COMEYbak
estb 10 25
belated, neglected, see attackers
HILLARY EMAIL 11 DAYS BEFORE ELECTION 2016 --> TRUMP
SEE RETALIATE 3 XO
see Jessie Liu
see deep state BS
on prof watchlist 722
ashcroft standup save?
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pence team sure beat until comey re-open hillary emails
Comey, then the FBI director, sent a letter to Congress announcing the reopening of the email probe on Oct. 28, 2016, 11 days before the Nov. 8 election.
wait, isn't this the guy who re-opened hillary email-gate before the election? why yes it is.
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HUH? AN 9 26
Appeals judges appeared leery of allowing President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice to revive its dead prosecution of Attorney General Letitia James on Tuesday. James’ prosecution was dismissed under the argument that the top prosecutor pressing the case did not have a right to be leading the indictment.
But DOJ attorneys say Senior U.S. District Judge Cameron Currie "administered […] strong medicine" as a consequence of Lindsey Halligan's "unlawful" appointment, insisting a mere "error in the title" should not have led to dismissal of Letitia James' and James Comey's indictments in Virginia, reports Law and Crime.
Rather, Attorney General Henry Whitaker argued before the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that the three-judge panel should "respect" grand juries' decisions and revive fraud and false statement indictments against Trump's perceived enemies New York's attorney general James and the former FBI director Comey. Whitaker claimed Currie erroneously concluded in November that ex-U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi "unlawfully appointed" Trump's former personal attorney Halligan as interim U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia.
“But attorneys for Comey and James countered that Halligan was little more than a private citizen when she was the only prosecutor to sign the indictments and present to the grand jury. Notably, that is how U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon described ex-special counsel Jack Smith when she dismissed his Mar-a-Lago case against Trump on Appointments Clause grounds,” reported Law and Crime.
"Mr. Smith is a private citizen exercising the full power of a United States Attorney, and with very little oversight or supervision," Cannon said, tossing out the president's willful retention of classified documents and conspiracy case as a remedy.
Judges were quick to use that argument in the dismissal of James’ indictment.
"How would you then distinguish United States v. Trump when Judge Cannon found that Mr. Smith, whatever his name was, wasn't lawfully appointed? What happens in this case? How would you distinguish it if Ms. Halligan's not lawfully appointed?" asked Senior U.S. Circuit Judge Henry F. Floyd, a Barack Obama appointee. “… The point is that she says it wasn't a lawful appointment.”
Whitaker found himself flailing as he tried to discern between the two identical dismissals.
“She did, Your Honor, but Judge Cannon there was faced with the appointment of a special counsel to which different appointment authorities apply. For example, in this case, we could have appointed Ms. Halligan to conduct these prosecutions under 28 U.S.C. 542 and 543, which were appointment authorities that the United States did not invoke in defending the Jack Smith appointment," Whitaker said.
"To put it bluntly, would have, could have, should have. That didn't happen," Chief U.S. Circuit Judge Albert Diaz, also an Obama appointee, said, jumping in.
//
Politico
Trump admin argues Lindsey Halligan should return to US attorney post
1 day ago
The Daily Beast
Goon Grilled by Judges Over Trump's Beauty Queen Prosecutor
13 hours ago
Courthouse News
Trump tries to revive indictments against political foes at Fourth Circuit
1 day ago
Reuters
Judges question DOJ bid to revive cases against Trump foes Comey, James
1 day ago
Baltimore Sun
DOJ asks appeals court to reinstate indictments against Comey and James
8 hours ago
DK 9 26
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AN 9 26
The Justice Department is taking another crack at indicting former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James.
According to Bloomberg Law, the move will be an appeal of a prior decision that District Attorney Lindsey Halligan was not lawfully appointed to serve as DA because she wasn't confirmed by Congress. The Justice Department is seeking to restore the criminal cases against James and Comey.
According to the DOJ, even if Halligan’s appointment wasn't legal, it shouldn't erase the indictments. However, Comey and James argue that the cases were invalid from the start because an unlawfully appointed prosecutor brought them before grand juries.
On Tuesday, a three-judge panel at the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals will hear arguments on the matter again and decide whether a remedy is needed and what it would look like.
A panel of judges in the Eastern District unanimously approved her predecessor, Erik Siebert, to take over the office in the interim. He'd initially resigned ahead of Halligan indicring Comey and James.
"Lawyers arguing on behalf of the Justice Department, Comey, and James won’t know who they’re appearing before until the morning of argument," the report said. "The Fourth Circuit is one of the only federal appellate courts that doesn’t announce the three-judge panel in advance."
It explained it's a "crapshoot" as to who they could appear before. While it was once a conservative court, eight of the past 15 new judges were appointed by Democrats.
Lawyers should prepare for “questions about the plain language, the origins of the statute, the problem the statute was trying to solve, and the ramifications of ruling one way or another,” explained former Virginia Solicitor General Michelle Kallen.
“If I were prepping for oral argument, I’d be prepared to answer more questions about the exact circumstances that led Congress to give a role to the courts in connection with the appointment of US attorneys,” Kallen said.
Last November, the Eastern District of Virginia was in complete disarray after Halligan was told her appointment to the post was not lawful.
After the ruling in the Comey and James cases last year, two magistrate judges and a district court judge in Alexandria, Virginia, went so far as to rebuke prosecutors in open court about Halligan’s name on all recent criminal cases, explaining that it should not be there. The documents included a new criminal case filing, guilty plea papers and several indictments.
Magistrate Judge William Fitzpatrick told prosecutors it was “not acceptable” for charging papers to be filed under Halligan’s name, and both he and Judge Michael Nachmanoff said that, after the ruling, Halligan’s name should not appear on any cases.
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AN 1 26
Trump DOJ fires attorney who refused to prosecute James Comey - Alternet.org
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AN 10 25 WSJ GOT DM TO BONDI 2 BEEFY FBI AGENT TO PERP WALK COMEY , WENT PUBLIC SO HE SENT 2ND ONE PRAISING HER?
PURPOSE NOT TO CONVICT OR EVEN MAKE HIM SPEND 4, JUST TO HUMILIATE W PERP WALK?! ENOUGH TO SCARE OTHERS?
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Laura Ingraham says James Comey's Russia investigation “was a travesty and justice must be done”
Written by Media Matters Staff
Published 09/25/25
Video
Citation
From the September 25, 2025, edition of Fox News' The Ingraham Angle
LAURA INGRAHAM (HOST): We have to think about it this way, too, regardless of how this all turns out, the director of the FBI helped spearhead one of the most damaging episodes of American criminal justice that we have ever seen -- injustice, I should say. Taking it upon himself to try to unseat a sitting president of the United States with these bogus, B.S. cases that they tried to, you know, gin up in the public's mind, affect public opinion, and ultimately hobble this president. That's at the bottom of what all went on here. And there were a lot of people involved. But he was at the top of the food chain here. Barack Obama was the other, but he was at the top chain here. And I think justice must be done, lest no one have faith in the FBI anymore. If nothing comes of everything that we know happened, then what are we?
FITZGERALD: Well, I'm retired FBI and I certainly agree with that. I would be very much bothered if this wasn't taken to its logical conclusion.
I'm going to go back to 2017, the Women's March in January of that year. Right after Trump was inaugurated or right around that time. I'll never forget Mrs. Comey and two of her daughters were interviewed by chance, by CNN directly identifying themselves, who they were. They have every right to do that, First Amendment, all that. But you really think the wife and daughters of the FBI would stay away from making controversial statements about the upcoming Trump administration. But we knew that was just one adjacent part of what their husband/father was doing. It was also Crossfire Hurricane going on inside the FBI. And we all know where that went, winding up with him possibly committing perjury in front of Congress.
INGRAHAM: This was a long, winding set up of a duly elected president of the United States. And it was a travesty and justice must be done.
MMA//
09/26/25 12:02 PM EDT
09/26/25 10:50 AM EDT
09/25/2
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MMA
09/26/25 9:26 AM EDT
09/26/25 8:44 AM EDT
- ### Laura Ingraham says James Comey's Russia investigation “was a travesty and justice must be done”
09/25/25 7:41 PM EDT
09/25/25 7:25 PM EDT
09/25/25 7:16 PM EDT
AN 7 25 PROSECUTED HUMAN TRAFFIC AND EPSTEIN PAL gISANE
Firing of 'high-profile' prosecutor shows Trump 'is not thinking clearly': analysis
https://gregolear.substack.com/p/deconstructing-the-epstein-myth-what
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AN 725
On Wednesday morning, July 9, NBC News' Ken Dilanian confirmed that the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has "opened criminal investigations into the conduct of former CIA Director John Brennan and former FBI Director James Comey." Dilanian reported this development on X, formerly Twitter, and during a conversation with MSNBC's Ana Cabera.
Dilanian described Brennan and Comey as "two of Donald Trump's political foes who have long been the target of MAGA conspiracy theories."
"Exactly what is being investigated is unclear," Dilanian reported on X, "but a source briefed on the matter said CIA Director John Ratcliffe made a criminal referral to the Justice Department about Brennan. Ratcliffe last week released an internal CIA review that criticized Brennan’s handling of a 2017 intelligence assessment concluding that Russian President Vladimir Putin wanted to help Trump defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton."
READ MORE: Bloodthirsty Republicans need to stop their praying
Dilanian added, "The origin of the Comey probe is unclear. A special counsel appointed by Trump spent years investigating how the intelligence assessment on Russian election interference was put together, requiring many CIA officials to hire lawyers. That special counsel, John Durham, also used a grand jury to scrutinize the actions of Brennan, Comey and many who worked for them over how the FBI and CIA handled investigations into Russia’s effort to interfere in the 2016 election. But Durham did not charge the two former leaders or accuse them of wrongdoing."
Dilanian told Cabrera that Comey and Brennan were "exhaustively investigated" by Durham, nothing that Brennan is a "paid MSNBC contributor and has been for years."
Since returning to the White House, Trump has filled DOJ with MAGA loyalists — including U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, FBI Director Kash Patel, Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino and Deputy U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche.
Dilanian's reporting is drawing a lot of discussion on X.
READ MORE:Why Americans haven’t reached the Trump tipping point yet — and what it will take
Journalist Marcy Wheeler tweeted, "1) Clinesmith didn't lie on an application. He altered an email. 2) Why do we assume the Comey thing isn't about the 8647 tweet? Kash has been laying (false) foundation that Comey attracted look-alikes."
X user Kimberly Suth posted, "Being that Comey single-handedly handed Trump his first win, you'd think there'd be a commendation."
Another X user, CAC, commented, "The FBI and DOJ are accomplishing what was feared. A weaponized system to punish Trump's perceived enemies."
Trump critic Laura Karson wrote, "There's nothing there other than to make life for Brennan and Comey miserable!"
X user Kathi Domalski tweeted, "Trump’s fascism is expanding."
READ MORE:'What kind of dummies are you?' How one comedian is 'getting under' Trump press secretary’s 'skin'
*Watch the MSNBC video below or at this link.
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nbc?
:{:{July 9, 2025}:
By Ken Dilanian, Ryan J. Reilly and Dan De Luce
The Trump administration has put two repeated targets of President Donald Trump under criminal investigation, although details of what exactly they are being investigated for or how far the Justice Department intends on taking the probes are unclear.
The two targets are former CIA Director John Brennan and former FBI Director James Comey, whom Trump fired in his first term, according to a statement that a Justice Department spokesperson provided to reporters.
The statement followed a Fox News article on Tuesday evening reporting on the existence of the investigations. After referring to Comey and Brennan, the spokesperson said the Justice Department does "not comment on ongoing investigations.”
A lawyer for Comey had no comment. Brennan, who is a paid contributor to NBC News and MSNBC, said he has not been contacted by the Justice Department or the CIA about the reported investigation. The FBI declined to comment.
The Fox News article was published as both FBI Director Kash Patel and Attorney General Pam Bondi are facing significant blowback from conservative media and influencers over their handling of the Jeffrey Epstein investigation and material related to it. This week, the Justice Department and the FBI put out a memo restating what prior investigations had already found: that Epstein, a convicted sex offender and financier, killed himself in his jail cell in 2019 and that there was no incriminating evidence against uncharged third parties.
Patel, before joining the government, engaged with conspiracy theories about Epstein, while a statement from Bondi that an Epstein "client list" was sitting on her desk fueled more speculation on the right. Bondi later said she was speaking about documents related to Epstein, not an actual list.
U.S. newsVirginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin says his family was rescued in Texas floods
As for Brennan, a source briefed on the matter said CIA Director John Ratcliffe had made a criminal referral of Brennan to the Justice Department. Exactly what prompted the Comey investigation is unclear.
Ratcliffe last week released an internal CIA review that criticized Brennan’s handling of a 2017 intelligence assessment concluding that Russian President Vladimir Putin wanted to help Trump defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election.
Any conduct that took place during that campaign or even in most of Trump’s first term is now outside the typical five-year statute of limitations for federal crimes. The Fox News article mentions testimony that Brennan gave to the House Judiciary Committee in May 2023 about the so-called Steele Dossier that was an issue during the 2016 campaign. It cites no specific conduct from Comey during the past five years.
A special counsel appointed by then-Attorney General William Barr spent years investigating how the 2017 intelligence assessment was put together, requiring many CIA officials to hire lawyers. That special counsel, John Durham, also used a grand jury to scrutinize the actions of Brennan, Comey and many who worked for them over how the FBI and CIA handled investigations into Russia’s effort to interfere in the 2016 election. But Durham did not charge the two former leaders or accuse them of wrongdoing. His sole charge against a public official came against a low-level FBI lawyer who had lied on a warrant application.
The Trump administration has been taking action against people involved in investigations of the president and his supporters. The Justice Department has a "Weaponization Working Group" that is examining those investigations, and many who worked on them and were still in the department have been fired. And on his first day in office, Trump pardoned his supporters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
ED FUCKING MARTIN JARED WISE EX FBI
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James Comey's seashell post featured a photo of shells arranged to form the numbers "8647," which some interpreted as a coded message for violence against President Trump. Comey later clarified that he intended it as an innocent observation and deleted the post after it sparked controversy and an investigation by the Secret Service.
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abc hillary investigation
James Comey’s acknowledgement that he may have subconsciously expected Hillary Clinton to win the presidency when he disclosed days before the 2016 election the reopening of a probe of her emails shows that the then-FBI chief was driven by political motivation and self-interest, a White House spokesperson said.
“The guy knew exactly what he was doing,” White House spokesperson Sarah Sanders told ABC News Chief Anchor George Stephanopoulos on “This Week” on Sunday. “He thought that Hillary Clinton would win, and he thought that this would give him some cover. He made these decisions based on the political landscape and not the facts of the case,” White House spokesperson Sarah Sanders told ABC News Chief Anchor George Stephanopoulos on “This Week” on Sunday.
Sanders was responding to a video excerpt from Comey's exclusive interview with Stephanopoulos that will air tonight at 10 p.m. ET.
In the excerpt aired on "This Week," Stephanopoulos asks Comey whether his choice to reveal that he was reopening the investigation into Clinton’s emails days before the election may have been influenced by his belief that Clinton would become president.
Comey, then the FBI director, sent a letter to Congress announcing the reopening of the email probe on Oct. 28, 2016, 11 days before the Nov. 8 election.
White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders speaks during the daily briefing in the Brady Briefing Room of the White House, April 13, 2018 in Washington, D.C.
"At some level, wasn't the decision to reveal influenced by your assumption that Hillary Clinton was going to win and your concern that she wins this comes out several weeks later and then that's taken by her opponents as a sign that she's an illegitimate president?" Stephanopoulos asked Comey in the interview.
“I don’t remember consciously thinking about that, but it must have been because I was operating in a world where Hillary Clinton was going to beat Donald Trump, and so I’m sure that it was a factor,” Comey said. "I don’t remember spelling it out, but it had to have been, that she’s going to be elected president and if I hide this from the American people, she’ll be illegitimate the moment she’s elected, the moment this comes out."
Clinton has said she thinks Comey's announcement about the email probe so close to the election killed her chances of winning.
Sanders on "This Week" slammed Comey, saying he has been “inconsistent constantly.”
“He said that he opened the Hillary Clinton investigation on its merits," the White House press secretary said. "Now we're finding out certainly that it had something to do with the political landscape.”
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this is part of anti-mueller collusion obamagate bs
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/510818-trump-yates-either-lying-or-grossly-incompetent
no lnx vid
trump: Yates either lying or grossly incompetent
BY MORGAN GSTALTER - 08/06/20
President Trump on Thursday accused former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates of “either lying” or being “grossly incompetent” after her testimony Wednesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Justice Department investigations into election interference in 2016.
“It is not possible she could have known so little about Dirty Cop James Comey (and others) from her high position in the Department of 'Justice,'" the president tweeted early Thursday. “Thepolitical Crime of the Century, [// fox hanty tucker rhet on obamagate]and she had no idea what they were doing?”
Yates told the committee that the FBI, under the leadership of then-Director James Comey, in January 2017 interviewed incoming national security adviser Michael Flynn without her authorization or advanced knowledge.
"I was upset that Director Comey didn't coordinate that with us and acted unilaterally," Yates said.
"Did Comey go rogue?" Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, asked.
"You could use that term, yes," Yates responded.
Despite her criticism of Comey’s handling of the process, Yates defended the FBI’s need to interview Flynn due to his conversations with the then-Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak after the November 2016 election.
"Interviewing General Flynn was really right at the core of the FBI's investigation at this point to try to discern, what are the ties between the Trump administration and the Russians?" she said during her testimony.
Flynn was fired in 2017 for misleading Vice President Pence about those conversations. He had initially entered into an agreement in 2017 to cooperate with the Department of Justice and pleaded guilty, but he subsequently withdrew from the plea agreement and was fighting the charges.
The Justice Department decided earlier this year to drop the case against Flynn, a decision that sparked outrage among Democrats, who claimed Attorney General William Barr was politicizing the agency.
Yates, asked about the decision to drop those charges on Wednesday, said she thought it was “highly irregular.”
Prior to her testimony,Trump lashed out at Yates and tweeted that she has “zero credibility.”
“She was a part of the greatest political crime of the Century, and ObamaBiden knew EVERYTHING! Sally Yates leaked the General Flynn conversation? Ask her under oath. Republicans should start playing the Democrats game!” Trump tweeted.
Trump fired Yates in January 2017, while she was serving as acting attorney general, after she refused to defend his controversial travel ban
When asked if she doesn’t like Trump, Yates told senators, "I don't respect the manner in which he has carried out the presidency."
[Trump attacks Cuomo after his Democratic convention speech
Roger Stone drops appeal of felony convictions]
“You despise Donald Trump, don’t you?” Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) shot back.
“I don't despise anyone, senator,” Yates added.
The GOP is ramping up their Obama-era investigations and Graham is centering his efforts around the origins of of the FBI’s investigation into Russia's election interference and the Trump campaign as well as former special counsel Robert Mueller’s subsequent probe.
==
guk wolf bk
Russia
Bannon was Wolff’s main source on how the White House reacted to Trump’s firing of the FBI director James Comey – which he says was Ivanka and Kushner’s idea – and the appointment of the special counsel Robert Mueller.guk
Bannon strenuously denies any involvement with Russia-related events but does not spare the rod on others: the meeting at Trump Tower was “treasonous”, “unpatriotic” and “bad shit” and there is “zero” chance Trump did not know of the meeting involving his son Donald Jr, Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort. The president may have met the Russians himself, Bannon says.
He also suggests that Trump has never understood what trouble he is in over Russia and claims money-laundering charges, such as those denied by Trump’s onetime campaign chairman Manafort, are what will bring the Mueller investigation to its head, probably involving Deutsche Bank and the Kushner property empire.
Wolff quotes the former Fox News chief executive Roger Ailes telling Trump: “You’ve got to get right on Russia. You need to take this seriously, Donald.”
“Jared has this,” Trump replies. “It’s all worked out.”
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https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/irs-auditing-james-comey-andrew-mccabe-concerning-n1296936
The 'random' IRS audit of Trump's enemies leaves me deeply suspicious
IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig has some serious questions to answer.
00:08 /04:33
July 9, 2022,
By Frank Figliuzzi, MSNBC Opinion Columnist
A report from The New York Times revealed this week that both former FBI director James Comey and former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe found themselves on the receiving end of the rarest and most severe level of audit the Internal Revenue Service can conduct.
Former President Donald Trump fired both men from their positions toward the beginning of his term. And before Trump’s term was over, both were subjected to a process that tax lawyers refer to “only partly jokingly, as ‘an autopsy without the benefit of death,’” according to The New York Times. It’s been said that the only things certain in this world are death and taxes. But the odds that both Comey and McCabe would be subject to the IRS’ scrutiny at “random” as the IRS claims leave me deeply, deeply suspicious.
Comey was notified in 2019 that his 2017 tax returns were selected for the rare audit program. McCabe was advised in 2021 that his 2019 returns would be scrutinized under the same program. Now, the chances of being selected for this audit are miniscule. There were almost 153 million individual returns filed for 2017, and the IRS selected only 5,000 for this most comprehensive of audits — that’s about one return out of every 30,600. If that’s not “random” enough for you: McCabe’s attorney was audited, too.
The odds that both Comey and McCabe would be subject to the IRS’ scrutiny at “random” as the IRS claims leave me deeply, deeply suspicious.
Before dismissing this as pure coincidence, let’s consider the following facts: Comey was fired by Trump in 2017 after Comey refused to publicly refute the existence of an FBI investigation into Trump – Russia collusion in the 2016 presidential campaign. “The Department of Justice has authorized me to confirm” the existence of a broader investigation into potential collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign, Comey said during public congressional testimony. “We’re not going to say another word about it until we’re done.”
:{:{}:
McCabe was terminated in 2019, just 26 hours before hitting retirement and pension eligibility. The reason given was that he lacked candor while being investigated by the Department of Justice for allegedly inappropriate communication to a newspaper. McCabe later sued for wrongful termination and won in a settlement agreement. While the reason for the settlement isn’t public, clearly DOJ found it necessary to undo McCabe’s firing and reinstate his pension – with back pay – because something was amiss with either the opening of the case, how it was conducted, or how he was terminated.}:
Inspector general to investigate unusual audits of Trump enemies
July 7, 2022 07:41
McCabe served as acting FBI director when Comey was fired, and in that role continued to oversee the Trump – Russia campaign investigation. Trump publicly harassed McCabe, and McCabe wrote in his book that during a phone call with the president, he mocked McCabe’s wife who ran for state office as a Democrat in Virginia.
Finally, let us note that IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig was appointed by Trump to head the agency in 2018. He was thus the IRS’s leader when Comey and McCabe fell under the audit program. Rettig remains in that role today.
==
hannity 120
You know, the laundry list of people that now are experts, Comey [3 YR OLD LEAK INVEST RE-OPENED?!] , Brennan, McCabe, Clapper, all these people, and now they’re getting paid gigs on the same networks that got it wrong. It’s unbelievable. Great gig, I guess, if you can get it. Lying, propagandizing, I guess, pays for people. It pays pretty well. So what’s that? These are con artists now, you know they’re just liars, they’re just advancing a political agenda.
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nyt
NO LNX
Justice Dept. Investigating Years-Old Leaks and Appears Focused on Comey
An inquiry into years-old disclosures of classified information is highly unusual and leaves law enforcement officials open to accusations of politicizing their work.
James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director, has been a frequent target of President Trump.
By Adam Goldman
Jan. 16, 2020
WASHINGTON — Federal prosecutors in Washington are investigating a years-old leak of classified information about a Russian intelligence document, and they appear to be focusing on whether the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey illegally provided details to reporters, according to people familiar with the inquiry.
The case is the second time the Justice Department has investigated leaks potentially involving Mr. Comey, a frequent target of President Trump, who has repeatedly called him a “leaker.” Mr. Trump recently suggested without evidence that Mr. Comey should be prosecuted for “unlawful conduct” and spend years in prison.
The timing of the investigation could raise questions about whether it was motivated at least in part by politics. Prosecutors and F.B.I. agents typically investigate leaks of classified information around the time they appear in the news media, not years later. And the inquiry is the latest politically sensitive matter undertaken by the United States attorney’s office in Washington, which is also conducting aninvestigation of Mr. Comey’s former deputy, Andrew G. McCabe, that has been plagued by problems.
Law enforcement officials are scrutinizing at least two news articles about the F.B.I. and Mr. Comey, published in The New York Times and The Washington Post in 2017, that mentioned the Russian government document, according to the people familiar with the investigation. Hackers working for Dutch intelligence officials obtained the document and provided it to the F.B.I., and both its existence and the collection of it were highly classified secrets, the people said.
:{:{}:
}:
The document played a key role in Mr. Comey’s decision to sideline the Justice Department and announce in July 2016 that the F.B.I. would not recommend that Hillary Clinton face charges in her use of a private email server to conduct government business while secretary of state.
The investigation into the leaks began in recent months, the people said, but it is not clear whether prosecutors have impaneled a grand jury or how many witnesses they have interviewed. What prompted the inquiry is also unclear, but the Russian document was mentioned in a book published last fall, “Deep State: Trump, the F.B.I., and the Rule of Law” by James B. Stewart, a Times reporter.
A lawyer for Mr. Comey declined to comment, as did a spokeswoman for the United States attorney’s office in Washington.
Mr. Trump has repeatedly pressured the Justice Department to investigate his perceived enemies. In 2018, he told the White House counsel at the time, Donald F. McGahn II, to prosecute Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Comey. Mr. McGahn refused, telling the president that he did not have the authority to order investigations and that doing so could prompt abuse-of-power accusations. Mr. Trump had also discussed the appointment of a second special counsel to conduct the investigations he sought.
Previously, federal prosecutors in New York scrutinized Mr. Comey after his personal lawyer and friend, Daniel C. Richman, provided the contents of a memo about Mr. Comey’s interactions with Mr. Trump to a Times reporter at Mr. Comey’s request. That memo contained no classified information, officials later determined.
Though officials retroactively determined that other memos that Mr. Comey wrote contained classified information, prosecutors declined to charge Mr. Comey with illegally disclosing the material. The Justice Department’s inspector general, who had examined Mr. Comey’s conduct and referred his findings to prosecutors in New York, concluded that Mr. Comey violated F.B.I. policy.
The latest investigation involves material that Dutch intelligence operatives siphoned off Russian computers and provided to the United States government. The information included a Russian analysis of what appeared to be an email exchange during the 2016 presidential campaign between Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Democrat of Florida who was also the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee at the time, and Leonard Benardo, an official with the Open Society Foundations, a democracy-promoting organization whose founder, George Soros, has long been a target of the far right.
In the email, Ms. Wasserman Schultz suggested that then-Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch would make sure that Mrs. Clinton would not be prosecuted in the email case. Both Ms. Wasserman Schultz and Mr. Benardo have denied being in contact, suggesting the document was meant to be Russian disinformation.
That document was one of the key factors that drove Mr. Comey to hold a news conference in July 2016 announcing that investigators would recommend no charges against Mrs. Clinton. Typically, senior Justice Department officials would decide how to proceed in such a high-profile case, but Mr. Comey was concerned that if Ms. Lynch played a central role in deciding whether to charge Mrs. Clinton, Russia could leak the email.
Whether the document was fake remains an open question.But American officials at the time did not believe that Ms. Lynch would hinder the Clinton email investigation, and neither Ms. Wasserman Schultz nor Mr. Benardo had any inside information about it. Still, if the Russians had released the information after the inquiry was closed, it could have tainted the outcome, hurt public confidence in the Justice Department and sowed discord.
Prosecutors are also looking at whether Mr. Richman might have played a role in providing the information to reporters about the Russia document and how it figured into Mr. Comey’s rationale about the news conference, according to the people familiar with the investigation. Mr. Comey hired Mr. Richman at one point to consult for the F.B.I. about encryption and other complex legal issues, and investigators have expressed interest in how he operated.
Mr. Richman was quoted in the April 2017 article in The Times that revealed the document’s existence. A month later, The Post named Ms. Wasserman Schultz and Mr. Benardo as subjects of the document in a detailed article. A lawyer for Mr. Richman declined to comment.
Typically, prosecutors would decline to open investigations into older leaks of classified information because the passage of time makes such cases much harder to pursue as the memories of witnesses fade. Also, the initial leaks can generate more leaks as more officials feel comfortable discussing the information with journalists because it has become public.
Multiple news stories about the classified disclosures also make it harder to determine whether one person was speaking to reporters or several people, according to former law enforcement officials. And the larger the universe of government officials who have been briefed on classified information, the more difficult it is to find the leaker, former officials said. In this case, lawmakers were briefed on the Russian document in addition to executive branch officials.
In inquiries where investigators determine that a leak is coming from members of Congress or their staff, political sensitivities make those cases difficult to investigate. Most of the time, former officials said, such inquiries are dead on arrival.
Additionally, investigators could also decline to open an investigation into an older leak because it might further harm national security if the information once again made headlines, as in this inquiry.
“Leak cases are incredibly difficult to prosecute,” said Brian J. Fleming, a former lawyer with the Justice Department who worked on many such cases in his work on national security issues. “They are very challenging to present to a jury both as an evidentiary matter and in terms of presenting a compelling, coherent narrative. That is a big reason so few leak cases get charged and even fewer ever go to trial.”
Still, if a government agency is determined to hunt down the source of a leak, as the C.I.A. was in the case of Jeffrey A. Sterling, a former C.I.A. officer who was convicted of leaking details about an anti-Iran operation to a Times reporter, Justice Department officials generally will pursue the case aggressively.
Justice Department officials might also be interested in making an example of Mr. Comey, a development almost certain to please Mr. Trump. Like the Obama administration, the Trump Justice Department has regularly prosecuted officials who provided sensitive information to reporters.
Federal prosecutors in the District of Columbia have embraced politically fraught cases under the United States attorney,Jessie K. Liu, an ambitious prosecutor who has angled for bigger jobs in the Trump administration.
She aggressively pushed for the prosecution of Mr. McCabe on suspicion of lying to investigators about sensitive law enforcement information provided to a reporter. Mr. McCabe was accused of misleading investigators conducting an administrative review, not a criminal inquiry; typically, such cases are not referred for prosecution.
The relatively straightforward case against Mr. McCabe has dragged on for more than 20 months. Prosecutors have refused to tell Mr. McCabe’s lawyers whether they intend to bring charges.
Ms. Liu’s office also charged Gregory B. Craig, a onetime White House counsel in the Obama administration, after prosecutors in New York passed on the case. Mr. Craig was charged with lying to the F.B.I. about his work for the Ukrainian government, but a jury last year quickly acquitted him,handing Ms. Liu an embarrassing defeat.
Mr. Trump nominated Ms. Liu last month to be the Treasury Department’s under secretary for terrorism and financial crimes. He had previously tapped her to be the No. 3 spot in the Justice Department, but she withdrew from consideration after Senator Mike Lee, Republican of Utah, raised concerns about her conservative credentials.
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jon s salon an 7 22
A right-wing group in Missouri has launched a "woke heat map" documenting instances of "wokeness" in an attempt to fight back against "critical race theory" and alleged "grooming" in schools across the state.
The group, dubbed "Liberty Alliance," says it is "committed to fighting back against the Woke agenda that is permeating all across Missouri."
"The first step in fighting back is uncovering their crazy ideas – from Critical Race Theory to grooming toddlers with sexually explicit books," the organization states on its website. "That is why we have officially launched the Woke Heat Map – an interactive tool designed to expose the insane actions of the radical Left. This map will alert Missourians of craziness happening in their own communities."
"‘Liberty Alliance’ has launched a ‘Woke Interactive Map’ to warn MAGA about instances of woke behavior in a particular community. The site will alert people if either: 1. CRT, 2. Woke Extremism, or 3. ‘Action by a Crazy Leftist’ has taken place," Ron Filipkowski tweeted.
"This is the “Genderbread Person” & the latest example of the insanity that’s in Missouri schools," Eric Schmitt tweeted. "We launched The Students First Initiative to empower parents & bring transparency back to Missouri schools. This was submitted by a Fox C-6 parent We’ll keep exposing the extremism."
Another Twitter user added, "A reminder that on college campuses, anyone that doesn’t fall in line with the left are censored Where are you at @SLU_Official? These actions continued into the night and no one has been punished for vandalizing a peaceful #prolife @SLUSFL display #FreeSpeech [Students for Life]"
Liberty Alliance's map isn't the first of its kind. Over the years, numerous right-wing groups have created rankings, watchlists, and cluster maps to keep track of the left's alleged influence in healthcare and education as well as Corporate America.
Last October, Salon reported on a custom Google map created by trans activist Erin Reed that provides those seeking hormone replacement therapy with the names and locations of nearly 800 informed consent clinics throughout the country.By February of that year, Reed told Salon, her map was repurposed by anti-trans activist Alix Aharon as a resource for organizing protests against doctorswho provide gender-affirming care. That new map, called "The Gender Mapper," was quickly taken down over apparent copyright infringement. However, a new one has since appeared in its place, cataloging roughly 200 clinics in total.
On its website, The Gender Mapper accuses "Big Gender" of testing "experimental medication" on "confused and vulnerable children."
"GenderMapper volunteers work in secret, around the world to collate evidence and document what is occurring," the site adds. "Gendermapper volunteers are unsung [sic] heros- and data is our truth."
Right-wing groups have also sought to crack down on left-wing "indoctrination" on college campuses.
Notable among them isTurning Point USA, a conservative youth advocacy group, which runs a "Professor Watchlist" designed to keep right-wing students abreast of "college professors who discriminate against conservative students and advance leftist propaganda in the classroom."
"The project," its website says, "is comprised of published news stories detailing instances of bias, propaganda, or speech infringement on college campuses."
The site allows users to submit tips and search for professors by name or university. Some professors on the list include activist Angela Davis, linguist Noam Chomsky, author Ibram X. Kendi, and former FBI Director James Comey.As of 2016, there were roughly 200 academics on the list.
In the private sector, conservative are similarly hounding companies that engage in "woke" actions, arguing that Corporate America is prioritizing political correctness over profit.
Alliance Defending Freedom has its "Viewpoint Diversity Score," a 50-company index that "evaluates corporate policies, practices, and activities to determine whether companies respect their stakeholders' freedom of expression and freedom of religion or belief as a standard part of doing business." The list specifically breaks down each company's support of free speech in the market, the workplace, and the public square, analyzing everything from political giving to DE&I (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) policies.
On the index, companies like Facebook and Meta – which face baseless accusations of anti-conservative bias – have notably lower scores than most.None of the firms included on the list score higher than a 35 out of 100.
"The results of our inaugural Business Index reveal that there is much work to be done. Company scores ranged between 2% and 35%, with the average overall score an abysmal 12%," wrote Jeremy Tedesco, senior vice president of corporate engagement for ADF, in The Wall Street Journal. "The poor showing confirms that there is an alarming trend among major corporations to favor virtue-signaling even at the expense of fundamental American freedoms."
Corporations have no legal obligation to promote free speech, a constitutional right designed to protect Americans from governorship censorship and coercion.
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ww.nytimes.com › politics › leak-investigation-james-comey
Justice Dept. Investigating Years-Old Leaks and Appears ...
2 days ago - James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director, has been a frequent target ... leak of classified information about a Russian intelligence document, ...
thehill.com › policy › national-security › fbi › 478695-nyt-justice-inv...
NYT: Justice investigating alleged Comey leak of years-old ...
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www.nationalreview.com › news › department-of-justice-investigating...
DOJ Is Investigating Comey's Role in Leak of Classified ...
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www.foxnews.com › politics › james-comey-fbi-leak-investigation
James Comey focus of FBI leak investigation, report says | Fox ...
2 days ago - The Justice Department is investigating whether then-FBI Director James Comey illegally leaked secret information concerning a Russian ...
www.nbcnews.com › politics › justice-department › department-justic...
Inspector general says Comey violated policy by leaking ...
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www.reuters.com › article › us-trump-russia-comey › doj-declines-to-...
DOJ declines to prosecute Comey despite finding that he ...
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www.cnn.com › 2020/01/17 › politics › justice-department-investigation...
Belated investigation into Justice leak and James Comey ...
1 day ago - Washington (CNN) Justice Department prosecutors are investigating a media leak tied to the FBI's Hillary Clinton email probe, a person familiar ...
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bktv 9/8/19
https://www.c-span.org/video/?462768-1/american-carnage
JULY 18, 2019
American Carnage
Politico Magazine chief political correspondent Tim Alberta explored divisions in the Republican Party that led to the election of President Trump.
2016 debate newt losing by attacking other cands, so goes after media 2 nuke ["no" i don't want to address current scandal?], won NC primary when he was in single dig?
mcconn dangled scotus seat to hard rw and evang;
pence team sure beat until comey re-open hillary emails
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This one act by Giuliani and his friends in the FBI could have been responsible for Trump’s win
How Rudy Giuliani engineered the infamous "Comey letter" of October…
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NB trump and putin: tit for tat, [cohn, roy, roger: deny all, attack]throw out emabassy ppl, demand to interroget mcfaul, kusner security clear leads (belatedly to :
https://www.alternet.org/sarah-sanders-trump-exploring-mechanisms-remove-security-clearances-brennan-clapper-comey-mccabe-and
...White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Monday said Donald Trump's administration is consideringrevoking the security clearances for former CIA director John Brennan, former FBI Director James Comey, Former DNI James Clapper and former national security adviser Susan Rice.
Sanders accused the former officials of "monetizing" thier security clearances and using them to play poltiics.
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:{:{After Comey hearing, conservatives go dumpster diving}::{}:
What was truly bracing about the right-wing reaction to Comey's testimony was how much was just pure dumpster diving, vile stuff straight from high school. Conservatives across the board attacked Comey's sexuality and gender, with one conservative saying "men should not write like this." The bottom line is no how much they lie, how much they smear, however deep into the gutter they go, there is nothing they can do to contain this story. It's too big.
mma
}:
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Republican National Committee (RNC) pushed a false talking point that originated from the “alt-right”/fake news ecosystem to try to discredit former FBI Director James Comey’s June 8 testimony to the Senate intelligence committee.
During his testimony, Comey said that he believed President Donald Trump fired him due to the FBI’s Russia probe, saying, “I know I was fired because of something about the way I was conducting the Russia investigation was in some way putting pressure on him, in some way irritating him, and he decided to fire me because of that.” He discussed a number of other issues as well, including saying that Trump directed him to end an investigation into his former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, and that he wrote memos on his one-on-one interactions with the president because he feared Trump might lie about the exchanges.
Responding to the testimony, the RNC tweeted, “#BigLeagueTruth: Comey testified under oath that @POTUS never asked him or anyone else to end any investigation. #ComeyHearing.” The tweet included a video of Comey’s previous testimony before the Senate intelligence committee -- on May 3 -- in which Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-HI) asked him if “the attorney general or senior officials at the Department of Justice” tried to block an FBI investigation, to which Comey replied, “Not in my experience.”
Contrary to the RNC’s implication, Comey did not contradict himself. On May 3, he was talking specifically about the Department of Justice, not the president. The RNC’s false claim was pushed early on by “alt-right” trolls Jack Posobiec and Nick Short, and was then repeated by fake news purveyors and other “alt-right” outlets before more traditional right-wing media figures and outlets, such as Fox & Friends and Rush Limbaugh, picked it up. Since then, Republican politicians such as Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) have also repeated the false assertion. The false claim even impacted the stock market.
In a statement to Media Matters, Sen. Hirono criticized the RNC for taking “a far-right conspiracy theory as fact,” and noted that she “only asked former Director Comey about pressure from officials at the Department of Justice”:
“If you listen to the exchange, it’s clear that I only asked former Director Comey about pressure from officials at the Department of Justice, but the RNC chose to move forward and take a far-right conspiracy theory as fact. This sends a clear message that Republicans are willing to share fake news and dangerous narratives in their quest to deny Russian interference in our elections. Unfortunately, we’ve come to expect no less from the mouthpiece of an Administration that deals in alternative facts.”
The RNC’s incorrect claim is yet another example of how the “alt-right”/fake news ecosystem has been able to amplify its misinformation out of the fringe, pushing forged documents, baseless conspiracy theories, and smear campaigns into more of the mainstream.
https://www.democracynow.org/2017/5/10/glenn_greenwald_on_trumps_shocking_firing
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http://www.alternet.org/media/new-york-times-russian-hacking
fail?
Talk about strange bedfellows joining forces to produce an unlikely media alliance.
That’s what happened when The New York Times reported on October 31, 2016, that FBI officials had not been able to uncover any evidence that Russian operatives, through allegedly hacking Democratic emails, were trying to help elect Donald Trump.
“Investigating Donald Trump, F.B.I. Sees No Clear Link to Russia,” read the October 31 Times headline which relied on unnamed “law enforcement officials.”
Acting as an almost unofficial time-out, and one that came with the Times’ seal of approval, the article helped put the media brakes on the unfolding Russian hacking story; the same Russian hacking story that has now morphed into a full-scale Trump scandal.
The message on October 31 from the Times’ sources was unmistakable: There’s no conclusive connection between Trump and the Russians, and the Russians’ efforts were “aimed at disrupting the presidential election rather than electing Mr. Trump.” (Question: How do you not pick sides in a two-person election if you only undermine one of the candidates, the way Russian hackers only undermined the Democrat?)
The Times piece set off audible cheers within the conservative media, which usually holds the Times in contempt for its supposed “liberal media bias.”
In fact, pointing to the newspaper’s alleged Democratic leanings, conservative claimed that if even the liberal New York Times determined there was no Trump-Russia story, then it definitely must be true.
“And as far as liberals are concerned, the Democrats are concerned, when the New York Times clears you, you are cleared,” Rush Limbaugh told his listeners on November 1. “The New York Times carries as much weight as the FBI, and if the New York Times says there’s nothing to see between Trump and Russia and Putin, then there’s nothing to see.”
All across the conservative media landscape, the Times report was held up as putting the Trump-Russia story to bed.
However, to suggest the Times’ influential October 31 report “hasn’t aged well,” as MSNBC’s Chris Hayes recently put it, may be an understatement, as the unfolding hacking scandal continues to gain momentum and more evidence tumbles out regarding claims that Russians were trying to help Trump. (Hayes also correctly recalled that "At the same time the FBI was leaking like a sieve about Clinton, people around it went out of their way to dampen the Putin talk.")
The problems with the Times article are many. First off, Sen. Harry Reid’s spokesman claimed that Reid had been interviewed for the Times’ article, pushed back against its timid premise about there being no connection, and that Reid’s comments were omitted from the story.
More recently, we’ve seen all kinds of information revealed that contradicts the Times’ often-quoted October 31 report. For instance, FBI Director James Comey testified in December that Russia had “hacked into Republican state political campaigns and old email domains of the Republican National Committee,” but did not release information from those hacks. As Reuters pointed out, that allegation “may buttress the U.S. intelligence view that Moscow tried to help Trump against Democrat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 campaign.”
More recently, the BBC reported that “a joint taskforce, which includes the CIA and the FBI, has been investigating allegations that the Russians may have sent money to Mr Trump's organisation or his election campaign.” Also last week, the Guardian reported that FBI investigators were so concerned with a possible Trump-Russia connection that they asked for a foreign intelligence surveillance (Fisa) warrant to monitor Trump aides during the campaign. (The warrant request was reportedly denied.)
Meanwhile, Britain’s The Independentreported that the former intelligence officer who wrote the recently revealed Trump dossier was frustrated that the FBI had “for months” ignored the information he passed along to the bureau about a possible Trump-Russian connection.
Note that just four weeks after the election, the Times itself reported, “Both intelligence and law enforcement officials agree that there is a mountain of circumstantial evidence suggesting that the Russian hacking was primarily aimed at helping Mr. Trump and damaging his opponent.” (Emphasis added.)
And from NPR: “FBI, CIA Agree That Russia Was Trying To Help Trump Win The Election.”
Here’s the larger context for the Times report and why it was seen as such a game-changer at the time.
On October 31, the FBI was dealing with two breaking news stories that were spinning out of its control and reflecting poorly on Comey.
The bureau was under withering criticism from legal experts, journalists, Democrats, and even some Republicans after Comey inserted insert himself into the final days of the campaign by informing Congress that the FBI was reigniting its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of private email while secretary of state. That last weekend in October the bureau was also battling damaging news stories that suggested its leadership had been slow to respond to the Russian hacking controversy as it pertained to Donald Trump.
Comey’s letter to Congress about the emails was dispatched October 28. In the days that followed, a steady stream of revelations undercut his actions. On October 30, CNN reported that the FBI had known about the new emails for “weeks” before Comey decided to go public with the information just days before the election.
The following day, news outlets reported that Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) had sent Comey a blistering letter , insisting the FBI director was sitting on “‘explosive’ information about close ties and coordination between Donald Trump, his top advisers, and the Russian government.”
That same day, Mother Jones, foreshadowing the news last week about a dossier collected on Trump, reported that, “a former senior intelligence officer for a Western country” had provided to the FBI with “memos, based on his recent interactions with Russian sources, contending the Russian government has for years tried to co-opt and assist Trump—and that the FBI requested more information from him.”
And that same day, CNBC reported, “FBI Director James Comey argued privately that it was too close to Election Day for the United States government to name Russia as meddling in the U.S. election.”
The contrast was startling: Comey had publicly reinvigorated the Clinton email investigation based on emails the FBI hadn’t even read (the emails turned out to be irrelevant), yet at the same time Comey allegedly sat on new information regarding claims that Trump had ongoing ties with Russia because Comey thought the optics would look bad.
Given all this, the FBI needed a way to stop the public relations bleeding. And late in the day on October 31, the Times provided the respite.
Specifically, the article helped push back on reports Comey didn’t want to go public with any Russian information close to Election Day.
“The reason Comey didn’t announce the existence of this investigation wasn’t because it was it was ‘explosive’ and could impact the election,” announced the conservative site, Hot Air, pointing to the Times article. “It was because the FBI had already figured out it was a dud.”
In other words, FBI PR problem solved. The problems with the Times report, however, were just beginning.
Eric Boehlert is a senior fellow at Media Matters for America and the author of Lapdogs: How The Press Rolled Over for Bush.
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