82 Extreme Carelessness: Did Comey Give His Press Conference Based on a Fake Russian Document?
UPDATE: At this point even the bottom-part C looks pretty tight.
February 15, 2023
In Chapter Probable Cause we saw Comey’s Emailgate original sin was opening it in the first place which he then compounded by publicly announcing it’s existence on October 1, 2015. In Chapter What Took so Long we saw that he compounded his sins by dragging out for many months an investigation which never should have been opened in the first place-and that Comey knew it should not have been-in his book he admitted it was always unlikely they could prove intent. Which means it shouldn’t have been opened as there was no predicate.
In this chapter we look at Comey’s next day of infamy-after July 10, 2015 and October 1, 2015-the date of July 5, 2016-his very careless press conference. We look particularly at the various explanations not to say rationalizations Comey has offered in the next few years after he elected Trump, particularly his suggestion in classified testimony before Congress that he did the presser in response to a fake document concocted by Russian intelligence. Just like with all his other indefensible actions he took in Emailgate his response has been a variation of sorry, not sorry.
The rationales have shifted but the arrogance and lack of introspection have been constant.
As we had noted back in Chapter Probable Cause, the partisan divide in response to the Comey Presser was striking. The GOP claimed to be indignant and outraged-even though Clinton’s poll numbers sunk after Comey’s indefensible press conference. The Democrats fell all over themselves to thank Comey. No doubt at least part of this was driven by their naive and mistaken assumption that this was over. The naivety was in their hasty assumption Comey was somehow on their side-this would be a recurring assumption in the next few years after Comey had in fact elected Trump. Yet the Dems still imagined that he was an ally-see Chapter Bill E. Buckner.
In reality Comey was still on Trey Gowdy’s side as he always had been.
As for the Press Conference-what more can you say? Despite all the various rationalizations it was an egregious violation of DOJ policy but many failed to understand this in real time-which is why everyone was so floored almost four months later on October 28-even though in retrospect we should have seen it coming.
FN: I personally never felt grateful to Comey, I did notice that his press conference tanked Clinton’s poll numbers for the next three weeks until the Democratic convention raised them again-though her favorables didn’t improve. But at that point I didn’t appreciate the real history of the FBI-like most Americans I sort of assumed that of course this was some austere law enforcement agency that deserves our respect. I could assume this in large part because I knew so little of the history at that time-like for starters that the FBI had never had a Democratic FBI Director in its history. I was vaguely aware of the troubling legacy of J Edgar Hoover but I didn’t even know the name Louis Freeh and his legacy which was much more relevant to 2016.
Regarding Freeh’s legacy start with (not so?)trivial fact that Charles McCullogh whose security referral started this whole mess also worked for Freeh during the Whitewater Years; meanwhile Comey sought out a role in the notorious GOP Senate Whitewater Committee; meanwhile Rod Rosenstein was a Whitewater prosecutor reporting to Ken Starr-noticing a pattern?
Mostly what I felt at the time was gratitude the But Her Emails boondoggle was over. But if I knew Comey’s legacy I’d have been far less sanguine see Chapter 23 Years of Hunting the Clintons
End FN
Certainly we should not have felt sanguine. What no one appreciated was at every point Comey had egregiously violated the rules and every time in a way that hurt Hillary Clinton-the Presidential candidate Comey just happened to oppose-he had donated to both of Obama’s opponents.
Regarding the Comey Presser some called Comey out in real time-while most DOJ insiders didn’t want to say it publicly they didn’t think his actions there were defensible:
“Behind the scenes, others in the executive branch have been considerably less circumspect. “It’s really tough for all the attorneys [to speak out], because they all have to practice before DOJ,” says Matt Miller, who led the Justice Department’s Office of Public Affairs from 2009 to 2011. “But I’ve heard from dozens of officials, both current and former, and not one of them agreed with [Comey’s] decision to hold the press conference.”
FN: In retrospect you have to give it to this Politico writer as they saw Comey coming before October 28.
July 5, 2016 was yet another Comey day of infamy but it wasn’t the first-and so it should have been clear it wouldn’t be the last. As we saw in Chapter No Probable Cause the original sin was July 10, 2015. This egregious sin begot more sins like the date of October 1, 2015 when Comey again egregiously violated DOJ policy to reveal to the media the existence of the Emailgate investigation. July 5, 2016 wasn’t his first very careless press conference. Before the October 1 presser he’d already revealed Emailgate to Devin Nunes’ HSPCI-ie a vociferous partisan opponent of Hillary Clinton-like Comey himself.
As we saw in the last chapter What Took So Long, despite knowing for many months-at the latest early January, 2016-though in reality Comey always knew even before he opened the criminal investigation-Comey and Team Emailgate knew perfectly well they had no basis to charge Clinton. Yet they at Comey’s direction continued to drag it out. The IG reveals a focus on how to make the declination decision in a way to insulate themselves from the criticism of Trey Gowdy and his GOP co-conspirators. This is the opposite of how due process is supposed to work. If someone is not going to be charged the priority is a quick exoneration not politics or the reputation of the investigators, etc.
Meanwhile Comey had hatched yet another scheme, another truly terrible scheme of violating DOJ policy again, this time by going out alone and giving a press conference about Clinton. While he would eventually clear her, he did this only after dirtying her up for 20 minutes.
The man has a talent for coming up with truly the worst “solution” for his imagined “conundrums” which in fact are nonexistent if he didn’t think himself above the rules-ironically the alleged sin of Clinton’s use of private email. As we saw in the last chapter apparently folks on the Emailgate team were taken by a Ruth Marcus column suggesting Hillary couldn’t be exonerated without an extended commentary-that would dirty her up even as it exonerated her.
FN: Marcus was another notorious Clinton hater.
What becomes clear in reviewing all of Comey’s flagrantly bad ad hoc decisions is once he gets a truly bad idea in his head no one will ever talk him out of it. Once he wants to do something he will use any rationale or framing he can but he’s not going to be stopped. The right question is why does he always have such bad ideas? This is a very interesting and crucial question this book develops in later chapters especially in Chapter 23 Years of Clinton Hunting.
FN: Not sure what chapter I was referring to here..
Comey then played a kind of shell game where he hid his true intent from the DOJ-he suggested maybe he and Sally Yates would “jump off the bridge together”-per the IG report. Of course to the extent that Yates was open to such a scheme she-and her boss Loretta Lynch-were part of the problem as even that would violate the spirit as well as the letter of DOJ policy which is that you don’t dirty up folks you’re not charging.
In reality there’s not supposed to be a press conference at all. And the decision is supposed to come from the AG. Comey arrogated to himself a role in a process he had no rightful role in. It wasn’t his job to worry about wether following policy would lead to “the world catching on fire” as he claimed in his IG interview. He thought they couldn’t offer up a terse one sentence declination particularly not Loretta Lynch but again this is Comey’s problem-he thinks following policy lacks moral grandeur. Neither was it his job to worry what Fox News would say. DOJ policy dictates that a terse one sentence declination was exactly what should have been done-not by Comey but Loretta Lynch.
FN: As for the Tarmacgate canard-as we’ll see below even Comey thought it was a canard privately though publicly he pretended it was a real issue-Lynch was under no obligation to recuse but if she did choose to do so then it was Sally Yates job to give the-one sentence- declination statement. Instead she chose the worst of both worlds-she didn’t formally recuse but arrogated her role in giving the statement.
But again, to the extent that Lynch-Yates bought the idea themselves that the normal one sentence declination wasn’t sufficient because supposedly Emailgate was so “exceptional”-Comey’s word-they themselves left the door open for Comey.
In 2018 in yet another Comey sorry not sorry moment he whined that there were no good options.
Sure there was-the conundrum was of his own making. The good option was DOJ policy which he had no problem following when a Republican was being investigated. Last July 5-six years after the Very Careless Press Conference, the MSNBC reporter, Ja-han Jones wrote:
“Six years later, James Comey’s Clinton conference still stings”
“Six years ago, then-FBI director James Comey held a controversial press conference. It was a huge gift to Trump.”
Indeed it was. While Comey claims to have always been above base politics its notable that his bad decisions invariably always hurt the Democrats/benefited Republicans.
I agree with almost everything Ja’han says here:
“Tuesday, July 5, shall forever be known as the anniversary of former FBI Director James Comey’s foray into politics.”
“Six years ago today, Comey held an infamous press conference at the height of the 2016 presidential election, in which he announced that although Hillary Clinton hadn’t committed any crimes in using a private email server as secretary of state, she’d still done things Comey personally thought were “extremely careless.”
“Comey’s announcement may well have helped tank Clinton’s campaign. (He’s kinda, sorta, not-really apologized for his language at the press conference, and a late-stage announcement that he was investigating new Clinton emails). But I argue the political impact goes even deeper than 2016. In hindsight, I think it’s clear July 5 was also a foundational moment for Trump’s perversion of the Justice Department. Comey showed Trump the value of a DOJ willing to launch or close investigations based on pretext and politics.”
I certainly agree with noting the six year anniversary of Comey’s terrible decision. The only thing I’d add is that July 5, 2016 wasn’t the moment of original sin-July 10, 2015 was. But point taken we ought to hold yearly decelebrations of Comey’s terrible decisions-four dates as noted above: July 10, 2015, October 1, 2015, July 5, 2016, and of course, October 28, 2016.
Below this chapter looks at the floating rationalizations Comey has since offered for July 5-Tarmacgate, the idea that without the Presser “the world will catch on fire”-the IG report-makes you wonder what Comey thinks the world has done since he elected Trump if this is merely very bad.
But especially it looks at his astonishing claim that he chose to do the press conference based on a fake document put out by Russian intelligence. Maybe that’s why Comey did such a poor job in the Russia investigation-he was also their useful idiot.
UPDATE: The question that remains from this chapter is where to put the discussion on where the document comes from-also note that the recent new chapter Barr-Durham gives some new info on it-it was used by them as well starting in 2019
June 4, 2021
Some of these previous June 2021 updates already appear long dated.
FN: In his December 2018 testimony before the GOP House-who were basically there to accuse him of leading a “witch hunt” against their illegitimate ‘President’, Comey again claimed to believe the mysterious Russian doc was actually real. It would be nice for someone to attempt to unpack what he means-does he really believe that Amanda Renteria and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz did conspire with Loretta Lynch? He also asserted it was his belief that the document was still classified.
UPDATE: Maybe first introduce this information before discussing it…
UPDATE 2.0: I think maybe I did introduce it above.
The story of Comey’s fake Russian document-and the alleged impact on his-indefensible-decision to do his July 5 press conference-raises many questions that investigators-wether in Congress or private reporters or free lancers-need to answer.
FN: Everything we’ve seen the last few years suggests that a large piece of it will have to come via private investigators, reporters, and citizen journalists. Certainly nothing gives you much confidence in the elected Democrats at any level of government in showing any vigilance in protecting our democracy and forestalling a future Trumpian authoritarian regime.
As citizen journalists like Sarah Kendzior and Andrea Chalupa-linked to above-warn, the last four years were just a dress rehearsal.
Like every episode in Comey’s Emailgate fiasco, his claim that a mysterious fake Russian document influenced his decision to do the indefensible presser is a riddle wrapped inside a mystery wrapped inside an enigma.
As his “answers” never answer anything but raise many further questions we will attempt to at least begin a search for answers that make more sense-the only way to start such an investigation is with the right questions. Here are at least some of the many questions Comey’s fake Russian doc-and his unsatisfying and shifting explanations-raise.
A). First of all-why? Comey’s July 5, 2016 press conference violated DOJ policy and guidance on how to end an investigation as well as Hillary Clinton’s privacy. This was plenty bad enough but now it’s further compounded by the discovery that Comey based this decision at least in part on a fake Russian intel document. Yes it just keeps getting better.
Secondly what did Comey understand regarding the nature of this Russian intel doc at the time he used it as the reason/pretext/excuse/rationalization for violating DOJ policy and HRC’s privacy in such an egregious way? The reason for this question is that Comey’s answer to it has changed many times-over time there have been three or four different attempts to answer it.
And how important was this fake Russian intel doc in Comey’s decision to violate DOJ policy and HRC’s privacy in such an egregious way? More below on this too.
In Emailgate Comey always seemed to come up with the absolute worst solution to his real or imagined conundrums-and much of his “tough decisions” were self imposed, had he simply followed DOJ policy-as the IG report itself pointed out-had he not constantly been insubordinate-he would have faced no “conundrums” and would have been on high moral ground in the case of any future tongue lashing from Trey Gowdy.
Comey’s “solution” to the problem he saw in this fake Russian doc was to basically pay the Russian hackers a ransom note.
Indeed yet another question raised is what does DOJ policy advise in a situation like Comey’s alleged conundrum? Do the DOJ regs advise that if there’s a dodgy document that was hacked by Russian intel then the best course is to pay the hackers their ransom? More on this below as well.
FN: Uninteresting, forgettable, and meager because as usual when it comes to Emailgate-a la Jerry Seinfeld-Comey yada yada yadaed all the interesting parts. There was very little in it that was remotely either new information or interesting-yet Showtime based its miniseries on the Comey Letter on this self serving and uninteresting book of Comey’s thereby viewers learned very little that was new or interesting. Indeed in the entire book there was exactly one interesting revelation-Comey’s real opinion regarding Tarmacage and it’s real importance as a factor in doing his indefensible-not to say extremely careless and irresponsible-press conference-more below.
UPDATE: In retrospect I’d say there were two interesting revelations-his real view on Tarmacgate but just as interesting and important was his admission that he knew when he opened Emailgate it was unlikely they’d ever be able to prove intent. See the last chapter. He then grandly added that he wouldn’t “prejudge” the results missing the fact that before opening a criminal investigation you’re supposed to prejudge wether or not there’s probable cause-if charges are unlikely then there’s not.
His offered explanation here is notable in how cursory and scant it is-he gives it only a very fleeting mention. Again-as usual Comey yada yada yadas the interesting parts.
UPDATE 2.0:
However, this article points out Comey did mention the Russian disinformation on pg 172 of his book
FN: Why the Comey Letter chapter for more on this tendency.
Pg. 172
Yada yada yada. This is notable because Comey’s story-as it does on all things Emailgate-has changed. According to reporting by CNN in late May, 2017 Comey acted on Russian intel he knew was fake.
UPDATE: I’ve come to think maybe his story never really changed-he never suggested the Russian disinfo was disinfo-he always seemed to suggest he thought it was authentic. His framing changed-at different points he emphasized different reasons but he never claimed it was disinfo-this was most others at the FBI. This point perhaps belongs below
“Then-FBI Director James Comey knew that a critical piece of information relating to the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email was fake – created by Russian intelligence – but he feared that if it became public it would undermine the probe and the Justice Department itself, according to multiple officials with knowledge of the process.”
“The Washington Post reported Wednesday that this Russian intelligence was unreliable. US officials now tell CNN that Comey and FBI officials actually knew early on that this intelligence was indeed false.”
“In fact, acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe went to Capitol Hill Thursday to push back on the notion that the FBI was duped, according to a source familiar with a meeting McCabe had with members of the Senate intelligence committee.”
So McCabe had to correct the record. But who’s record did he have to correct? As usual Comey’s record-during that same period, the FBI also had to correct Comey’s howler that Huma regularly forwarded HRC’s emails for Anthony Weiner to printout.
FN: Chapter Comey’s howler on Huma’s emails-Chapter NYPD Threatens to Leak Huma Abedin’s Emails to Wikileaks
End FN.
It turns out when Comey told Congress of this Russian intel document in a closed session a few months ago he never suggested it was fake.
“In classified sessions with members of Congress several months ago, Comey described those emails in the Russian claim and expressed his concern that this Russian information could “drop” and that would undermine the Clinton investigation and the Justice Department in general, according to one government official.”
“Still, Comey did not let on to lawmakers that there were doubts about the veracity of the intelligence, according to sources familiar with the briefings. It is unclear why Comey was not more forthcoming in a classified setting.”
Why wasn’t he more forthcoming in a classified setting? Perhaps to match his lack of forthrightness in non classified settings and most of all because he’s never forthcoming on the subject of his historical errors in Emailgate.
FN: As noted above the Showtime series was total Comey hagiography based as it was on Comey’s boring and tedious Higher Loyalty. Comey so much wants to be this great moral hero when in fact he is the Bill E. Buckner of American politics.
UPDATE: See Chapter Bill E. Buckner of American politics
So yet another riddle/mystery/enigma in Comey’s story-the general rule of Emailgate is that if Comey’s story contradicts Andy McCabe-or anyone-I’m inclined to believe Andy McCabe-or anyone.
So did Comey knowingly act on Russian intel-hacked by Russian intel-despite knowing it was fake or did he in fact-unlike Andy McCabe and the rest of the FBI really believe it was real? Here’s it’s tough not to quote Zizek-even though I still hold Zizek’s endorsement of Trump in 2016 against him: ‘As Stalin would say both options are worse’-it’s hard to know what scenario is worse-that he acted on a fake Russian intel doc he knew was a fake or he was actually duped by this fake Russian intel doc. Neither scenario makes him look any better.
UPDATE: Maybe put this below but I’ve come to think he believed it was real-Schoenberg’s point is important here-see Chapter Buckner and Chapter Barr-Durham Fiasco.
However, this does not exhaust the pool of possible scenarios. Some Comey defenders at the FBI offered yet a third possibility:
“Sources close to Comey tell CNN he felt that it didn’t matter if the information was accurate, because his big fear was that if the Russians released the information publicly, there would be no way for law enforcement and intelligence officials to discredit it without burning intelligence sources and methods. There were other factors behind Comey’s decision, sources say.”
So did he know it was a fake doc, was he duped into believing it was real or was he agnostic regarding wether it was true or not-ie, he acted on it indifferent to wether it was real or fake?
Again the basic rule of Emailgate is Comey’s explanations are always shifting-though never improve for all the shifting. Yet another shifting riddle/mystery/enigma is how important a factor was the Russian document to his terrible decision to do the July 5 press conference. Publicly he’s often claimed that Tarmacgate was very important.
FN: Interestingly in his somewhat more interesting book, Andy McCabe takes the idea that Tarmacgate put Comey over the top at face value. I say somewhat more interesting as I suspect that McCabe-or Comey-or most such folks could write a far more interesting book if they were inclined.
But even with McCabe-while I find him a more honest broker than Comey-you get the sense that even when now as a disgruntled former FBI agent, there’s the usual desire to protect the agency, protect his institution. This is a general problem with “insider” accounts-yes maybe they understand more about the general workings of their agency or institution OTOH they are less inclined to be frank because they are so close-too close.
This WaPo article makes much the same point
So in another sense they understand less about them… So much for the punditry’s worship of experts and insiders.
McCabe has some interesting new revelations-that explain among other things why Loretta Lynch failed in her job to rein Comey in-but he still pulls his punches-even after the way Comey treated him in barring him from that Comey Letter meeting on October 26-27, 2016.
Yes, it’s likely he’d say something to the effect that ‘Sure I disagreed strongly with Jim on this decision but I respected his decision and I knew it wasn’t personal.’
In a way you almost want to say it’s too bad McCabe doesn’t take it more personally. If he did he could really strike back at Comey, the FBI-and the Trump people who drummed him out of the agency he’d loyally served all those years 26 hours before he was eligible to receive his pension. Wether or not what Comey did was ‘personal’ in barring him from the meeting it was nefarious-as I argue in Chapter Why the Comey Letter I think it’s fair to take it as axiomatic that the reason was because McCabe-and his staff lawyer, Lisa Page-were strong skeptics of the Comey Letter.
So if McCabe does pull punches why? Again because he’s an institutionalist. What this entire fiasco has pointed to-what the more recent terrible decisions of Merrick Garland point to-is that institutionalism isn’t the solution it’s the problem. As-even a disgruntled-member of the institution, McCabe’s tendency-like Matthew Miller’s here-is to defend the institution right or wrong.
.@harrylitman and I had a really great discussion about what’s going on at DOJ, informed by some of my experiences in the last new administration where an AG needed to clean things up from the prior bunch. Hope you will have a listen. https://t.co/vwcR4gLqJU
— Matthew Miller (@matthewamiller) June 11, 2021
The upshot of Miller’s interview seemed to be that he sees Garland’s decisions wether right or wrong as clearly reasonable not at all black or white but many shades of gray. I’m sure that’s self evident to the extent that you drink the institutionalist water. To be clear Miller is one of the best and most candid insiders. But even with him you see the effect of being an insider-it’s not in his DNA to say these are terrible decisions. That doesn’t mean they aren’t.
FN:
Regarding Garland’s decision to defend Trump against his alleged rape victim one plausible motivation is the AG wants to defend the career DOJ folks who were involved in this terrible decision to commit agency resources to defending Trump’s private legal interests.
Eugene Robinson offers up an explanation that is rather implausible-according to him Garland has to restore normalcy to the DOJ by defending all the things Trump and Barr did to violate normalcy. This was something of the attitude that Obama took post W-he defended and continued many of W’s terrible policies that he’d criticized on the trail-indeed, Biden himself had criticized the specific Jean Carroll case on the trial. Now his Justice department has picked it up-if successful she will likely have no remedy against the man-using the term loosely-she says raped her
How much of this is too “timely?”
UPDATE: This IS striking
What to know about 2 other Donald Trump accusers allowed to testify at E. Jean Carroll rape trial
FN: I mean you get the sense that if these Dem institutionalists took power after Hitler they’d be protecting the right to do the Holocaust in court-as they’re stated biggest worry is that there are ‘wild swings in policy.’
This works out perfectly for the GOP as-the party of anti institutionalists-is cool with wild swings in policy in their direction all the more so as they know the Democratic institutionalists who will take over will leave their awful policies in place-so as not to engage in wild swings.
End FN
Sarah Kendzior-among some others-has criticized the notion that ‘institutions will save us’ and, again, it’s become clear institutionalism isn’t the solution it’s the problem.
Que the Eli Mystal Nation post
Regarding career officials involved in Jean Carroll-they don’t deserve to be protected. They deserve at a minimum to be named and shamed-if not fired cum ‘reassigned’-ie, Andy McCabed. Again, Andy McCabe more than anyone arguably should feel this way-but no doubt he’d never think like this as he’s an institutionalist.
UPDATE: https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/27/politics/e-jean-carroll-defamation-lawsuit-trump/index.html
That’s certainly good for the institution if not for the public. But this is what institutionalism does to you-it makes you far more sensitive to the institution than the public interest.
End FN
But this isn’t what he said in his classified Congressional hearing in March, 2017.
“In at least one classified session, Comey cited that intelligence as the primary reason he took the unusual step of publicly announcing the end of the Clinton email probe.”
“In that briefing, Comey did not even mention the other reason he gave in public testimony for acting independently of the Justice Department – that Lynch was compromised because Bill Clinton boarded her plane and spoke to her during the investigation, these sources told CNN.”
Um, ee, er-well?
So protecting this document from public scrutiny justified violating DOJ policy and HRC’s privacy? What was in that document? As we saw in chapter Mensch, Mensch argues that Comey did all this clumsy, dodgy stuff to protect the Russian Interference and Possible Collusion investigation but this is contradicted by the fact that the pre FBI fingerprint regarding Russian Collusion was very light.
It yet again brings us to the question of what DOJ policy says regarding this Comey Conundrum-again, more below. What all this does point to is we-the American people-need to know what was in that Russian document and how important it really was in Comey’s decision. I mean if Comey is arguing-or at least on that day of the week, privately in a classified session before Congress-argued that this was so important it justified violating DOJ policy and HRC’s privacy in such an egregious way, we absolutely need to know what was in that document.
And no I don’t in this case find the old saw about protecting sources and methods persuasive-and that our very national security would be violated by releasing it-least of all this old saw coming from Comey. After all, no one did more to harm our national security than he did-in electing Trump despite having knowledge of the national security threat Trump represented.
As we speak our national security remains imperiled as the Democrats have failed to even begin an effective investigation of January 6.
FN: As we saw above, Pelosi is still dithering over a Select Committee, claiming to be open to it but still insisting she wants the Senate to agree to a Commission-even though that clearly won’t happen.
UPDATE: Again this is dated how much about this belongs in this chapter even as footnotes remains to be seen.
The same thing is now happening regarding the stunning revelation that Trump and Barr were investigating Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell.
It's unfortunately clear where this going-nowhere. The Senate wants to subpoena Barr-Sessions-Rosenstein but can't. The House can but wants the DOJ to do it. The DOJ doesn't want to do it. So-it won't get done https://t.co/Xu5l7ZhE9D
— Expand the Court (@ProChoiceMike) June 12, 2021
As usual the Dems all want someone to subpoena Barr/Sessions/Rosenstein-but they all want it to be some other Dem. The Senate Dems seem to want to do it-but they can’t. The House Dems can but seem to want the DOJ to do it-and as should be clear by now the DOJ won’t do it-it wouldn’t be a ‘normal’ thing to do.
End FN
UPDATE: How much of these carps belong here over a year later remains to be seen.
So did Comey know it was fake, not know it was fake, once think it fake but now knows it’s fake, or is in it fact real? Because OTOH the Washington Post reported there are Comey defenders who also suggested it was real.
According to the Washington Post-in contrast to CNN-Comey’s defenders still insist that there is reason to believe the document is legitimate and that it rightly played a major role in the director’s thinking.
So while the Comey defenders CNN references argued Comey didn’t care wether it was real or fake, the Comey defenders in the WaPo piece argue that actually the document may in fact be real.
“It was a very powerful factor in the decision to go forward in July with the statement that there shouldn’t be a prosecution,” said a person familiar with the matter. “The point is that the bureau picked up hacked material that hadn’t been dumped by the bad guys [the Russians] involving Lynch. And that would have pulled the rug out of any authoritative announcement.”
UPDATE: I’ve come to suspect Comey probably wrongly thought it was real-just like he wrongly thought Hillary was “a criminal who hadn’t been caught”-see Chapter Why the Comey Letter. I’ve also come to suspect that there is a pretty good correlation between those who claim it might have been accurate information and the leaking anti Clinton rogue agents threatening to leak Huma’s emails in October 2016… The intuition behind this conjecture is that partisan Republicans within the FBI are likely the ones who believe or claim to believe it was accurate.
But others say the exact opposite:
“Other people familiar with the document disagree sharply, saying such claims are disingenuous because the FBI has known for a long time that the Russian intelligence document is unreliable and based on multiple layers of hearsay.”
This quote directly contradicts what Comey told Congress in that classified setting.
“It didn’t mean anything to the investigation until after [senior FBI officials] had to defend themselves,” said one person familiar with the matter. “Then they decided it was important. But it’s junk, and they already knew that.”
“After the bureau first received the document, it attempted to use the source to obtain the referenced email but could not do so, these people said. The source that provided the document, they said, had previously supplied other information that the FBI was also unable to corroborate.”
This leads to yet another raised question regarding Comey’s fake document that may or may not have been a very important factor in Comey’s indefensible Press Conference that we’ll look at in more detail-who was the source of this fake document?
FN: See point C below where we develop this idea.
Again-more below.
For once it’s impossible to disagree with Lindsay Graham:
‘None of it makes much sense’
“Comey told lawmakers after the press conference that he had no choice but to go around the Justice Department and answer directly to reporters out of fear that the document might leak, but he did not tell them that the document was probably fake, according to CNN.
“Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham told CNN on Sunday that Comey “never once told a member of the House or the Senate that he thought the email was fake” and would have been “incredibly incompetent” to act on a document he knew to be fraudulent.”
“I can’t imagine a scenario where it’s OK for the FBI director to jump in the middle of an election based on a fake email generated by the Russians and not tell the Congress,” Graham said.
As we saw above, though some Comey defenders at the FBI argued that it does make sense-in the interest of protecting sources and methods. Above we also raised the question of what DOJ policy says about Comey’s conundrum.
UPDATE: In his December 2018 testimony before the GOP House-who were basically there to accuse him of leading a “witch hunt” against their illegitimate “President”, Comey -who elected him-again claimed to believe the mysterious Russian doc was actually real. It would be nice for someone to attempt to unpack what he means-does he really believe that Amanda Renteria and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz did conspire with Loretta Lynch? He also asserted it was his belief that the document was still classified.
FN: In Peter Elkind’s ProPublica piece-one of the few major pieces, one of about three-about Comeygate post 2016, Elkind appears to take Comey’s claim at face value that he thought the Russian document was authentic.
End of UPDATE
Comey apparently was under the impression that the best way to proceed is to pay the ransom to the hackers from Russian intel and hope for the best. You know if you pay the blackmailer odds are he now leaves you alone and doesn’t up the ante-according to Comey’s logic?
Apparently that’s not what the DOJ regs say.
I know: didn’t see that coming… Who would have thought that paying the blackmailer doesn’t make it all go away?
“In cases where there is intelligence suspected of being false, the correct procedure is to investigate,” said Scott Olson, a recently retired FBI agent who ran the agency’s counterintelligence operations and spent more than 20 years at the bureau.
“In this case, the parties referenced should have been interviewed as part of the investigation,” Olson said. “Then, if the document was used as feared, the results of the investigation could be used to effectively rebut.”
Um, ee, er…
Olson said Comey’s decision to bypass his superiors based on the document was even more bizarre.
“None of it makes much sense,” Olson said. “The notion that the FBI needs to circumvent DOJ procedure and officials because a known false document might be used publicly to forward some political agenda makes no sense. And the notion that DOJ is somehow incapable of defending itself against false publicity does not withstand scrutiny.”
FN: It’s bizarre until you look at Comey’s history. After doing that it seems just as bizzare yet even more bizzare is that it fits a long pattern in Comey’s career. That this bizzare action is actually typical in Comey’s career is even more bizzare but this was nothing new-Comey’s been doing things like this for years. The closer you look the less defensible Comey’s actions look-and the less he looks like the institutionalist “independent, nonpartisan” hero he’s been built up to be.
Yet all Comey could think to do was pay the ransom.
“The FBI is in the business of ascertaining the true facts through investigation,” Olson said. “That is what should have been done. I’d love to know why it was not done.”
FN: Ditto.
Because Comey follows not policy but his own idiosyncratic Kantian moral intuitions and makes it up as he goes along-a kind of Kantian Ad Hockery of Pure Reason.
“Matthew Miller, who was a Justice Department spokesman under Barack Obama, agreed that Comey “absolutely should have briefed” his superiors on the existence of the document before holding the press conference, especially if he thought it was fake.”
“If he already knew the document was fake, then he in no way should have relied on it to make decisions about how to handle the case, and he had an obligation to brief his superiors,” Miller said on Tuesday.
“Even if it was a real document, it wouldn’t excuse him acting on his own,” Miller added. “There are procedures set up for handling sensitive information like this when someone is potentially compromised, which is the best-case interpretation of his thinking. He could have briefed his direct boss, Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, and the two of them could have decided how to proceed.
“The bottom line is this document seems to have been an excuse to do what he always wanted to do, rather than an actual factor in any decision-making.”
UPDATE: Miller recently weighed in on the mysterious Russian doc once again.
UPDATE: Place below in appropriate spot next to the quote from agents that the document was always clearly trash
Upon reflection, the only obvious course of action now is an investigation into this investigation of Comey's behavior in the Clinton investigation, itself an outgrowth of a Benghazi investigation. We can surely keep this going forever.
— Matthew Miller (@matthewamiller) June 5, 2021
UPDATE:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/05/us/politics/biden-gag-order-new-york-times-leak.html
End UPDATE.
If nothing else, this underscores the breadth and depth of success of the Russian disinformation and interference campaign.
UPDATE: I do differ with Miller on the point though that we really do need an honest accounting of the Emailgate investigation. I disagree with the implicit idea that we should just let the matter die already and “move on”-there’s no moving on without accountability-see Chapter No Moving On
A ‘wildly successful’ Russian operation
“The revelation that a tainted document — believed to have been planted by the Russians in the trove of hacked documents obtained by the FBI — influenced Comey’s decision-making is evidence of the extent to which Russian disinformation could penetrate the highest levels of American law enforcement during the presidential campaign.
Glenn Carle also disagrees sharply with Comey’s belief that the way out was simply to pay the ransom to Russia in order to protect sources and methods.
“Glenn Carle, a former CIA operative who spent 23 years at the agency, said Comey’s use of the document to justify a decision that may have “changed the course of US history” meant that Russia’s election meddling was more “wildly successful” than anyone had imagined.”
“It is common to let bogus reports from the [foreign] opposition go forward, and continue unchallenged, so as not to compromise sources and methods,” Carle said. “But I dispute that the director should have treated this from the strict sources and methods protection perspective.
“In my view, he should in this instance have briefed the attorney general, the president, and the Gang of Eight,” Carle said, referring to a select group of lawmakers briefed on sensitive intelligence matters. “This was a policy call — a larger issue than the source and method. Historic errors on his part.”
Historic errors. The entire Emailgate investigation was one long, running historic error. Ironic it turns out Comey’s disastrous leadership in this fiasco of an investigation was the 500 year flood.
“Mark Kramer, the program director of the Project on Cold War Studies at Harvard’s Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, said Comey’s failure to alert the congressional committees that the document “was almost certainly a fake” was “appallingly negligent.”
Appallingly negligent.
“He should have emphasized that at the very start,” Kramer said. “By having failed to do so, he was disastrously incompetent and irresponsible.”
Disastrously incompetent and irresponsible.
Olson said he believed Comey and his team “forgot that the reputation of the FBI is secondary to the FBI’s responsibility.”
“At the end of the day, with due respect to notions of transparency, credibility, independence, and ensuring there is not even the appearance of improper conduct, what matters most is executing the role the FBI has in government,” he said. “Appearances don’t matter if reality, if the actual content, is wrong.”
After Scott Olson’s very tough-but totally fair and accurate-analysis of Comey’s conduct he tries to leaven the blow a little
The longtime FBI agent said he still believed Comey and his advisers “were trying very hard to do the right thing.”
“But they illustrated the old saying,” Olson said, “that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.”
I’m not prepared to even presume whose intentions were good with this level of bad faith in terms of an explanation but wether or not Comey operated with good intentions, his investigation was hell and not one we have turned the page from by any means.
B. Tarmacgate in retrospect.
In light of these bombshell revelations about Comey’s fake Russian intel document-that at least in a classified Senate hearing-Comey claimed was the main factor in his inappropriate Presser-Tarmacgate now appears in a whole new light. Regarding Comey’s Higher Loyalty I argued above that it was largely uninteresting and forgettable-and that it was too bad Showtime did it’s dive into Comeygate based on this self serving piece of hagiography. However note that I said it is largely disappointing rather than completely.
My overall negative appraisal is based on the fact that Comey had very few new revelations-time and again, his version of events in Emailgate has been unreliable but also short and cursory as if Comey knows his actions are very tough to defend and so does everything he can to make his explanation as short and cursory as possible as he wants to avoid getting into the weeds of it at all costs.
Again his preference is to yada yada the weeds. However, the reason I say it was largely forgettable is that Comey’s book does provide one new revelation and it’s a very interesting and consequential one at that-no wonder Comey for the most part tries to avoid fulsomeness at all costs.
The new information is he discussed his own thought process with regard to Tarmcgate.
Now looking back to 2016 while some pundits admitted that Comey’s actions in the Presser-and later Letter-were inappropriate, they argue his actions were nevertheless at least understandable as that bad ole Bill Clinton gave him little choice after saying hello to Loretta Lynch in a busy Denver airport. This left the MSM in a very comfortable position-blaming the victim essentially-Hillary’s privacy and due process may have been violated but it was-as usual-her own fault as her husband is the one who forced Comey to violate her privacy and due process.
So it’s her fault-she should have divorced Bill when they and the GOP co-conspirators told her to.
At the time I personally thought that was absurd-if Bill Clinton really wanted to rig the process there were much better ways than on an airport tarmac with all the world watching. As it turns out, this was Clinton’s own thought process as well-per his interview with Horowitz in the first half of DOJ-OIG-2016-Election-Final-Report.pdf (documentcloud.org)
FN: As we’ve noted notable times in this book-as with time passing it only becomes more outrageous-we still haven’t seen part two and apparently Horowitz’s intention now is to NEVER release it-Chapter A.
“Approximately 20 to 30 yards from Lynch’s plane was a private plane with former President Bill Clinton on it. Former President Clinton had been in Phoenix for several campaign events, including a roundtable discussion with Latino leaders and a campaign fundraiser, and his plane was preparing to depart. Former President Clinton said that he did not know in advance that Lynch was in Phoenix and was not aware that her plane was close to his until his staff told him. Asked about news reports that he purposely delayed his takeoff to speak to Lynch, former President Clinton stated: It’s absolutely not true. I literally didn’t know she was there until somebody told me she was there. And we looked out the window and it was really close and all of her staff was unloading, so I thought she’s about to get off and I’ll just go shake hands with her when she gets off. I don’t want her to think I’m afraid to shake hands with her because she’s the Attorney General. He said that he discussed with his Chief of Staff whether he should say hello to Lynch, and that they debated whether he should do it because of “all the hoopla” in the campaign. He stated, “I just wanted to say hello to her and I thought it would look really crazy if we were living in [a] world [where] I couldn’t shake hands with the Attorney General you know when she was right there.”
Pgs. 202-203
Yes we were living in a crazy world in the 2016 election, at some point in 2015 we wandered through Alice in Wonderland’s Looking Glass and we have never really left, so that what was in fact a nothingburger became this huge faux scandal. But then that more or less describes the Clintons’ 25 years in politics-nothinburgers getting blown up by the GOP and the media into something with no parallel in history other than maybe the Holocaust.
As Bill notes the email server that generated so much storm and stress-the entire election was about the damn emails-was actually his.
“Former President Clinton said that he did not consider that meeting with Lynch might impact the investigation into his wife’s use of a private email server. He stated, “Well what I didn’t want to do is to look like I was having some big huddle-up session with her you know…. [B]ecause it was a paranoid time, but…I knew what I believed to be the truth of that whole thing. It was after all my server and the FBI knew it was there and the Secret Service approved it coming in and she just used what was mine.” As a result, he said that he never thought the investigation “amounted to much frankly so I didn’t probably take it as seriously as maybe I might have in this unusual period[.]”
I don’t blame him for not thinking it amounted to much-in retrospect it didn’t and never did-as the last two chapters clearly demonstrate Emailgate was always what John Stuart Mill would call nonsense on stilts-there was no probable cause as even Comey admitted he knew before the fact it was exceedingly unlikely to lead to charges and hence it never should have been opened in the first place. The real question is how the tail wagged the dog to this extent, how did-what the Washington Post all too belatedly called a a minor email scandal decide a Presidential election? There are many reasons-one was the media a la Cillizza and Dean Baquet chose to blow it up to the crime of the century right up there with the Holocaust.
UPDATE: Then there’s the Secret Service fingerprints that also feel a little ‘queasy.’ Notable that they didn’t point this during the whole Emailgate furor-that they had approved the use of the server. The fact that HRC not only used private email but she had a server! A server!! was treated as particularly nefarious but in fact it had been approved of by Trumpland 2.0 the Secret Service-for Bill Clinton.
So basically Trumpland 2.0 the Secret Service approved the server and Trumpland 1.0 the FBI knew about it yet the FBI spent the entire 2016 election investigating it in a faux “criminal investigation”-per Chapter Probable Cause it was a matter-and copiously leaking about it.
Nevertheless, some might dismiss this explanation by Bill as self interested-and, and, of course, I’m an admitted partisan liberal Democrat. Here’s what’s interesting though: Comey came to the same initial conclusion as me and Bill Clinton.
In his own book, Higher Loyalty, Comey dismisses the idea that Tarmacgate was part of any conspiracy between Clinton and Loretta Lynch:
“Then, on Monday, June 27, on a hot Phoenix airport tarmac, Bill Clinton and Attorney General Lynch met privately aboard an FBI Gulfstream 5 jet for about twenty minutes. When I first heard about this impromptu meeting, I didn’t pay much attention to it. I didn’t have any idea what they talked about. But to my eye, the notion that this conversation would impact the investigation was ridiculous. If Bill Clinton were going to try to influence the attorney general, he wouldn’t do it by walking across a busy tarmac, in broad daylight, and up a flight of stairs past a group of FBI special agents. Besides, Lynch wasn’t running the investigation anyway. But none of these basic realities had any impact on the cable news punditry.”
“As the firestorm grew in the media, I paid more attention, watching it become another corrosive talking point about how the Obama Justice Department couldn’t be trusted to the Clinton email investigation.”
Pgs. 178-179.
So Comey himself saw the furor over Tarmacgate as “ridiculous.” But yet because of all the noise on Fox News he decided that while there was no reality to the furor the optics had to be dealt with. This is the Original Sin-at least one of it’s Original Sins, there are a few others-of the entire email probe-where in Comey’s concern about the appearance of politicization in a way that favored Clinton he politicized it in fact in a way that unfairly harmed her.
And here’s the irony, you have all these GOPers claiming that Clinton being cleared proved the investigation was politicized and, in a sense, they were right but in the opposite direction: all their claims of politicization led Comey, Andy McCabe, and friends to do what Hillary herself while Secretary of State called overcorrecting. They overcompensated those claiming Clinton was getting special treatment by giving her especially bad treatment.
So in his own telling, Comey gave the press conference not because he really believed that Clinton met with Lynch to clear his wife but because Fox News viewers believed it-kind of like Keynes’ beauty pageant applied to a politically motivated, Fox News directed FBI investigation. If nothing else, the GOP has demonstrated that there is value in gaming the refs.
UPDATE: See Chapter Matthew Miller
Nevertheless, at the end of the day the faux outrage over Tarmacgate gave him a handy excuse for the inexcusable presser. So it’s not clear that he was so much pushed by Fox News hysteria as he saw it as a convenient crutch for doing what he’d actually intended to do for about three months-a press conference for when he cleared Clinton without any principals from the DOJ at his side.
Per the IG report he had long planned to do this-the furor over the tarmac just gave his indefensible decision more apparent cover.
“Impact of the Tarmac Meeting on Comey’s Decision to Make a Public Statement As described above, Comey began drafting a public statement announcing the conclusion of the Midyear investigation in early May 2016, well before the tarmac meeting, and told the OIG that he planned not to inform the Department. Comey told us that he had struggled with the decision, and that “in a way the tarmac thing made it easy for me” and “tipped the scales” towards making his mind up to go forward with an independent announcement. He stated, “I think I was nearly there. That I have to do this separate and apart…. And so I would say I was 90 percent there, like highly likely going to do it anyway, and [the tarmac meeting] capped it.”
Pgs. 219-220
But let’s be clear he was going to do the presser and he was going to do it alone Tarmacgate or no Tarmacgate.
“As described above, documents and testimony indicate that Comey planned to do the statement independently without advance notice to the Department even before the tarmac meeting between Lynch and former President Bill Clinton. Comey acknowledged that he made a conscious decision not to tell Department leadership about his plans to independently announce a declination because he was concerned that they would instruct him not to do it, and that he made this decision when he first conceived of the idea to do the statement. He stated: Then, come May, and I’m trying to figure out how the endgame should work, to preserve the option that I ended up concluding was best suited to protect the institutions, I couldn’t tell them that I was considering that. Because if I told them that one of the—in my mind I drew this spectrum—at one end of the spectrum is I’m going to announce separate from you what the FBI thinks about this and very practical about it they, I remember thinking this, if I surface that with them, they might well say, I order you not to do that and then I would abide that, I wouldn’t do that. And so I remember saying to the Midyear team when I circulated in May my first draft I said what would the most, one end of the spectrum, what would that option look like? I said keep this close hold, I mean you can have conversations with the Department of Justice about the endgame, but don’t tell them I’m considering this because then that option is going from us. Because if I were the DAG, maybe they wouldn’t have, but what I was thinking was, if I’m the DAG I say, just to be clear, I order you not to make any statements on this case without coordinating it with us. And so to be honest, I would lose that option.”
Pg. 201.
In case it’s still not clear this is what insubordination-the report censured him as insubordinate-looks like. It shows clear conscious intent to violate DOJ policy. As clear a case of premeditation as it gets in an investigation like this.
Tarmacgate, then, was a convenient excuse-as many MSM pundits bought it-not a reason just like Comey’s fake Russian document that falsely tried to give the impression that Loretta Lynch, a member of the Clinton campaign, and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz’s aide were conspiring to help Clinton avoid charges. This fake news from a Russian doc has the inconvenience of being based on clear falsehood-that this Clinton aide and Lynch knew each other well-in fact they didn’t know each other at all.. But again, 2016 was the election where alternative facts had more currency that real ones.
This leads us back to Matt Miller’s point above-the Russian document was likely a pretext for doing the Presser just as Tarmacgate. But between what Comey wrote in his own book and what he told the Senate in a classified setting it’s clear that the idea that Tarmacgate was the main factor was pretextual.
Indeed, while I do believe we need to see the infamous hacked fake Russian intel document, it’s quite clear based on a preponderance of evidence that Comey always intended to do the Presser alone without Lynch regardless of what his latest pretext was.
Per the IG report, Comey had resolved to do the presser in April at the latest.
His cover story cum rationale kept changing but his resolve to do the press conference never changed. As we saw above in a closed Senate session he testified that the fake Russian doc was the predominant factor yet in an open session on June 8, 2017-soon after Trump fired him-he said the opposite of what he’d said in the classified setting back in March, 2017.
The MSM was clearly pleased by what he said.
The Comey testimony included a big reveal about the 2016 election
“Bill Clinton’s tarmac meeting is looking worse and worse in retrospect.”
It’s not hard to see why the Savvy loved this-it puts them in their favorite place-they can blame it all on Bill Clinton-and not their own absurd and excessive coverage of the Emailgate fiasco.
So the MSM breathed it in with a spoon but it baldly contradicted what Comey had said in the March 2017 private session. He-even more obliquely than in Higher Loyalty-eludes to it here only to claim that the public accounts of it were nonsense. Really-what aspect of them were nonsense?
FN: As for Comey’s alleged outrage that Lynch said matter not investigation see Chapter A. Short version of it is this doesn’t even pass the laugh test. In fact Lynch as we saw in Chapter A was right it was closer to a matter than an investigation.
Yet another very good question maybe some day someone will ask him-or seek to get answered. In any case in the closed session he said the Russian intel was the ‘conclusive’ factor and didn’t mention Tarmacgate at all. As we saw above, in his book he made it clear that he saw Tarmacgate as a canard-and as quoted above he admitted to the IG investigation that he’d already made his decision but TG offered a good pretext-obv he doesn’t use quite these words. Yet he tells Burr in an open session that Tarmacgate was conclusive.
Do you see why I argue Comey’s not a reliable narrator on anything Emailgate? And just to round it out so that we have Comey asserting A, B, C, all of the above, then none of the above, he told the IG that he was already ‘90% of the way-there before Tarmacgate.
Again, as Miller said of Comey on the fake Russian intel, Comey just finds whatever rationale he can think of at the moment to justify a decision he was going to make all along-the IG report makes it clear that he was already there by April, 2016 at the latest. Then he dawdled around for three more months-once again further hardening the-false-impression that Hillary was a felon guilty of terrible crimes.
In any case let us look at what Comey told the IG:
Pg. 270
In looking at this list it’s stunning how meager it is as a justification for violating DOJ policy and Clinton’s privacy and civil rights on this scale. Happily, the IG itself agrees.
Ibid.
The IG then takes apart this nonsense on stilts a la John Stuart Mills point by point.
IG makes it clear all this faux outrage over ‘matter not investigation’ is pure garbage. Ok strong words but apt when you see what they say:
Pg. 272-searchable format.
So Comey completely misconstrued what Lynch was saying-deliberately? When we see how willfully misleading Comey’s been on point after point regarding Emailgate how can you rule it out? How can you rule out that that he did deliberately misconstrue it? Why? He was desperate for some kind of half reasonable sounding justification but since none were forthcoming this was the thin gruel he glommed onto.
But it’s even worse than this-as it turns out that Hillary Clinton was never the subject of Emailgate-in fact it was an investigation-unpredicated and baseless it’s true-without a subject.
FN: Chapter Lynch was Right
End FN
In other words-Lynch was right it was a matter.
As I argue here and in other chapters, Comey is simply an unreliable narrator on all things Emailgate. To be sure I don’t think anyone who was part of his Emailgate investigation is a reliable narrator. But even among all these unreliable narrators, Comey is especially unreliable-see how time and again his version of reality contradicts that of everyone else?
He alone still claims the Russian document was real. Now we see that he alone claims to have found ‘matter not investigation’ significant.
Ok so onto this mysterious document hacked by Russian intelligence-that was fake and likely always known to be fake; note the FBI agents who told reporters that it was always known to be garbage.
So it was already known to be objectively false by June, 2016-in truth it was likely always obviously objectively false-yet Comey would tell the Senate Intel Committee in March, 2017 that it was real and was the basis of his indefensible press conference.
So he knew the allegations were false yet he paid the ransom.
FN: Or did he know they were false? More below…
As noted above by DOJ insiders like Matthew Miller, Glenn Carle, and Scott Olson, and now here by the IG, if Comey had concerns about the effects of Russian disinformation there were DOJ protocols and policies in place.
FN: But again, even in December 2018, Comey was again testifying that so far as he knew it WAS NOT a fake and still classified.
But, of course, Comey finds following DOJ policy as unmanly and lacking in moral grandeur.
Ok now IG deconstructs Tarmacgate.
So “90 percent there” means he was going to do it with or without TG-note in the IG passage above they state that by this time he was ‘already far along’ in his decision to-well, engage in insubordination-and his private March 2017 testimony-where TarmacGate wasn’t mentioned-as well as his book make it clear in reality this was never an important factor. Nothing really was as he’d already decided months ago to do it.
He’d then have these pretend debates with his Emailgate officials where he asked what should they do-when he’d already decided what to do. What’s clear both in how he operated with the Presser and later the Letter is Comey’s management mode is to make a decision then have a debate and frame the issue in a way that will hopefully get others to ‘recommend’ a course of action he’d already decided on beforehand.
FN: Indeed, this is what he did with the Letter too. His preference is to decide in advance then hold a mock debate where he frames the debate in such a way they’ll likely end up where he wants them to. The IG report quotes James Baker as being who first recommended that McCabe recuse but once you appreciate how Comey operates you understand this is dispositive of little. For all we know he pulled Baker aside before the meeting and urged him to make this recommendation. This is not only plausible but based on this pattern, perhaps likely.
End FN
But again-at the end of the day it wasn’t his decision to make.
The idea that the DOJ would dither and “screw around” is rich as Comey had been dithering and screwing around since at least January, 2016 at the latest. He’d known for many months that he didn’t have a basis to indict. Even once he decided on his presser-by April he still dithered and screwed around another three months. Nothing suggests he was in any hurry. What he didn’t want was to be denied a starring role-though policy offered him no public role whatsoever.
Nor do I buy for one second that he would have been happy to have shared the stage-that wasn’t his in the first place-with Sally Yates. He’d decided on his course of action and his claim after the fact to be open to letting Yates do it was more of his Emailgate spin.
FN: To the extent Sally Yates believed that he would have been happy just shows how successful Comey was in snowing Yates and her boss, Loretta Lynch along with everyone else at Obama’s DOJ.
Comey’s anxiety about “a world catching fire” is also pretty rich. How does he define catching fire and does he think that post his Presser and Letter the world HASN’T caught fire?
Comey’s next rationalization if possible failed the laugh test even more spectacularly than the previous objections-it’s close because “matter not investigation” is about as thin a reed as you could find but this objection in some ways is even worse as it’s such an insult to injury. It tells us a lot not just about Comey but the FBI.
This is something we see again and again where at the FBI it’s only those with Democratic political leanings who are presumed to be “biased.” I mean if by definition a Democratic AG can’t be trusted if a high ranking Democrat is being investigated why isn’t it looked at the other way-why not turn the telescope the other way? If you can just assume a Dem AG is biased in a investigation regarding a high ranking Democrat than why wouldn’t a Republican in the same role be assumed to be biased the opposite way? If a Democrat can’t be trusted to oversee an investigation of a Democrat because you assume they’ll protect them why wouldn’t a Republican overseeing it be assumed to be motivated to indict them for political reasons?
Why is Comey trustable-to use a Kevin McCarthy neologism-to investigate a woman he and his GOP dominated FBI have investigated in one guise or another for 20 years? As we discuss in in this and even more in another chapter, while Comey and James Baker-probably at Comey’s private request-called on McCabe to sit out the final Comey Letter summit on October 26-27 in 2016-because his wife took donations from Democrats-in a race that was over a year ago even though McCabe himself was like Comey, like Mueller, a life long Republican like most of the top officials at the FBI-by that logic why was Comey to be trusted who had donated to both of Obama’s political opponents-besides investigating Hillary for 20 years-and literally locked up the Hillary like Martha Stewart despite her having committed NO crime?
CF: See Chapter 23 Years of Clinton Hunting the FBI is a Very Republican Place?
Why if a Democrat will be presumed-with no other information-to be biased to exoneration why isn’t a GOPer presumed to be biased towards indictment? And indeed that’s certainly what we did see at Trumpland the FBI in 2016-they were all incensed that THAT WOMAN wasn’t indicted and later forced Comey to do the Letter that finally took her down.
The answer to the question, of course, is this is just how biased the FBI is-our largest domestic intel agency which has never had a single Democratic Director in its history.
This is the part that’s a little foggy-where did I make this hypothesis? Did we introduce adequate “foundation” as the lawyers say? Do we need to add more? How does this part sync with Chapter Leeden?
C. Ok so above I also raised the question of the source of Comey’s fake Russian doc-he continued to assert was real-probably because in his heart he remains a Hillary hating GOP partisan hack and so believes any accusation against her no matter how absurd or baseless.
One possible source who comes to mind is the late Peter Smith. After all his crusade was to find HRC’s legally deleted emails-his preferred method was paying Russian hackers.
FN: In chapter Leeden Manifesto we look at this entire crusade that obsessed not just Smith but the entire Republican party-in 2016 they were obsessed with HER EMAILS in a way that they are now obsessed with Hunter Biden’s laptop-despite the fact that any alleged crime or malfeasance he’s guilty of pales in comparison to say, Jared Kushner.
No surprise that Beltway pundits have learned nothing since BUT HER EMAILS
End FN
So that the late GOP partisan hack who was obsessed with HER EMAILS and was paying Russian hackers to somehow hack her deleted emails would shop fake Hillary emails to his fellow Republicans at the FBI who were similarly obsessed with her legally deleted emails makes perfect sense.
However, in August 2018 a story broke that Trump campaign adviser Joseph Schmitz brought alleged Clinton emails from the ‘dark web’ to FBI | The Hill
“A former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser in the summer of 2016 asked multiple federal agencies, including the FBI, to review material obtained from the “dark web” that he believed to be content from former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s deleted emails. ”
“Joseph Schmitz, formerly a Pentagon inspector general and then a member of the Trump campaign’s national security and foreign policy team, reportedly found the unverified material through a client, who remains an unidentified contractor. He brought it to at least two federal agencies and two congressional committees, CNN reported. ”
It’s amazing but with all the questions already begged by Comey’s whole Russian disinfo fiasco, this only raises further questions. Note that we don’t know if these fake Hillary emails were in any way related to Comey’s fake Russian doc that falsely claimed to show Debbie Wasserman-Schultz was in bed with Loretta Lynch, et al.
Were these two pieces of Russian disinfo related?
FN: We know Comey’s disinfo was from Russian intelligence and it seems plausible that Schmitz’s disinfo was also from Russian intel. In referring to Schmitz’s disinfo as Russian I’m conjecturing but it’s a fairly plausible conjecture.
End FN
We don’t know but it’s a very good question. If you accept the timeline of the initial CNN story on Schmitz, he shopped his fake Hillary emails to his HRC hating ideological GOP bedfellows at the FBI in the Summer of 2016 while Comey’s fake Russian doc showed up many months earlier. But even if that is true-and we don’t know for sure-it could still be the same source-for example, GRU hackers…
Seth Abramson suggests Schmitz’s unidentified contractor was none other than the Late Peter Smith-arguably no one single man did more than he to elect Donald Trump-see Chapter The Unreported Background.
FN: Which-who knows? –if Smith didn’t kill himself this fact would be a pretty strong motive to murder him. His death in some ways recalls William Casey’s death-while officially it was natural causes it’s hard to miss that like with Smith, Casey’s death was very convenient-the morning of his scheduled testimony before the Iran-Contra Committee.
Certainly, a plausible conjecture, as they shared the same Holy zeal to “find” HRC’s legally deleted emails and were evidently very comfortable working with Russian intelligence to find them.
Schmitz himself was one of five on Trump’s original foreign policy team and stayed on the team throughout the election and was later considered for the post as Trump’s Secretary of the Navy.
Seth argues that Trump’s Nat-Sec team was his version of Nixon’s CREEP. Let’s remember who else was on Trump’s version of CREEP: Carter Page and George Papadopoulos.
At the time these choices baffled GOP foreign policy experts:
“Trump’s foreign policy team baffles GOP experts.”
“Republicans can’t figure out the mogul’s quirky mix of advisers.”
“Two of the five people Trump cited Monday have private-sector backgrounds.”
Yes these two people were: yep, Carter Page and George Papadopoulos, who together would be the center of the start of the Russia collusion investigation.
A third person on Trump’s Nat-Sec team? Joseph Schmitz:
“Another Trump adviser concerned with domestic Islam is Joseph Schmitz, a former Pentagon inspector general with ties to the Center for Security Policy. The center’s president is Frank Gaffney, whose controversial statements about Muslims — including a charge that President Barack Obama might be a Muslim — came under new scrutiny when Ted Cruz named him as a foreign policy adviser last week. Schmitz, a Naval Reservist and former partner at the Washington law firm of Patton Boggs, co-authored a 2010 report for the center titled “Shariah: The Threat to America.”
FN: Note he was a Pentagon IG during the W. Bush years who didn’t do much inspecting.
Schmitz was with the campaign throughout and Trump considered him for Secretary of the Navy after it ended.
“Schmitz counseled Trump “through the November election,” according to a biography on his law firm’s website. After Trump’s election victory, he considered Schmitz as a possible Secretary of the Navy, first reported by the Daily Caller and confirmed by CNN’s sources.”
Ok so here’s the money quote:
“Schmitz met with officials at the FBI, the State Department and the Intelligence Community Inspector General — the watchdog tasked with investigating Clinton’s alleged mishandling of classified information. He claimed a source he called “PATRIOT,” an unidentified contractor he was representing, had discovered what he believed was likely material stolen from Clinton that could contain classified information. Both the client and Schmitz were afraid that going through the material without permission could jeopardize their security clearances, though there is no indication their actions were illegal.”
UPDATE:
When Schmitz was last heard from publicly he was advocating the man he helped elect-through collusive means-overturn a legitimate election.
Trump Leads Uncontested Electors 232-227: Not Over Until Supreme Court Rules | https://t.co/BxH22yEHhR https://t.co/uBbm4v3dZM via @Newsmax
— Joseph E. Schmitz (@josepheschmitz) November 13, 2020
CF: Schmitz’s NewsMax Archives
Joseph E. Schmitz Article Archives – August 2023 | Newsmax.com
FN: I’m curious why this MSM pundit article is so quick to say “there’s no indication their actions were illegal”-working with hackers to steal information isn’t illegal? There was far less ‘indication Hillary’s actions were illegal’-that didn’t stop them all chanting “Lock Her Up!”
As to why: quite possibly various rogue anti Clinton agents assured the MSM pundits there was ‘no indication there was anything illegal’ about Schmitz shopping hacked, sketchy anti HRC emails to them-why would they consider that a problem? It rather showed he was one of them, an honorary rogue FBI agent…
As noted above Seth Abramson conjectures that Smith was Schmitz’s contractor.
Indeed put this way it is pretty hard to believe the two of them were not working together-though this is a hypothesis and needs to be investigated and run down like the many other hypotheses in this book.
FN: Seth asks another very good question, noting that Devin Nunes himself has admitted that ‘collusion is a crime.’
He then rightly asks who else Schmitz might have showed the fake Clinton emails to.
But, of course, with Devin Nunes and Friends the question answers itself. It’s like asking why the Secret Service failed to save the texts from January 6 and why the FBI has been slow to investigate J6 in many offices across the country.
FN: See Chapter Barr-Durham Fiasco?
End FN
Regarding Comey’s Russian disinfo above we had quoted from WaPo:
“It didn’t mean anything to the investigation until after [senior FBI officials] had to defend themselves,” said one person familiar with the matter. “Then they decided it was important. But it’s junk, and they already knew that.”
I do have to admit this discussion gets rather tendentious as it’s easy to confound the various pieces of-largely Russian-disinformation without a scorecard. So let’s recap what we know to be fact and what at this point are some educated guesses based on the fact pattern.
We know for a fact that in the Summer of 2016 Schmitz met with officials at Trumpland the FBI and offered what he believed were stolen emails from HRC. However, Seth Abramson quite reasonably raised the question whether the Late Peter Smith was in fact Schmitz’s unidentified client. In addition, we have Comey’s fake Russian document he claimed in a classified setting to have been a major factor in his inappropriate and Very Careless Press Conference in July 2016. In addition, I’ve raised the question of whether Schmitz and/or Smith were the source also for Comey’s fake Russian intel doc.
Regarding Comey’s fake Russian doc-we don’t know the source but it’s certainly plausible either Smith and/or Schmitz was involved-as we know for a fact Schmitz was involved with the fake HRC emails-and there’s good reason for suspicion the Late Peter Smith might have been his agent.
To requote WaPo on Comey’s Russian disinfo:
“It didn’t mean anything to the investigation until after [senior FBI officials] had to defend themselves,” said one person familiar with the matter. “Then they decided it was important. But it’s junk, and they already knew that.”
“After the bureau first received the document, it attempted to use the source to obtain the referenced email but could not do so, these people said. The source that provided the document, they said, had previously supplied other information that the FBI was also unable to corroborate.”
This further suggests the source of Comey’s Russian disinfo could have been either Schmitz, Smith or both Schmitz and Smith. If so, it would mean that when Schmitz gave the FBI disinformation in the Summer of 2016 it was hardly the first time.
UPDATE: Seth also conjectures wether the fake emails Schmitz peddled to Trumpland the FBI in the Summer of 2016 were the same ones Erik Prince was talking about on Breitbart Radio 4 days before the election.
This too is a plausible conjecture when you consider Schmitz’s ties to Bannon-he was Bannon’s partner, the COO at Blackwater.
Throughout the course of this book we see precisely this happened through many avenues-indeed it’s now clear that the leaks were going on all the time, indeed in Chapter Not a Surprise we learn that the GOP Congressional Chairmen already knew about Huma’s emails no longer than a day after Devlin Barrett’s tech-William Barnett?-“found” them on Weiner’s laptop a month before Comey’s letter. This merely reveals yet another avenue or pipeline.
FN: See Chapter Not a Surprise to Devin Nunes
In discussing the crucial question of the leaks rogue agents as this book tries to do-see particularly Chapter Unreported Background- it’s important to remember the information had already been leaked to the GOP Congress, but they needed Comey to announce what they already knew about Huma’s emails showing up on Huma’s laptop-as we will see in Unreported Background perhaps as a result of the late Smith planting it there himself.
FN: The fact that Nunes and Friends already knew about the emails by about September 28 has earth shaking implications. For one thing it underscores how meaningless is Comey’s insistence that he had to tell the GOP Congress about the emails-they already knew! Yet another very interesting question is wether he knew they knew…
Seems to me that from the view of Schmitz and his fellow GOP co-conspirators both inside and outside of the FBI it’s kind of a distinction without a difference-the question is where did he get the fake emails from? A plausible conjecture particularly if Seth’s conjecture Smith was Schmitz’s agent is accurate is that the fake emails came from Russian hackers but True Believers like Smith/Schmitz weren’t going to worry too much about authenticating it-like we’ve seen more recently with Hunter Biden’s alleged laptop. Indeed regarding Comey’s own fake Russian doc, he still claims to believe in its authenticity to this day ASFAIK. So the short answer to Abramson’s question if Schmitz knew the emails were fake is: I doubt it as he’d never try to authenticate them in the first place. A true believer takes it on faith.
Seth than asks if Mueller had questioned Giuliani, a question that in retrospect has turned out to be wildly overly optimistic-no jibe at Seth I too badly wanted to believe in Mueller back then-as all those concerned about our democracy did.
Clearly in retrospect Mueller would have considered such questions as way outside his scope.
Of course, it was completely within Horowitz’s scope, it literally was Horowitz’s scope-he did talk to Giuliani but tabled the report-see Chapter Horowitz. As for saying they came from the NYPD maybe they were in fact laundered through the NYPD-via Smith perhaps working with Prince and/or Schmitz. As we saw in Chapter Unreported Background it appears the late Smith actually gave the NYPD Huma’s emails who then implanted them on Weiner’s laptop.
UPDATE 2.0:
Our hopes were dashed by Horowitz just like with Mueller but for different reasons-Mueller just chose to construe his mandate as narrowly as possible-though what we still haven’t seen is his full unredacted report and the notes and intel behind it; what still remains to be seen and needs to be seen is the counterintelligence investigation on Trump-Russia-Horowitz did the investigation though we can’t know how fulsomely as he tabled it.
In Abramson’s January 2017 article on the Comey Letter he said this:
“Information presently public and available confirms that Erik Prince, Rudy Giuliani, and Donald Trump conspired to intimidate FBI Director James Comey into interfering in, and thus directly affecting, the 2016 presidential election. This conspiracy was made possible with the assistance of officers in the New York Police Department and agents within the New York field office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. All of the major actors in the conspiracy have already confessed to its particulars either in word or in deed; moreover, all of the major actors have publicly exhibited consciousness of guilt after the fact. This assessment has already been the subject of articles in news outlets on both sides of the political spectrum, but has not yet received substantial investigation by major media.”
Six years and eight months later it still hasn’t-and no doubt the plan of the Dean Baquet cum Devlin Barrett media is for it to never receive it. Those of us who believe there needs to be such a substantial investigation are barking up the wrong tree if we expect the mainstream media to do it.
We look at this entire question of the GOP crusade to “find” HRC’s legally detailed emails with the help of Russian intel if necessary-indeed in Chapter Leeden Manifesto it seems more than a mere necessity working with Russian hackers was a GOP preference in 2016-in Chapter Leeden Manifesto.