Comey channels Alfred E. Neuman
James Comey seems to be in “what, me worry?” mode.
Lat Monday’s statement of note from this wise public servant was as follows:
Mr. Meadows: All right. So, when you saw [that the Steele dossier was funded by a private client], who did you think the private client was?
Mr. Comey: I don’t know that I knew. [see NOTE below]
Mr. Meadows: I didn’t say you knew. Who did you think it was? Obviously — are you saying you’re so intellectually not curious that you would not say, “Who’s the private client?”
Mr. Comey: Show me where the word “client” is. I’m struggling a little. I see. So the sentence reads, “The source collected this information on behalf of private clients and was not compensated for it by the FBI.”
I don’t remember asking — other than knowing it was political people opposed to Trump, I don’t remember asking which firm, which law firm, those kinds of things. And I don’t remember being told.
Mr. Meadows: So you’re trying to share with this committee –and I want to take you — and that’s why I was asking you to verify this. You expect us to believe that you got notation that a private client is there and that you didn’t — you weren’t inquisitive enough to figure out who the private client was?
Mr. Comey: Who cares? It was Republicans —
Mr. Meadows: Well —
Mr. Comey: — opposed to Trump —
Mr. Meadows: — it makes a big difference. I mean, if you —
Mr. Comey: Let me finish my answer. It was Republicans opposed to Trump, and then it was Democrats opposed to Trump. There was potential bias in this information. That’s really important. Whether it was Sally Smith or Joe Jones, Republican, or Sally Smith, Democrat –
Mr. Meadows: Director Comey —
Mr. Comey: — to me, it didn’t matter.
Rep. Meadows objected, saying it is of great importance, given that the information was used to gain court permission to spy on an American citizen:
“It does make a difference. If someone is paying for this and you’re actually using that information to surveil American citizens with a FISA application, it does matter to me and most Americans.”
Here Comey is repeating MSM and Democratic talking points about Fusion which have been shown to be untrue. Republicans had zero to do with the funding of the dossier, as Comey either knows or should know if he’s at all competent. What he probably does know, however, is that Republican involvement is the fiction the MSM was pushing and that many many Americans probably believe that to be the case, so Comey’s answer will appear to make some sense to those people even though it is based on a falsity.
Comey’s lack of specific interest in who funded the dossier (if he really didn’t know and didn’t ask, which may or may not be the case) would have come from his need to get that investigation going and to use the dossier to jumpstart it no matter what. Why question its provenance if you’re already dedicated to using it despite the fact that Trump’s enemies paid for it, which should have made it highly suspect as a source?
Of course, it turns out that Trump’s oppponent’s campaign funded it, which if anything would make it even more suspect than if other Trump enemies had funded it. But to Comey, all of that was irrelevant (or at least he’d like us to think it was irrelevant). In his previous career, had he really lacked curiosity to that degree? I doubt it very much. But he’s a clever enough lawyer to use it as an excuse now. He’d prefer that we think him a fool rather than a knave, if he has the choice of shaping our opinion.
I say “knave.” The man is no fool, not by a longshot.
[NOTE: Let’s look at this exchange a bit more closely:
Question: So, when you saw [that the Steele dossier was funded by a private client], who did you think the private client was?
Mr. Comey: I don’t know that I knew.
Isn’t that quintessential Comey? “I don’t know that I knew.” The question was not, however, whether Comey knew who the client was. The question was who Comey thought funded it. His answer was that he doesn’t know whether he knew or not, and yet later in the exchange he seems to be saying he didn’t know and what’s more was not the least bit curious about it.
That seems to contradict his earlier response about not knowing (or not remembering?) whether he knew or didn’t know, although it’s all so slippery it’s hard to even say. Statements that are so equivocal are deliberately difficult to contradict, because they essentially say nothing. But Comey is quite practiced at that sort of thing.]
Comey should have said, “To quote a great leader – ‘What difference, at this point, does it make?’ ”
This would show where his real loyalties lie. He will lie, obfuscate and conveniently forget anything about his involvement in this fiasco.
If Trump was truly involved with a foreign country to destroy us, I would be supporting an investigation. But with how the justice and intelligence communities have acted more as coup plotters than really looking for the truth, it is difficult to support what has happened.
This is what has caused so much loss of faith in these institutions for me, not Trump. Many of us work for bosses we dislike and despise. You don’t undermine a boss if you hate or disagree with them. If you don’t like it you leave.
To be sure, the tragic passing of “Mad Magazine” has left a huge void, which Comey, it seems, is valiantly trying to fill (now that the “usual gang of idiots” is no longer in the WH).
What I find curious is how he can be so sure that this rather adolescent (though for all that, rather effective) game of his will not end up with him facing certain less-than-optimal consequences….
(To his credit, I guess, one can’t deny that he has studied exceeding well his Lewis Carroll.)
I am sad that tar and feathers are no longer used. I am also sad that we cannot turn off pensions when people claim to not remember what happened during their public service.
Barry Meislin:
So who is or was filling the role of the “Spy vs Spy” cartoon from Mad Magazine in this farce?
The original anti-Trump funding was by the magazine run by Bill Kristol’s son in law, the one that The Weekly Standard was closed by the billionaire funder to support. That was NOT the Steele project, just Fusion GPS before Steele went to his KGB buddies for the dossier.
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Well, if Alfred E. Comey thinks the Clintons are going to protect him from getting his just desserts, he ought to remember that they can’t even sell tickets to their speeches anymore.
“The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real aims and one’s declared aims, one turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.” George Orwell
Never, in all of history have so many in a society’s leadership justified deceit and duplicity in the pursuit of treason, as “for the greater good”.
Mike K, it’s the Washington Examiner’s owner which closed The Weekly Standard. Bill Kristol’s daughter is married to Matthew Continetti of the Washington Free Beacon. The Free Beacon paid Fusion GPS for opposition research on several candidates, including Trump, but stopped after Trump got the nomination.
The disrespect and disdain he demonstrates for the people of the United States in his interactions with our representatives is especially galling to me.
“I say “knave.” The man is no fool, not by a longshot.”
But he IS a fool. His choices, his beliefs, his actions over the course of his life and his career all highlight his irrational conviction that what he does is right, when it is so very clearly demonstrably wrong. He believes what he says and does WON’T result in the complete erosion of trust in the rule of law, and the eventual destabilization of a society and political system which enabled him to be who he is and enjoy the luxuries that he does.
Liberals—more importantly Progressive Socialist Liberals—simply can’t grasp the fact that if they get the system they are so eagerly pursuing at any cost, they won’t get to keep any of the nice things they have today. They won’t be the true 1% of socialist/communist rulers who get to pillage and rape their fellow citizens of everything they own and struggle for. That privilege will go to the tyrants who execute people like Comey once they have served their usefulness.
So yes, Comey is a fool.
OK, Kate. My point remains the same.
Cutting to the chase, Comey is a something that can not be described in polite company.
Flashback to Pelosi and Schumer repeatedly insisting that “discussions” with the President be held in private. It is not healthy for the ruling class if the Hoi Poloi glimpses how how the sausage is made, or how they are governed. Fortunately for the ruling class, the proletariat are mostly tuned out.
But the source was compensated by the FBI until someone decided that the source’s leakage to the press should be used to stop compensation.
Comey now reminds me of that smug little rat from the IRS, John Koskinen.
These people are contemptible. My, how they thrive in Washington.
Liberals—more importantly Progressive Socialist Liberals—simply can’t grasp the fact that if they get the system they are so eagerly pursuing at any cost, they won’t get to keep any of the nice things they have today.
MrSatyre: Or, as the parental admonition once went, “This is why we can’t have nice things.”
You’ve got to take care of your constitutional republic or it won’t take care of you.
Comey just flat out lies. He and the other agents always knew who was funding Steele. What you see in the records, though, is that Clinton is carefully and systematically not mentioned- everything always ends with a “law firm”, even though the FBI was well aware who Coie Perkins represented. The very first thing the FBI would have done with Steele’s information would have been to ask who was funding him, then ask that person who was funding them, and finally all the way back to the law firm- at that point, it would have been clear from FEC filings who was funding the law firm, even if they refused to disclose that under questioning.
Comey knows this fact was carefully concealed the entire way, so he feels free to lie about it today.
However, I do think there is a chance these questions were rhetorical, and designed solely to get Comey on the record and under oath. The House investigators may well have the electronic evidence to prove Comey is lying repeatedly.
Yancey Ward: That’s a lovely thought! It may even be true. Comey has said more than enough to weave a tangled web in his deceptions.
Then again, I notice Hillary got caught flat-out lying with her email server and she’s still drinking fine Chardonnay in a mansion.
______________________________________
See the brightest ones of all
Early in October fall
That’s the way that it goes
That’s the way
While the dark ones go to bed
With good whiskey in their head
That’s the way that it goes
That’s the way
“Gillian Welch – The Way It Goes”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AiS37_EULj8
“…role…”
Um, how ’bout Joseph Mifsud vs. Christopher Steele?
Or maybe Anthony Weiner vs. Huma Abedin?
(Or maybe even Comey vs. Comey?)
Actually, the possibilities are endless….
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Barry Meislin:
Ding! Ding! Ding! You win the Internet for today! Use it wisely. 😉
The House investigators may well have the electronic evidence to prove Comey is lying repeatedly.
Trump may be waiting for Mueller to wind up before declassifying the evidence, which is why Mueller is stalling.
Trump may be waiting for Mueller to wind up before declassifying the evidence, which is why Mueller is stalling.
Mike K: That’s on my mind too.
Trump bats last in the Mueller game.
“…Ding!…”
Wow! Where does one go to collect?…
Joking aside, however, it’s looking more and more like:
The Democratic Party and the Obama administration and the Clinton presidential campaign and the DOJ (all ably and enthusiastically) abetted by the MSM)
vs.
the US Constitution.
Sigh:
https://dailycaller.com/2018/12/20/fbi-counterintelligence-trump/
Comey should be in a cell not out peddling a book. How could he write about his time in the FBI and as it’s leader if he CANNOT remember when asked by Congress??? He remembers on talk shows hawking his book yet not when in front of Congress. What happened did writing his pack of LIES drain his brain and he has to read his book each show so he can talk about it.
So when is he going to be subpoena to face a grand jury? for starters he leaked one of his confidential emails to a friend, he lied to Congress, he lied while serving as FBI Director and more that everyone seems to be just letting go by the way side! Uranium One, Clinton’s Emails, are they waiting for him to just confess?
What is wrong with Rep Meadows, doesn’t he know that Comey is pissing in his face. Tell him to answer the question, he knows the answer, are you stupid. What are we paying you guys for, to let some jackass like Comey tell us what to do. That’s not what I voted for. You know he broke the law, arrest him. Why is he not having these hearings in public, I call bull shit to confidential information. On Who??
Whatta slime-ball!
comey is classic of what is wrong with this country no one has any respect for anyone or anything that’s what they teach in all stages of school especially higher ed.
I agree with Chuck Schumer and Obama when Obama was a senator he said we needed a border wall did secure America as did ole Chuck himself, what happened to that? Soros opened borders so the elite globist can rule the world… If the Latinos voted Republican the Democrats will be having a fit to build a wall. Their disgrace.
at bthe end of WWII the world was divided between US /capitalism versus russian communism. russia had a list of 45 tasks to destroy capitalism. #35 on the list is to
discredit and eventuall dismantle the FBI Done!!