak for himself, and it is catastrophic for Comey.
Well done, Chris.
I can't watch Wallace; did he go on to explain that we have a history in the United States of leaders taking responsibility for their failures? From the questions asked, I doubt it. He seems to hold such lecturing for those who don't need it.
It was intentional. It is not gross negligence to submit a statement you know to be false.
I had the same thought as Althouse last week. I can't understand why the FBI wouldn't want this to be political motivated. Yes, it's bad, but not "all the terrorists get out of prison" bad. It's like Christopher Wray hadn't thought long term before he gave that pathetic interview saying there was nothing wrong at the FBI. These guys leading the bureaucracy are dumber than I ever expected. Doesn't really instill confidence in our institutions.
So he was at meet of the critical reauthorization of the march 04 stellar wind surveillance how critical the next was the madrid train bombing. The brouhaha over the us atty firings, the crocodile tears over enhanced interrogation
Of course it was intentional--we all know that. But he admitted [by inference] to 'gross incompetence' under his watch which, IMO, should be headline news but won't be.
"You have to consider that other forces made the FBI people always lean in the same direction, such as a bias toward investigating and keeping an investigation going, trying to get something rather than closing it down. That could be the gross negligence, and if so, it is relevant to all the cases that don't involve Trump."
Not like coin flipping. Agreed. Now which direction did the errors go in the Hillary server investigation which involved many of the same investigators.
Wray was the supervisor of the enron task force who volunteered to resign over the stellar wind re up
It could be toward pursuing investigations too aggressively, with insufficient attention to the harm caused.
Lori Laughlin's legal team is going with this kind of "incompetence," in both the content and timing of her new defense strategy: the donations were legit, and the Feds are withholding exculpatory evidence, in just the way the IG report documents they did to Page. Yes, the consequences of this kind of incompetence are very far reaching. Suddenly everyone accused by the Feds are terrible crimes gets the Central Park 5 sympathy.
I would focus on what was given up morrie tobins fraud convictions
It's not intentional in any case. It's deliberate.
Preceded by incompetence.
I referenced the edwin wilson case, he was guilty of the offenses, but he had been ordered to do so, for 20 years they hid that fact.
rhhardin, are you describing the timeline of "Crossfire Hurricane" and whatever CIA operation preceded it, or are you on a grander time scale explaining how a lying, leaking loser like Comey comes to such success in DC? because the intentionality in question here is narrower, smaller, like the people involved in this. we don't need a grand explanation with schmucks like this in charge. explaining how they came to be in charge is distracting from common ground that people are arriving at. bad persuasion.
Weasel words as always.
On top of that he wants sympathy.
and anyway, if it is women voters, what incompetence did that decision derive from?
Embrace the healing power of “and.”
as Allen said....
Embrace The POWER, Of The Word AND
If Comey were shrewd, he'd blame it on the CIA, before Durham does. But Comey doesn't get ahead of things.
You people act like this is the FBI's first rodeo. For Trumpists, history began in November 2016.
Is that your a game howard
https://mobile.twitter.com/realDSteinberg/status/1206427283038363648
Women voters think like women. A short circuit from analysis to feelings. This is superior for running a neighborhood, but not for running a nation.
A competent voter would stop short and say, no I have to look at how the system will run here, can it work with all the side effects it will produce, and so forth. Think like a guy in large scale questions.
A guy would, as far as that vote goes, starve the child to save the nation. Save the child some other way, if that's important to you. A woman votes to save the child and ruin the nation.
Funny stuff. Alright, alright, it was gross competence, OK? Are you happy now? The smarter, younger people were viciously partisan, hoping to get big jobs in a Swamp Administration, us senior guys just signed whatever was put in front of us, like Henry Blake.
As my friend (don't say my onetime lover) Bob Mueller says (in fact it's about all he says now, many times a day): grossly incompetent, grossly incompetent, grossly incompetent.
This “intentionality” is what Comey did not find w Clinton and her emails, so he let her go on her way. He’s looking for that same treatment for himself here, no?
guys enacted the 19th amendment
Comey tries to say that Trump and his campaign was never under investigation. How does he explain why he did a car debrief after revealing the pee tape if he wasn't under investigation? He made it sound so courageous and sneaky in his book.... What's changed?
He is scum.
Whatever. The agents and Comey committed firing offenses.
"You people act like this is the FBI's first rodeo."
You are right, Howard. Our FBI--abusing Americans' rights from time to time since 1924. And just to make sure we get it badly wrong occasionally, we employ profilers, who are way, way off the mark.
But the leadership reached a new level of sanctimonious cynicism with the appointment of James Comey, the Worst Public Servant of His Generation.
Think a bit about that interview by Chris Wallace that Althouse posted. He looks scared to me, covering it up by evasions and blustering nonsense. When Wallace mentioned Barr, Comey went into panic mode. His speech quickened and his voice went up a bit.
I know what James Comey's default worry is--the thing that won't let him get back to sleep at 3:00 AM. It is "What can they prove?"
I don't make the game, Nabisco. It just is.
Ms. Althouse makes a very subtle point. In making decisions under uncertainty statisticians say that if the probability of an outcome or a more extreme outcome is very small, we reject that that outcome occured randomly. So we plug the 17 events negative to Trump into the binomial distribution and get that the outcome would occur once in millions of tries at 50% probability, and would still reject Randomness if the probability of the FBI favoring Trump was only 25%.
Rejecting means the FBI was statistically biased against Trump. The Althouse point is that the FBI may be biased against all the accused, including Trump. So if you are investigated the odds of being charged are high even if you are innocent. That would be a case for eliminating the FBI as that is anti justice, the FBI promises to be fair. ( They were not biased, apparently, against Hillary unless she was just really really innocent enough to overcome the bias against the accused. ). This puts tremendous power into those who can start investigations as it is very likely anyone investigated will be charged, even up to fraudulent evidence like with the Carter Page FISA.
This destroys my simple faith in the FBI and also makes me concerned about the police.
Let's look at the big picture rhhardin. Since sufferage was enacted, the US went from a second tier power to the world's only Superpower. Even now, the whole world bows down to Hollywood, Google, Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Twitter and the almighty dollar.
Some ruin woman vote has wrought
Wallace: Did you know all of this?
Comey: All of what?
Wallace: Everything that we're talking about here...
Lol, that's the best moment of the interview.
Have you noticed that Comey looks like a weasel?
If the russians wanted to cause havok would they have done anything different then use deripaskas hire steele to ferry rumor from a subsource?
That they couldn’t properly frame the most hated guy in Washington sounds like gross incompetence to me.
Comey’s interview really steams me. He was right on top of candidate Hillarie’s case including special press conferences, but candidate Trump? “ Please, he was seven levels below me.”
Rhhardin asserts: A woman votes to save the child and ruin the nation.
Not if it's unborn. And I think you're imputing much more maternal instinct to today's women than many seem to possess.
"I don't make the game, Nabisco. It just is."
Hey, Howeird, drop dead.
Comey is a piece of shit.
Comey is a complete embarrassment. He is a fraud and a danger to our democracy.
Of course he chose incompetence, he's setting up throwing others under the bus. Which is why he distanced himself from the incompetent action of staff "seven layers" below. But it was intentional. All knew they had cover. Comey knows someone will have to pay the price, and it sure as hell not going to be him if he can help it.
The whole bunch should be put up against a wall...Comey first.
Crossfire Hurricane Team Didn’t Know About Steele’s Work For A Russian Oligarch, DOJ Report Says
There are times I can look at a situation and say someone rose far in power and only then did their incompetence emerge. And I can look at their actions and see incompetence the likely answer.
Comey is the opposite. You can look at his actions in Crossfire Hurricane - which the Horowitz report showed he and McCabe were directly involved in - and see that he is a lying traitorous SOB who was involved in trying to influence a presidential election and broke the law in doing so. His second in command, Andrew McCabe, was terminated with prejudice due to lying, leaking, and a pretty transparent history with avoiding investigating the Clinton Foundation while pressing for investigation into Trump.
Wallace should have nailed Comey to the cross here. This is a director of the FBI investigating a presidential candidate and using illegal means to do so, avoiding oversight and transparency and rules created to prevent abuse. And ALL mistakes were in one direction. The entire field of inherent racial bias is premised upon less evidence than we have in Crossfire Hurricane....that biases were repeated, widespread, and always in one direction.
I'm so dissapointed in Horowitz here because he did the same thing Comey did - instead of saying it was both negligent and deliberate, he left the question open. I'm sorry but that doesn't cut it. Editorialize if you must, but point out that negligence would be random or at least have results both for and against a case. INTENT is when all wrong actions go towards a desired outcome - in this case investigating trump's associates despite enough evidence to justify it. Why Horowitz couldn't point this out...?
I believe William Barr means what he says, he means to hold people accountable and so I really think a bunch of crooked democrats are eventually going to prison. A result devoutly desired, by me for sure.
I watched the Wallace/Comey interview and was pleasantly surprised to see Wallace so aggressive. Normally he only takes this stance against a Trump supporter. But then he interviews Adam Schiff and it was back to the old supine Chris allowing Schiff to have him however he wanted him. So why tough on the former FBI director but soft on Schiff? I think it reveals how the media will shift their tactics in their war against Trump. Heap sin on the now-toothless Comey and send that goat into the wilderness. Show how “objective” you are. But keep working with your allies in Congress.
The takeaway: if your Adam Schiff, don’t lose your seat. If you do, you’re trip to the wilderness is next.
A flip of the coin is a fine analog - they’re independent events. Trying to dismiss that by claiming institutional bias as a factor doesn’t change the cumulative probability.
Great job by Wallace! A few thoughts:
1. Comey is delusional;
2. The Steele Dossier was a piece of shit
3. Steele, himself, was a lying weasel
4. The FBI used Steele and his shitty little Dossier to mislead a Federal Court to get an intrusive warrant to spy on an innocent man, Carter Page.
5. The motive of 4 was to spy on the Trump campaign - the "insurance policy" if Trump won.
6. Comey remains delusional.
McCabe and Comey should be prosecuted.
7. Camp Hillary Corruption PAID for the Steele Dossier
The Dossier the brain dead left seal clappers and the corrupt media(D) insist is real and true
Why Horowitz couldn't point this out...?
Of course no one admitted to evil intent, and except for the STrok/Page texts, there's nothing in writing, ergo, no evidence to report. He likes his reputation enough to let us draw our own conclusions, because he'd be totally trashed if he publicly made the correct inferences.
"I watched the Wallace/Comey interview and was pleasantly surprised to see Wallace so aggressive."
It's long past time for those among the liberal news media to get started trying to rehabilitate their self soiled reputations.
Media to Americans: Of course the Trump Dossier is true.
M Jordan @8:19, I fear you are right. The never-Trumpers are carefully picking their battles. While they know the wrath of Trump supporters and the ensuing fallout when he is impugned, they are also notably clueless about Trump voters, whom they consider knuckle-dragging cretins.
MountianMan wrote: "... all 17 went in one direction. The chance that these were just random errors is about 7 in a million. They were intentional."
And there you have it. Additionally, there is only one reason possible that someone would not accept that obvious truth.: dishonesty. This is a good test for people to see how honest they really are about the subject.
The whole bunch should be put up against a wall...Comey first.
______&&&&&&-------
And listen to Greta Thunberg till eternity.
Blogger dreams said...
"I watched the Wallace/Comey interview and was pleasantly surprised to see Wallace so aggressive."
It's long past time for those among the liberal news media to get started trying to rehabilitate their self soiled reputations
_____&&&&&------
Please note : news media also have to choose between incompetent or intentionally for their own actions.
Comey Hints at Horowitz Pee Tape After IG Testifies to FBI FISA Abuse
https://www.thederringer.com/
Comey made a game attempt to obfuscate. He wasn't successful, but, given that he was completely in the wrong, it was about the best he could manage. It was definitely competent obfuscation.....He didn't look good in that interview, but the interview will not cause much of a stir. SNL will not feature it in a skit. Colbert will not play off the obvious inconsistencies.....Maybe further down the road, Barr will cause some bruising, but this interview will not. Beyond these precincts, the interview will not be commented upon. In effect, this interview never happened.
Trump voters, whom they consider knuckle-dragging cretins.
How many will know that it's objective case not as the object of the verb but as the subject of an omitted "to be."
The whole bunch should be put up against a wall...Comey first.
______&&&&&&-------
And listen to Greta Thunberg till eternity.
Comey should be stranded on a desert island with Greta.
The "gross incompetence" choice is also disastrous.
Take both options to the next step. It means the end of the FBI.
Either it's so incompetent that it keeps investigations going despite exculpatory evidence, or its so biased that it keeps investigations going despite exculpatory evidence.
Either way the organization can no longer be trusted.
I say nuke it from orbit, its the only way to be sure.
How many will know that it's objective case not as the object of the verb but as the subject of an omitted "to be."
Thank you for the correction, rhhardin. My bad.
The left believes that the FBI can be both incompetent and politically motivated when they do things like investigate Communists or Martin Luther King, but their motives and means are above reproach when they investigate Republicans and Trump. In like way, there is no reason to trust the intelligence services when they report on WMD in Iraq but when they report on Russian election interference, they're 100% correct.
As Auric Goldfinger noted, as he was preparing to put James Bond on the laser table (lasers were new and cool then), “Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action."
And seventeen times is a declaration of nuclear war.
Comey knows, that however this plays out, Obama is absolutely untouchable. So the crosshairs are for Comey alone. He’s probably outraged at the unfairness of it all. Not because he’s innocent, but because he’s the only guilty one who’s going to take a fall.
Perhaps he knows of more evidence which proves it was intentional. That would fully explain his dodging. He doesn’t want to get nailed again for lying on national TV.
How can he even agree to this interview due to the likely jeopardy that poses for him?
Because the risk of not doing the interview is worse the risk of doing it.
Comey needs to achieve some things:
1. If he can get Trump removed from office, then the investigation ends and he's safe.
2. If he can get results from the investigation delayed until after the election and Trump loses, then he's safe.
3. He needs to telegraph to others in the conspiracy that he knows a lot and that he won't be the man holding the bag. The whole "I have to tell my mother-in-law I'm not going to jail" portion is that code.
It's obvious that Barr's (and Durham's) statements right after the spin on the IG report started really impacted Comey, et. al. The spin didn't take hold.
As I believe Yancey pointed out weeks ago. This is political battle to the death.
2020 is going to be a long year.
Howard said...
You people act like this is the FBI's first rodeo. For Trumpists, history began in November 2016.
Howard still hasn't seen "Richard Jewell." If you had you would know better. The FBI ran the coup against Nixon. They gave LBJ tapes of MLK's trysts so they could all laugh. This is not new. Only left wing dopes think it's new.
A jury will decide about Comey and McCabe. I just hope it is not a DC jury.
Kudos to Ann for her careful analysis. She is able to divorce herself from the situation and analyze it like a historian would analyze it 50 years from now.
I think many of us listen to Comey's responses and become too angry to sift out the logical implications. For my part, I find myself screaming at the video of Comey lying.
Super-smart but badly and mistaken 17 times, conscientious, but extremely sloppy.
Anyway, Comey doesn't have to confess to be guilty.
How does this fly?
Let USA put KGB or equivalent outsource in charge of investigating FBI corruption!?
Sort of Devil's Advocate
Wallace is a fucking shill. How does he not ask Comey why Trump and his campaign were not given a defensive briefing?
Not because he’s innocent, but because he’s the only guilty one who’s going to take a fall.
Is he? I can think of others in the chain of command who certainly should have been briefed on a frickin federal investigation of a rival campaign.
Sally Yates?
John Brennan?
Susan Rice?
Loretta Lynch?
The IG report has identified, either incompetence on such a level that the entire FBI is broken, or a criminal conspiracy inside the highest levels of the Obama government. Either way, the questions should/will be asked of those in the chain of command.
What did you know and when did you know it?
Comey is probably the highest they can get, but maybe he has notes of conversations he had with HIS superiors.
Right now they are all presenting a united front. That will work right up until the indictments start coming down.
You also have to remember that none of these people are stupid. You don't get to the highest levels of the FBI by being stupid. They do things for a reason. It may be a bad reason, but there's a definite calculus involved in the decision making.
why Trump and his campaign were not given a defensive briefing?
That's the biggest piece of evidence that it's bias not incompetence.
The email was not changed at random. That shows intent doesn’t it?
Perhaps he knows of more evidence which proves it was intentional. That would fully explain his dodging. He doesn’t want to get nailed again for lying on national TV.
Or, more likely, he want's to avoid damaging his get out of jail card. "Yes it was a conspiracy, I was a part of it, but there are higher fish to fry". He doesn't want his own statements to be detrimental to that.
We've heard nothing from Loretta Lynch, the AG at the time. Just another AA figurehead?
Ann Althouse said...The answer "intentionality" is horrible for Comey. You can see why he won't go there and why he wants to crush that option when he hears it from Barr. So why not go with "gross incompetence"? It's painful, but it fends off the horrible "intentionality" option?
The simple answer is that while if it was intentional Comey and others should face criminal charges if it was incompetence then President Trump did the correct thing in firing Comey (and should, in fact, have fired him earlier). That undercuts a key Comey and Media claim--that Comey's firing was unjust and/or illegal itself and should be taken as evidence of Trump's desire to obstruct.
Admitting his agency was grossly incompetent makes it impossible to deny his firing was justified and destroys two years worth of Media Narratives about Trump. So he can't admit that...even though it's, hilariously, the LESS damaging option.
"Trump voters, whom they consider knuckle-dragging cretins"
Sorry to disappoint, but I am a Trump voter and here is my profile:
BA, JD, and LLM. A high net worth individual and retired partner from an international law firm. I speak English and French, and can read and write Latin. But in lefty-world I am a knuckle-dragging cretin. I would suggest the knuckle-dragging cretins are the credentialled idiots who voted for Hillary
Comey gives himself the benefit of the doubt he refused to give the newly elected President Trump, which is surprising given the excessive doubt he applied to the case of Hillary Clinton's use of a primate mail server for activities pertaining to the public business of the Department of State and more matters of national security (and wrongly in that case as the decision not to prosecute was not legally his to make). This in spite of the fact that Hillary's behavior after the fact strongly implied criminal intent, specifically obstruction of the FBI investigation by hiding and then destroying the data. If any typically powerless person under investigation by the Justice Department had tried that dodge he would find himself indicted.
mountain man writes: My back of the envelope assessment would be this: If these were random defects - all 17 identified deficiencies - you would expect about half to go in Trump’s favor and half against.
Several days ago (can't recall who without search the Althouse archive) someone else made the observation that actual mistakes, as opposed to willful malfeasance, should be reckoned to be in either of one or three states rather than two -- for Trump, against Trump, or neutral. In that case,. the odds of all 17 "mistakes" devolving against the President exceeds 1 in 130 million.
Comey’s incompetence is well established. But the idea that all the FBI mistakes were in one direction is ludicrous. The FBI didn’t seek its first FISA warrant for Carter Page until October 2016, and his involvement with Russia now seems at most tangential. Meanwhile, the Russian hackers were operating with impunity. We shouldn’t discount the FBI motive of covering up its embarrassment at getting beat by Russia.
How justified am I in continuing to admire FBI based on impression from Black Widow 1987!?
Or Boomers 👌
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0090738/
can't understand why the FBI wouldn't want this to be political motivated. Yes, it's bad, but not "all the terrorists get out of prison" bad. It's like Christopher Wray hadn't thought long term before he gave that pathetic interview saying there was nothing wrong at the FBI.
They are hoping it goes away.
When Barr was confirmed Attorney General they knew they had lost their top cover. When Brennan or whoever is running this coup lost the FBI he moved on to the state department and the NSC. Hence the Ukraine mess.
This won't end until someone loses. Either Trump or his enemies.
Carthago delenda est
The Althouse point is that the FBI may be biased against all the accused, including Trump. So if you are investigated the odds of being charged are high even if you are innocent.
I like this conclusion the most. Not, the FBI is railroading Trump. But rather, the FBI ignores the law, and frames their chosen target, regardless of outside variables. The FBI just ignores fairness, and the facts, in order to puff up their statistics. The most powerful investigative law enforcement agency in the world abuses its power.
Sing this from the house tops. Force the leftist to admit this is a one-of, its just fine because, orange man bad, and breaking the law for all the right reasons.
What were you expecting here? You write as if you thought there was some possibility of Comey doing anything but emitting a stream of evasive bullshit in an interview.
TJM, breakdown of the 2016 vote confirms your contention that college-educated and higher income white men voted for Trump. Even 45% of college educated white women voted for Trump. They know very well we are not 'knuckle-dragging cretins' but it's their way of casting shade.
Primate mail sever
Ha! Thick fingers. Is Clinton a primate? Recent evidence suggests rodent.
Comey has lived his life getting away with lies. He must be the Olympic record holder in "Duper's Delight." That ought to get him some respect here. He sure fooled Gen. Flynn.
Best comment so far is, " Like Obama, Comey always act like he was an innocent spectator at the organisation he commanded."
Are there any details on if Mueller was on short list or shortest list like ONLY.
Supercompetent or
Incompetent or Intentional Obtuse?!
Meanwhile, the Russian hackers were operating with impunity.
Who was hacked after the DNC?
" Gross negligence " or merely "extremely careless"? Maybe Comey should have asked Strozk to help him with his messaging.
Comey knows, that however this plays out, Obama is absolutely untouchable. So the crosshairs are for Comey alone.
Obama is totally radioactive. The Republicans have to avoid implicating him in any way because racism is an extremely powerful charge today..
The Democrats playing this deep game are hoping that Republicans will try to implicate Obama. I doubt if they are that stupid.
The smart play is to let Barak and Michelle bask in their glory while Barr and Durham indict and hopefully convict the foot soldiers.
Maybe it's "prosecutorial discretion."
As in, we reserve the right to mess up your life for years, regardless of facts, because we're the government.
Left Bank: Comey’s incompetence is well established. But the idea that all the FBI mistakes were in one direction is ludicrous. The FBI didn’t seek its first FISA warrant for Carter Page until October 2016, and his involvement with Russia now seems at most tangential. Meanwhile, the Russian hackers were operating with impunity.
Either you don't know what "directions" people are referring to when they make the claim that "all the mistakes were in one direction", or you're implying that the "Russian hackers" were on the side of one of two possible "directions" in question.
Ahem.
I watched the interview twice. Comey came off very bad, but he's guilty as hell so he had little to work with. I'm surprised he did the interview. He must have expected more sympathetic treatment.
"All responsible persons must forever hang on the cusp? Was it "gross incompetence" or "intentionality"? It was one or the other, but you can never say, you can never even speculate about which one it was?"
Andrew McCarthy made this point regarding the ridiculous claim that Horowitz exonerated the investigation from the charge of political bias. Horowitz said he didn't find documentary evidence. Fine, but that's almost always the case. Nobody writes a memo saying "I did it". In fact, they scrupulously avoid leaving paper trails. If that is the judgement standard to which we must be held, nobody would ever go to prison for anything.
Comey has been playing word games and lying ever since May 2017, if not before then. Remember he was telling Trump he was NOT under investigation, when TRump WAS under investigation?
I thought this was a terrible interview, when someone starts being evasive and playing "word games", then you call the person on it, directly. You say "You're playing word games and being evasive. Why won't you answer directly?" You don't just keep repeating the question!
Anyway, Comey is trying to square the circle. First, he has to chalk-up the whole thing up to well-intentioned subordinates who made a few errors "mistakes were made". Then he absolves himself by saying, "I trusted his people to do their jobs right and wasn't really involved". In other words, he was victim too. If only he hadn't been so trusting! If only he'd gotten involved and done their jobs for them!
Narciso others comment please :
As KGB Putin was well positioned to know USSR was a fraud.
Suppose he's Russia's Trump and want to join civilization and MRGA.
And is venomously rejected by globalist corruptocracy for it?!
BTW, in Corporate America, this is typical CYA management behavior. When things go bad, the Big Guy always claims he wasn't involved, or delegated the task, or just didn't know nothin' about nothin'. Of course, when you look into it, you find The Big Guy was directing it, or micro-managing the whole disaster.
Wallace dropped the ball when he asked if Comey would resign had he still been FBI director. Comey said no, there were mistakes "more consequential" than the FISA lies.
Follow up question: Like what?
"When Barr was confirmed Attorney General they knew they had lost their top cover."
Rosenstein has skated in this whole thing, despite the fact, he was key player. BTW, its interesting that Comey as DAG appointed Fitzgerald to investigate Scooter Libby when Ashcroft recused himself. The Rosenstein-mueller thing is almost a copy of that.
AZ Bob,
I noticed that as well - the "more consequential" comment was the most telling in the entire interview.
Clearly this wasn't "incompetence" - they very deliberately worked around the "obstacles" that are built into the processes.
Comey tries to avoid choosing.
The answer is (c) A Higher Loyalty.
You know, as he sits in his prison cell, Comey will always have his fond memories of when all the media fanbois lauded him and talked about his integrity and what a brave American hero he was.
So much "I don't understand" going on, I was expecting him to go full Vinnie Barbarino.
I was expecting him to go full Vinnie Barbarino.
You mean Comey doing the What? Where? When? bit or Comey blaming the French Fry Phantom?
Sorry Ann but "over zealous prosecutors" doesn't hack it as an excuse. There were two distinct activities where mistakes were made - Hillary's emails and Trump's campaign. They were significantly under zealous about Hillary and incredibly over zealous about Trump.
That's bias not anything else.
What about Schiff?
Chris Wallace: I've just got a minute left -- because at that time, in 2018, you said the FBI and Department of Justice did not -- quote -- "omit material information." Apparently, you did not know at the time that, in fact, Steele's main Russian sources had told the FBI that he had misrepresented what that Russian source had said and that the FBI knew, at the time, that Carter Page, in fact, was acting as a contact, as an unofficial source for the CIA. Given what you know now -- we talked earlier to Director Comey, and he basically said, "I was wrong in what I represented back in 2018." Are you willing to admit that you were wrong in your defense of the FBI's FISA process?
Adam Schiff: Oh, I'm certainly willing to admit that the Inspector General found serious abuses of FISA that I was unaware of. Had I known of them, Chris, yes, I would have called out the FBI at the same time. But I think it's only fair to judge what we knew at the time, not what would be revealed two years later. But yes, there were very serious abuses of the FISA process. They need to be corrected; we need to make sure they never happen again.
It's not that Schiff "did not know at the time". Schiff represented that he knew all the information and what Nunes stated was patently false.
Schiff was the ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee, he had all the information that Nunes had, yet argued that Nunes was lying.
Nunes was not lying.
Blogger The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...
Comey knows, that however this plays out, Obama is absolutely untouchable
______&&&&&------
And also Orange Man is eminently touchable, imperative to be destroyed BAMN
Is Obama third rail of politics now?
D's seem to be great at railroad design.
TJM: “ BA, JD, and LLM. A high net worth individual and retired partner from an international law firm. I speak English and French, and can read and write Latin. But in lefty-world I am a knuckle-dragging cretin. I would suggest the knuckle-dragging cretins are the credentialled idiots who voted for Hillary”
I like to use this argument too. I’m not quite as credentialed as you (just as Master’s) but I’m a many-times published writer, I’m in high standing in my community, and my three kids all have PhD’s. Like you, I’m not bragging: I’m blowing up a false stereotype.
I think the Progs are smart/Cons are stoopid dichotomy is nearing its end. Trump’s tariffs kicked a big hole in the door by showing the elite opinion to be completely wrong. The same in his stands on trade in general, NATO, Syria, and eventually, immigration. The New Dumb are the liberals/progressives, made so by living on understandings from previous eras which have descended to cliche status and worse.
Comey: “That’s not the way it works, though. As a director sitting on top of an organization with 38,000 people, you can’t run an investigation that’s seven layers below you,” he said. “You have to leave it to the career professionals to do…If a director tries to run an investigation, it can get mucked up in other kinds of ways given his or her responsibilities and the impossibility of reaching the work being done at the lower levels.”
This investigation wasn't seven layers below him. They held meetings in "Andy's Office", for Christ's sake!
Rcocean observes: BTW, in Corporate America, this is typical CYA management behavior. When things go bad, the Big Guy always claims he wasn't involved, or delegated the task, or just didn't know nothin' about nothin'. Of course, when you look into it, you find The Big Guy was directing it, or micro-managing the whole disaster.
It doesn't work in corporate America, either. See Enron.
Blogger Breezy said..."I was struck by his seeming to believe that the IG report is the final result."
I was struck by that too, but he doesn't believe it. He was being disingenuous.
Wasn't firing Comey considered obstruction at one point in the charade?
Comey's financial and professional rise began at the time of his handling of the Marc Rich pardon. There was no reason to appoint a person of his low experience as FBI Director.
So far this impeachment show has taken eyes away from the Clinton email investigation fiasco.
If you think you have some idea of how deep the corruption is think again. It will take years to get anywhere near the bottom of it. If the Dem's return to power we will never find out how deep it runs.
I have reached the point that the only thing that the only thing that will satisfy me is 20 or 30 bodies swinging from lampposts in the public square.
Left Bank: "But the idea that all the FBI mistakes were in one direction is ludicrous."
Shorter moron Left Bank: (waving hands) Horowitz didnt say what he clearly said and documented....
JAPBBS.
I really need to make the time to read the IG report:
"Although we do not expect managers and supervisors to know every fact about an investigation, or senior officials to know all the details of cases about which they are briefed, in a sensitive, high-priority matter like this one, it is reasonable to expect that they will take the necessary steps to ensure that they are sufficiently familiar with the facts and circumstances supporting and potentially undermining a FISA application in order to provide effective oversight, consistent with their level of supervisory responsibility. We concluded that the information that was known to the managers, supervisors, and senior officials should have resulted in questions being raised regarding the reliability of the Steele reporting and the probable cause supporting the FISA applications, but did not. In our view, this was a failure of not only the operational team, but also of the managers and supervisors, including senior officials, in the chain of command.
For these reasons, we recommend that the FBI review the performance of the employees who had responsibility for the preparation, Woods review, or approval of the FISA applications, as well as the managers and supervisors in the chain of command of the Carter Page investigation, including senior officials, and take any action deemed appropriate."
Thing is, "the FBI" (a.k.a. Christopher Wray) is not up to the task. Maybe somebody with prosecutorial powers would be better ...
Ron Winkleheimer said, "Durham has called a grand jury to hear evidence on these (and other) very issues!"
Is this true? I had not heard that a federal grand jury has been convened.
AZ Bob said: Wallace dropped the ball when he asked if Comey would resign had he still been FBI director. Comey said no, there were mistakes "more consequential" than the FISA lies.
That's code, to Obama. Protect me when the time comes, or else I'll spill what I know.
I really deplore thirst for vengeance.
I only want details.
Put them in basement offices, solitary, task to write 300 pages, non repeating, no discussion.
Honor system.
We can then compare for invented or true.
No perjury traps.
I would recommend making this annual requirement.
Blogger Equipment Maintenance said ...
That's code, to Obama. Protect me when the time comes, or else I'll spill what I know.
____&&&&&----
Wallace did not ask follow up question.
Decode that also.
Recently, we've had 2 incredible TV interviews, where important folks were outed as either assholes, fuck-ups or something worse:
1. Prince Andrew -- that non-sweaty royal sleazebag.
2. Jeremy Corbyn - that Commie anti-semite.
We must salute these interviewers of doing some great journalism by cutting through the fog of narrative.
I hope this interview with Comey does the same. Wallace penetrated the fog. Comey spied on the Trump campaign, using layers of bullshit pretext, and tried a soft coup against a candidate, then a sitting President. He is delusional.
Obama is totally radioactive. The Republicans have to avoid implicating him in any way because racism is an extremely powerful charge today..
That's why he could never be impeached. Identity is everything until the country implodes and you start again.
"I really deplore thirst for vengeance....
Honor system."
Yeah, that'll be a good deterrent to keep the crooks out of Fort Knox.
The hang them from lamposts is metaphor of course, but I agree wholeheartedly with Trump. This can never be allowed to happen again.
This can never be allowed to happen again.
Given the IG report, do we think this is the first time this has happened?
Was the Cruz campaign investigated?
We know Tea Party groups were investigated by the IRS.
Hey Left Bank...
The FBI didn’t seek its first FISA warrant for Carter Page until October 2016
I would guess that was the insurance policy.
He should be a source of the answer, not a person who'd be getting started looking into what happened.
he should have been a source of prevention, by having integrity and being honest, so there would be no "questions" needing "answers" resulting from his work
Comey is a lawyer, a politician, a bureaucrat. He's skilled in the art of communicating without actually saying what people think he meant.sally327
I also noticed Comey's skill at being glib. Or as a friend from New Jersey would describe Comey's statements, "That's a lot of happy horseshit."
This is why I always read Althouse.
I want to discuss this part of the interview:
Chris Wallace said: "But this isn't some investigation, sir. This is an investigation of the campaign of the man who is the president of the United States. You had just been through a firestorm investigating Hillary Clinton. I would think, if I were in your position, I would have been on that, you know, like a junkyard dog. I would have wanted to know everything they were doing in investigating the Trump campaign."
James Comey replied: "Yeah. That's not the way it works, though. As a director sitting on top of an organization of 38,000 people, you can't run an investigation that's seven layers below you.""
This is just Comey lying- flat out lying. He was the "junkyard dog" on the Clinton investigation that was happening "seven layers below" him (and the 7 layers bit is also a fucking lie- 2 layers at most, and likely only one- you only get to seven layers by including the janitorial staff).
Althouse wrote:
"It's not like the chance in coin-flipping.
You have to consider that other forces made the FBI people always lean in the same direction, such as a bias toward investigating and keeping an investigation going, trying to get something rather than closing it down. That could be the gross negligence, and if so, it is relevant to all the cases that don't involve Trump."
No, it's not like coin flipping, but we aren't reading this report in a vacuum either- we have already read Horowitz's report on the Clinton e-mail investigation, and there all the "mistakes" favored Ms. Clinton and her associates- none of them were made to "keep the investigation going rather than closing it down".
Does anyone at this point in time really believe that if you just flipped the two targets in the two investigations- made Trump the target in the e-mail case and Clinton the target in the Russian Hoax case, that the two investigations would have been run exactly as they were run? Here is what would have happened in that hypothetical instance- Trump would have been indicted in Mid-Year Exam, and Clinton wouldn't even have been investigated at all in the Russian Hoax- Crossfire Hurricane would never have been opened, not to mention that a special counsel would never have been appointed.
CWJ makes a great point at 6:59. As a mathematician I was also struck by the probability argument of all 17 errors going in one direction. There *are* other explanations for that, and a coin flip is an interesting rhetorical comparison, but not really accurate. But CWJ's point brings it back to solid evidence of the bias -- those errors all went the *other* way in the Clinton case.
QED (to within any reasonable doubt).
“Andrew McCarthy made this point regarding the ridiculous claim that Horowitz exonerated the investigation from the charge of political bias. Horowitz said he didn't find documentary evidence. Fine, but that's almost always the case. Nobody writes a memo saying "I did it". In fact, they scrupulously avoid leaving paper trails. If that is the judgement standard to which we must be held, nobody would ever go to prison for anything.”
As for documentary evidence the amazing thing is not that the couldn’t find it for anyone else, but that Strzok and Page were so stupid that they used government phones to exchange incriminating text messages. Government phones where the expectation of privacy from government surveillance should be zero.
Everyone involved in the DOJ and FBI was either an FBI agent or an attorney working in law enforcement. Many of the latter, like Comey, had bee prosecutors. Most of them spent a decent portion of their working lives trying to prove intent in courts of law, and the easiest way to do that, almost always is with documentary evidence of the intent. The Mafia knows not to write down the plans for their planned extortion schemes. It should not be surprising that the FBI and DOJ whose job it is to put the Mafia in prison for the extortion, also know not to leave documentary evidence lying around.
And I suspect that this is something that almost every attorney Lear’s early I his career - when to have documentary evidence, and whe not to. For the patent bar, one of those instances was with negative patent search results. Someone hires you to search the patentability of their invention. The one thing that you don’t do is send them a letter in the mail telling them that their invention not only isn’t novel and nonobvious, but that someone else already has a patent on it. That is because if the client manufactures anyway, the letter is documentary proof of intent to infringe, opening them up to punitive damages. So, whenever you have search results, you always call the client up first and give them the news verbally, good or bad, then ask, in light of that news, whether they want a written opinion (after pointing out that a negative written opinion could be used to show intent). The result is that positive search results are usually documented with a formal report, and negative results almost never are. Client makes the decision and not the attorney.
The point of that is that part of legal training is learning to be paranoid, and part of that is learning when you should, and when you should not, leave documentary footprints. No doubt where those decisions are differs a bit specialty to speciality. But it is something that every competent attorney worries about. An attorney might screw up a little practicing in another area of expertise, but all of the attorneys involved, up through at least the DOJ and FBI, were operating in their area of expertise, where they typically had decades of practice.
"This is just Comey lying- flat out lying. He was the "junkyard dog" on the Clinton investigation that was happening "seven layers below" him..."
The were meeting in "Andy's office".
Amadeus 48 wrote:
"Chris Wallace is really good here. He gets a lot of flak for being "neverTrump", but his questions and followups cause Comey to shred his own credibility. Comey is lying and expecting Wallace and his audience to be gulled by his evasions. Wallace lets Comey speak for himself, and it is catastrophic for Comey.
Well done, Chris."
I agree completely. I had first read descriptions of the interview at Conservative Treehouse before actually watching the interview myself, but they didn't really hold up when you actually see what Wallace did to Comey in letting Comey discredit himself. This was Wallace at his very best, and his father would have been quite proud of him despite the politics involved.
It is not an easy thing to pin someone down on an answer to a question they intend to evade relentlessly, and Wallace made it very clear that Comey was being evasive, and still got Comey to all but admit his FBI was incompetent and that he, Comey, wasn't Harry "The Buck Stops Here" Truman. Wallace got Comey to throw all his subordinates under the bus yesterday- that is quite an accomplishment.
Comey is being set up as a fall guy.
"It doesn't work in corporate America, either. See Enron."
There are lots of not-Enrons. It works more often than not.
The phenomenon of "failing up" is common.
Yeah, Yancey, I thought the interview was devastating. Why did Comey submit to it? The only explanation I can see is he thought Wallace would treat him with kid gloves.
“This is just Comey lying- flat out lying. He was the "junkyard dog" on the Clinton investigation that was happening "seven layers below" him (and the 7 layers bit is also a fucking lie- 2 layers at most, and likely only one- you only get to seven layers by including the janitorial staff).”
I don’t think as far off as you think. During the MYE investigation and early CFH investigation Peter Strzok, as a section chief, was officially two levels below CD ADD Bill Priestap, who reported to the head of the National Security Branch, who then reported to DD McCabe, and thence to Dir Comey. Five levels between Comey and Strzok when Comey went on air about Crooked Hillary having been extremely careless, but not grossly negligent with her emails. So there literally could have been seven layers between Comey ad the people working for Strzok.
This BTW, is part of the dynamic exposed in the Strzok/Page test messages. Page worked directly for McCabe and was sleeping with Strzok. Strzok was working directly with McCabe, cutting out the intervening levels of management.
cutting out the intervening levels of management
Because to do otherwise would expose the bias...
These two adjectives could be applied to Chrissy Wallace's reporting
Comey could be falling on his sword, to protect some others.
No doubt for some future consideration.
They have ways to reward those who are loyal.
buwaya,
Comey isn't falling on his sword- he quite clearly put the sword through his subordinates yesterday- note how he took none of the blame in that interview. However, that interview was the first instance that Comey admitted anything wrong had happened, but then said it wasn't his fault even though he was the director of the shit show.
Apologies if this point has already been made, but as a legal matter there is almost no difference between gross negligence and intentional misconduct. The former is defined, for example, in jury instructions as "negligence so extreme as to amount to (evil) intent". Consider a person who drives his car at 80 mph into a crowded intersection: (s)he says, "I didn't mean to do harm, I was careless..." vs another who proceeds at 30 mph through an apparently empty intersection. Both may have caused injuries/deaths by their conduct, but in the first case the jury has to decide if the driver's level of recklessness was so great as to be virtually indistinguishable from evil intent. The driver may aver that harm was not intended, but the jury looks at a person who floored the accelerator with his car pointed at pedestrians who had no way to escape harm and must decide if his reckless (negligent) conduct was so extreme that it is virtually the same as actually intending the harm that resulted.
Which admittedly sounds pompous and ponderous, but the crucial point is the difference between garden-variety negligence and gross negligence. Comey should have been arguing that his minions were just merely incompetent, and that his own acceptance of their serial eff-upping wasn't intentional. But once you've conceded that the two options for analyzing conduct are that it was either meant to bring about an evil result or so reckless/incompetent as to amount to evil intent, you've lost the game because the two choices amount in the eyes of the law to one and the same thing.
Good point, Megaera. A surgeon who cut off the wrong leg, though not intentionally, is still guilty of negligence if he/she failed to observe protocols.
"It's not like the chance in coin-flipping.
You have to consider that other forces made the FBI people always lean in the same direction, such as a bias toward investigating and keeping an investigation going, trying to get something rather than closing it down. That could be the gross negligence, and if so, it is relevant to all the cases that don't involve Trump."
Fine. You are probably right that the incentives point in the direction of continuing the investigation and no anti-Trump bias. But if instead of a coin flip we have only a 10% chance of each decision being due to anti-Trump motives, we are still left with only a 17% chance that there was no anti-Trump motivation in any of the mistakes. That still points to at least some political motivation.
The phenomenon of "failing up" is common
Jamie Gorelick
“ Jamie Gorelick”
I would add Jim Comey, Bob Mueller, and probably Brennan and even Obama to that list. Though Gorelick is a good example too.
I wouldn't put Obama on that list; he didn't fall upward because he never did anything -- Senator "Voting Present", etc.
I mean, can you Fail as a "community organizer"?
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