Comeyfail
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8/12 comeybak notes fail
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an 8 26
The FBI just botched DOJ’s entire case against James Comey: legal expert
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Secret Service acknowledged 'legally bad decision to surveil Comey: court docs
capt
comey726
notes fail 7 29 26 also bak
Export Notes
comey, james fbi
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?
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.
SOME MISSING SEE WEB4
DOJ GETS --- THE BULL MOBSTER TO SAY THAT 86 MEANS KILL 7 29 26 MSNBC
AN 7 26 NEW
Trump has been making specific demands of those involved in the James Comey sea shell case, court exhibits show.
According to exhibits in a recent court filing published by CNN, Trump asked a Secret Service agent who interviewed Comey to give him his notes so he could use them for a press conference he was having later that day.
According to CNN, "one agent messaged that Comey’s post and investigation 'is a hot topic' on Air Force One and noted that Trump 'is very interested.'"
The exhibits were revealed as part of discovery in the case against Comey, who has argued that the prosecution should be dismissed as vindictive. Comey is accused of making threats against the president when he posted a photo that spelled out "86-47" in shells on a beach in North Carolina. The full document includes a series of emails between agents. Comey later deleted the photo and said that in his and his wife's experience in the restaurant industry "86" meant to clear a table or cancel an order. Not to murder someone.
The filing also included every statement from Trump about Comey between May 2017 and the fall of 2025.
In *The New York Times* reporting of the exhibit, it described the details as "one of the most glaring examples to date of the degree to which Mr. Trump now directs federal law enforcement actions. The records suggest his intense personal involvement in investigating his longtime nemesis and a sharp break from past practice in which the president remained removed from criminal inquiries."
Comey was reportedly interviewed by phone by Secret Service agents and he committed to stopping by the office on his way back from North Carolina for another interview.
A previous report revealed that the special agent in charge of the matter at Secret Service asked agents if it was possible for law enforcement to track Comey’s phone, one email said. At the time, an agent said it was a "bad idea" because they'd need to “declare an exigency exemption” in court.
“We needed to believe that there is an imminent threat to life or limb,” the agent’s email said. “At that time we did not believe that anyone’s life was in immediate danger and legally it was a bad idea to ping the phone.”
The case against Comey argues that there was an "imminent threat" to the president from Comey, who was on vacation at the time.
The special agent in charge responded that he understood that tracking the phone was “legally questionable” but claimed, “we might anyway."
The full motion to dismiss was filed on Tuesday.
Trump reportedly wanted a "perp walk" in the James Comey indictment, CBS News reported in October.
"The source told CBS News that leadership asked for 'large, beefy' agents to conduct an arrest of Comey 'in full kit,' including Kevlar vests and exterior wear emblazoned with the FBI logo. It was suggested that a supervisory special agent in the violent crimes division of the FBI's Washington Field Office would be able to put together the kinds of agents who fit the bill," the source told CBS.
AN 5 26
ANALYSIS LING
Trump admin indictment of Comey falls apart under linguistic analysis - Alternet.org
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AN 5 26
The Donald Trump-era U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), under former U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi and now, Acting AG Todd Blanche, hasn't been shy about targeting the president's adversaries for criminal investigations — from New York State Attorney General Letitia James to outgoing U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell. And former FBI Director James Comey is now facing a grand jury indictment — a prosecution that, Bloomberg News argues in a May 14 editorial, "marks a new low" for the Trump-era DOJ.
"Comey's purported crime came a year ago, when he posted a photograph on social media of seashells arranged as '86 47,' and writing, 'Cool shell formation on my beach walk,'" the Bloomberg editorial board explains. "The Justice Department alleges that the photo constituted 'a threat to take the life of, and to inflict bodily harm upon, the President of the United States.' According to the president, eighty-six is 'a mob term for 'kill him.' Trouble is, most Americans use the slang term in the same way that Merriam-Webster defines it: to eject or ban a customer (i.e., 'eighty-six them'), or 'to reject, discontinue, or get rid of (something).'"
The editorial continues, "As Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche acknowledged, the phrase 86 47 'is used constantly' by Americans who aren't indicted for it. Comey's post may have been in poor taste, but to state the obvious, it doesn't equate to a murder hit."
Bloomberg's editorial writers stress that the Comey indictment fits into a "troubling pattern" of "dubious" and politically motivated Trump DOJ investigations of everyone from former CIA Director John O. Brennan to Sen. Adam Schiff (D-California).
"The message the administration is sending — crossing the president risks criminal charges, while playing ball can get you out of trouble — is a destructive one," the Bloomberg board warns. And it may yet get worse. ... Some of the president's loyalists contend that he's merely treating his enemies the way they treated him. Not so."
The writers add, "It's fair to debate whether several local and state cases brought against him were tainted by politics, but the blatancy and scope of the political retribution now being pursued by the federal government has little precedent in American history."
AN 5 26
During President Donald Trump’s first term, he bemoaned the failure of his first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, to protect him from the Justice Department’s investigation of Russia’s efforts to elect Trump in 2016.
“Where’s my Roy Cohn?” Trump erupted, referring to his notorious former fixer who had also been Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s hatchet man during the 1950s Senate hearings into communist activity. Trump later fired Sessions.
For a time, Attorney General William Barr was the answer. But the two men parted ways after Barr told him repeatedly that no evidence supported Trump’s obsessive claims that voter fraud had cost him the 2020 election.
In Trump’s second term, it appeared that Pam Bondi fit the bill. She tried valiantly to meet Trump’s every legal need. She transformed the Justice Department into Trump’s personal tool, prosecuted Trump’s perceived enemies, and tried to protect Trump from the fallout over the scandal involving Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged sex trafficking of minors.
Bondi’s Deputy, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, is now auditioning to remove the “Acting” from his title. He hopes to succeed where his predecessors have failed—to become Trump’s enduring Roy Cohn.
But she bungled the Epstein files. She tried but failed to prosecute two key targets on Trump’s vengeance list: New York Attorney General Letitia James and former FBI Director James Comey. She savaged her own reputation but could not save her job.
Bondi’s deputy, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, is now auditioning to remove the “Acting” from his title. He hopes to succeed where his predecessors have failed—to become Trump’s enduring Roy Cohn.
From Democrat to Trump Enabler
Blanche began his legal career in 1999 as a paralegal in the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York. Working days and attending Brooklyn Law School at night, he graduated in 2003. After a stint as an associate in the Davis Polk firm and two federal court clerkships, he returned in 2006 to the US Attorney’s Office as a prosecutor and eventually became co-chief of the violent crimes division.
In 2014, Blanche joined the WilmerHale firm as a partner before moving to another big New York firm, Cadwalader, Wickersham, & Taft. In 2019, he represented Paul Manafort on state mortgage fraud charges similar to federal crimes for which Manafort had already been convicted in 2018. (Trump pardoned Manafort in December 2020). Blanche got the state law claims dismissed on double jeopardy grounds.
But in April 2023, Cadwalader balked when Blanche, then a registered Democrat, sought to represent Trump in the hush-money case involving payments to Stormy Daniels. So Blanche left Cadwalader and started his own firm. The jury eventually convicted Trump, but for Blanche it began a profitable relationship that generated over $3 million from Trump’s Save America PAC in the new firm’s first year alone.
Blanche went on to represent Trump in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case and in the election obstruction case involving Trump’s efforts to overthrow the 2020 election. In 2024, Blanche switched his registration from Democrat to Republican.
Trump’s Latest Roy Cohn
Blanche is no longer Trump’s personal attorney, but you wouldn’t know it from his conduct in office.
Although he was the No. 2 official in the Justice Department, in July 2025 he tried to quiet the MAGA backlash over Trump’s breach of an election pledge to release the Justice Department’s Epstein files. Blanche went to Florida where Epstein’s co-conspirator Ghislane Maxwell was in prison and interviewed her personally. Openly seeking a pardon, Maxwell said that she had never seen Trump do anything inappropriate.
Mission accomplished.
Shortly thereafter, Maxwell was transferred to a “club fed-type” prison camp—even though her conviction had rendered her ineligible for such placement under Bureau of Prisons policy. Blanche said that threats against her were the reason for the transfer.
As acting attorney general, Blanche has now picked up where Bondi had failed to put Comey behind bars. At an April 28, 2026 press conference, he announced Comey’s indictment alleging that in posting an Instagram photo of sea shells that formed “86 47” on a North Carolina beach, Comey “knowingly and willfully made a threat to take the life of, and to inflict bodily harm upon, the President of the United States.”
A sea-shell death threat via Instagram.
“So, I think it’s fair to say that threatening the life of anybody is dangerous and potentially a crime,” Blanche said indignantly as he explained that the charges against Comey came with a 10-year potential prison sentence. “Threatening the life of the President of the United States will never be tolerated by the Department of Justice.”
Blanche continued, “[W]hile this case is unique and this indictment stands out because of the name of the defendant, his alleged conduct is the same kind of conduct that we will never tolerate and that we will always investigate and regularly prosecute.”
Really? How about these?
“Hang Mike Pence”—Trump pardoned more than 1,500 January 6 insurrectionists, some of whom may have been responsible for the sign carrying that message and the gallows accompanying it. The statute of limitations on such “threats” is five years. Where was that indictment?
“86 46”—Anti-Biden Trump social media personality Jack Posobiec posted this in January 2022. It also appeared on T-Shirts, caps, and Republican fundraising messages.
Former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) posted this in February 2024: “We’ve now 86’d: McCarthy, McDaniel, McConnell. Better days are ahead for the Republican Party.”
Wasting Taxpayer Money
Prosecutors face a daunting task proving Comey’s subjective intent to harm Trump. Even longtime Trump apologist Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University, acknowledged that the indictment “is unlikely to survive constitutional scrutiny. If it did, it would allow the government to criminalize a huge swath of political speech in the United States.”
When asked at his press conference how he would prove intent, Blanche said “with witnesses, with documents, and with the defendant himself,” adding: “It’s very premature for me to do that today.”
That non-answer won’t suffice when Comey’s lawyers provide evidence that this is just another vindictive prosecution on Trump’s behalf at taxpayer expense.
Someday Blanche’s progeny may ask him why—as the chief law enforcement officer in the United States—he helped a rogue president run roughshod over the rule of law.
He probably won’t tell them about Roy Cohn.
AN 5 26
Legal experts detail how Todd Blanche lost the James Comey case in one interview - Alternet.org
AN 4 26
The DOJ's second indictment of James Comey is "flimsy, at best," according to a former U.S. attorney writing for MS NOW, but even if it is no real threat to the man himself, there is one threat it does pose.
On Tuesday, the DOJ confirmed that it had acquired a grand jury indictment against the former FBI director, charging him in relation to a photo he shared on social media last year featuring seashells arranged to spell out, "86 47," on a beach. The indictment argued that this was an active threat to do harm to or outright kill President Donald Trump, while Comey explained that it was merely in reference to removing him from office. He also never claimed to have arranged the shells himself, only to have found them during a morning walk.
This is the DOJ's second attempt to criminally indict Comey, as part of the ongoing campaign to weaponize the federal justice system against Trump's perceived enemies. The original indictment pertained to shaky allegations that he gave false statements to Congress in 2020, and was ultimately dismissed after a judge ruled that the prosecutor on the case, Lindsey Halligan, had been appointed illegally.
Barbara McQuade, a legal analyst for MS NOW and former U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, wrote in a Wednesday piece that this new indictment, filed in North Carolina, is "suspect for several reasons."
"First, Trump has already publicly demanded criminal charges against Comey for perceived grievances," McQuade explained. "Trump apparently still harbors a grudge over Comey’s refusal to pledge his loyalty to him in 2017, when Comey declined to halt the investigation into Russia’s efforts to influence the 2016 presidential elections."
She continued: "The timing is also suspect. The conduct described in this new indictment occurred almost a year ago. If this were a serious crime, the Justice Department would not have waited so long to indict. Only after the false statements charges fell apart did the DOJ treat this incident as a crime. Calling it a crime is generous. The legal theory behind this indictment is flimsy, at best."
McQuade further explained that a statement needs to be deemed a "true threat" in order to overcome the burden of free speech laws, "defined as a serious expression conveying that a speaker means to commit an act of unlawful violence." Comey's post, by comparison, was vague, open to "various interpretations" and immediately explained by the former FBI director himself. With all of those mitigating circumstances, she concluded that it is unlikely that a real jury would ever rule beyond a reasonable doubt that it was a "true threat."
Given that the case is almost certain to be dismissed before getting to trial, McQuade explained the only real threats that it poses.
"Even if the Justice Department cannot convict Comey, prosecutors can make his life miserable for several months by forcing him to pay for a lawyer, occupy his time and attention, emotionally exhaust his family and disparage his reputation," McQuade explained. "Ultimately, the only true threat here is to the legitimacy of the Department of Justice."
RWW
04/28/2026
by
Kyle Mantyla
Collin Binkley @ The Associated Press: Southern Poverty Law Center says its informant program was not kept secret from law enforcement
The Southern Poverty Law Center told a federal court on Tuesday that law enforcement agencies have long known that the nonprofit paid informants to report on the movements of hate groups, rejecting assertions by the Trump administration that the nonprofit steered money to the Ku Klux Klan and other extremist groups without the knowledge of authorities.
Kali Holloway @ The Nation: The DOJ’s Bogus Allegations Against the SPLC Are a Dog Whistle to White Nationalists
The case against the anti-hate organization will reassure racists that an organization that successfully tracks, exposes, and bankrupts them is now in the government’s crosshairs.
Steve Benen @ The Maddow Blog: Comey’s second indictment shows the lengths Blanche will go to please Trump
The latest indictment of the former FBI director is ridiculous, but it’s part of an unsubtle pattern from the acting attorney general.
Benjamin Parker @ The Bulwark: State Dept. Finalizing Plan to Put Trump Picture on U.S. Passports
The new design would mark yet another U.S. government property upon which the president has plastered his likeness.
Tom Durante @ Mediaite: FCC Reviewing Disney’s Broadcast License Amid Jimmy Kimmel-Trump Feud
The FCC is reportedly prepping a review of Disney’s broadcast licenses, a day after late-night comic Jimmy Kimmel refused to apologize for a remark that First Lady Melania Trump had the “glow of an expectant widow,” a crack that has reignited a feud with President Donald Trump.
Anna Bower and Molly Roberts @ Lawfare: The Grand Conspiracy’s New Prosecutor May Be the Case’s Biggest Liability
Former Trump lawyer Joseph diGenova is one of the most vocal proponents of a conspiracy theory that he is now in charge of investigating.
Gregg Nunziata @ The Atlantic: The Age of American Caesarism
The legal right spent decades empowering the presidency. Now it must reckon with the system it helped create.
William Vaillancourt @ The Daily Beast: Pentagon Pete Goes Full Make-a-Wish for Washed Up MAGA Star
Kid Rock previously marveled at an Army helicopter flyby over his Nashville home.
Isabella Corrao, Jane Lee and Helena Hind @ Media Matters: “Nothing short of treasonous”: Right-wing media ramp up attacks on Democratic officials, mainstream news, and Iran war critics as “traitors”
Fox host Will Cain: “As we’re in a high-stakes moment overseas, some Democrats sound like they’re not on team America."
AN 4 26
On Tuesday, it was announced that former FBI director James Comey has been indicted by the Justice Department for a second time. The charges have yet to be revealed officially, but are reportedly tied to a 2025 social media post in which Comey shared a picture of seashells spelling out the numbers “86 47.”
According to those in the orbit of President Donald Trump, these shells were an intentional threat to kill the Commander in Chief, under the logic that “86” can mean to ban, remove, or kill someone, while Trump is the 47th president. But as CNN reporter Aaron Blake points out, a couple of key problems will make it impossibly difficult for the DOJ to prove its case.
“The main problem with indicting Comey over ‘86 47,’” notes Blake, “is that it's not self-evidently a threat. ‘86’ has plenty of non-threatening meanings. During Biden years, it was used to mean impeachment. The second problem is that recent Supreme Court precedent means prosecutors need to show Comey had ‘some subjective understanding of the threatening nature of his statements.’ When informed of the potential threatening meaning, Comey said he didn't know that and deleted it.”
“Cool shell formation on my beach walk,” Comey wrote in the original post, and as Blake points out, the former FBI director then immediately removed it after learning of its possible significance. Comey said that he came across the shells already in place and did not arrange them himself.
Even so, Trump and his allies weren’t buying it. “Just James Comey casually calling for my dad to be murdered,” Donald Trump Jr., the president’s son, posted afterwards. And the president himself asserted that Comey “knew exactly what that meant. A child knows what that meant. If you’re the FBI director and you don’t know what that meant, that meant assassination.”
But according to Mary Anne Franks, a professor at the George Washington Law School and expert on free speech, “The claim that this is a threat is laughable under any standard.” In fact, courts have held for decades that “‘crude political hyperbole’ about the president does not constitute a true threat.”
Comey has long been the target of the president, ever since his involvement in the investigation into Russia’s attempts to meddle with the 2016 election on Trump’s behalf. During his first term, Trump fired Comey, went on to publicly push for his prosecution, then in 2025, finally pressed the DOJ to indict him under allegations of lying to Congress. This indictment was ultimately thrown out by a judge.
“I know that Donald Trump will probably come after me again,” Comey said at the time. “My attitude is going to be the same: I’m innocent. I am not afraid. And I believe in an independent federal judiciary.”
Now, once again facing that judiciary, experts say Comey has little to worry about.
“We have not seen the indictment, of course,” says Blake. “Maybe there is some silver bullet piece of evidence here. But we've certainly seen the DOJ chase indictments of Trump's foes based on very little.”
AN 4 26
DOJ indictments are converging with MAGA media narratives
Written by Matt Gertz
Published 04/30/26
Recent Justice Department indictments whose validity have been questioned by legal experts demonstrate an increasing alignment of the Trump DOJ’s activities with the narratives of the MAGA media echo chamber.
President Donald Trump has long sought to use federal law enforcement to punish his enemies, and under former Attorney General Pam Bondi, the DOJ and FBI launched scattershot and apparently pretextual probes targeting figures like Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, New York Attorney General Letitia James, and Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff over behavior unrelated to the president’s gripes.
But since Trump’s former personal lawyer Todd Blanche became acting attorney general last month, the president’s federal retaliation machine has seemed to sync up more closely with long-running talking points of his propaganda arm rather than simply focusing on the same targets.
Federal charges were filed or unsealed in recent days against the Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights group; former National Institutes of Health official Dr. David Morens; and former FBI Director James Comey. Legal experts have said that each of these cases are either weak or concern behavior common among Trump administration officials.
Each set of charges, however, has buttressed MAGA arguments, and provided their proponents with fresh opportunities to leverage them for content. And they foreshadow the potential fruits of DOJ’s ongoing “Grand Conspiracy” investigation, which unifies a string of conspiracy theories promoted by Fox News hosts like Sean Hannity under the auspices of Joe diGenova, a Republican lawyer and longtime fixture in right-wing media.
James Comey
Citation
Fox News
The target. Comey served as director of the FBI from 2013 until May 2017, when Trump fired him over his handling of the federal probe of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, which the president describes as a “hoax”; he subsequently became a key figure in the right’s “deep state” conspiracy theories. The DOJ indicted Comey last year over congressional testimony he gave in 2020, but a judge dismissed the case, ruling that the appointment of the prosecutor who filed the indictment (and replaced a U.S. attorney who had questioned the case) had been unconstitutional.
The charges. Federal prosecutors on April 28 charged Comey with one count of “Threatening the President” and one count of “Transmitting a Threat in Interstate Commerce” related to a now-deleted May 2025 Instagram post in which Comey posted a photo of shells arranged on a beach to spell out “86 47” and commented, “Cool shell formation on my beach walk.” In the press release announcing the charges, Blanche said, “The temperature needs to be turned down, and anyone who dials it up and threatens the life of the President will be held accountable,” while FBI Director Kash Patel added, “James Comey disgracefully encouraged a threat on President Trump’s life and posted it on Instagram for the world to see.”
The underlying right-wing media narrative. MAGA pundits have argued that recent examples of political violence targeting the right are the result of overheated commentary from Democrats and the media, often erasing incidents of right-wing political violence and ignoring violent rhetoric from the likes of Trump in the process. Numerous Fox News personalities suggested last May that Comey face an investigation or charges over his post, with Jesse Watters calling for it as “retribution.” And the indictment came days after a gunman allegedly targeting the president was stopped trying to breach the perimeter at the April 25 White House Correspondents Association’s annual dinner, which Trump, the White House, and media allies subsequently blamed on criticism from Democrats and journalists. VID]
The response from legal experts.“Supreme Court precedent has placed a high bar for convictions in threat cases like these, and former prosecutors and First Amendment scholars alike were highly skeptical the new prosecution would be successful,” CNN reported. Even some lawyers who are Fox News contributors aren’t buying DOJ’s argument — George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley said on Fox that Comey’s Instagram post would “very likely be viewed as protected speech if it was the basis of a criminal indictment” and “have a hard-time standing up in court,” while Andrew McCarthy wrote at National Review that the “bogus” indictment is a “farce,” called Comey’s conviction “inconceivable,” and added: “Of course, when the Justice Department abuses power this way, as it has repeatedly, it shreds its credibility with the courts and undermines the integrity of all its work.”
The response from the MAGA right. While the indictment drew skepticism on Fox’s daytime coverage, the network’s evening programs championed it on Tuesday night. MAGA lawyer Mike Davis said on The Ingraham Angle that the charges were “a long time coming,” offered “cheers” to Blanche and Patel, called Comey’s post “a clear threat,” and claimed, “There have been people who have gone to prison for a lot less than this.” Hannity, meanwhile, mocked the idea that “86 47” could mean anything but “get rid of Trump,” and hosted Fox legal analyst Gregg Jarrett to claim that Comey “surely knew what the phrase meant” and that “if he tries to claim free speech as a defense, that's not going to work.”
Dr. David Morens
Citation
Fox News
The target. Morens is an expert in public health and infectious diseases who served from 2006 to 2022 as senior adviser to Dr. Anthony Fauci, then the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
The charges. The Justice Department announced on April 28 that Morens had been charged with “conspiracy against the United States; destruction, alteration, or falsification of records in federal investigations; concealment, removal, or mutilation of records; and aiding and abetting,” specifically by using his personal Gmail account to conduct what prosecutors allege was government business in order to avoid public disclosure. Blanche alleged in the press release that Morens “deliberately concealed information and falsified records in an effort to suppress alternative theories regarding the origins of COVID-19,” while Patel claimed that “circumventing records protocols with the intention of avoiding transparency is something that will not be tolerated by this FBI.”
The underlying right-wing media narrative. The right-wing media echo chamber responded to the COVID-19 pandemic in part by turning Fauci into a hate object. Its participants also claimed that the coronavirus originated through a lab leak from a Chinese virology facility and its development may even have been funded by American tax dollars, rather than the prevailing view that the virus initially spread among wild animals before jumping to humans at a market in Wuhan, China. Morens and his email practices came under scrutiny from congressional Republicans and right-wing media in 2023 and 2024. While the Justice Department suggests Morens was acting to suppress the lab leak theory, The New York Times reports that the DOJ’s investigation “has so far yielded no evidence that scientists or health officials were involved in research that started or spread the coronavirus outbreak” and his emails in the indictment “do not show him trying to conceal evidence of a lab leak.”
The response from legal experts.Scott Amey, general counsel at the nonpartisan Project on Government Oversight, told The New York Times that “the allegations are quite concerning,” but also “noted that senior members of the Trump administration have themselves been accused of trying to evade federal record-keeping laws.” Indeed, The Washington Post reported last year that top Trump administration national security officials were communicating over their private Gmail accounts, and in March 2025, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared operational details of an impending U.S. military strike over an unsecured Signal chat with Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, other Trump administration officials, and Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg, who had been accidentally added to the chain.
The response from the MAGA right. The New York Post reported on — and effectively generated — “pressure on DOJ to prosecute Anthony Fauci” in light of Morens’ indictment. Its Thursday article claimed that “critics say Fauci … bears the most responsibility and that he should be hauled into court,” citing the head of a right-wing think tank, Republican Sen. Rand Paul, and a former DOJ official who is now national political reporter at the right-wing media outlet Real America’s Voice.
The Southern Poverty Law Center
Citation
Fox News
The target.The SPLC is a nonprofit civil rights organization best known for its monitoring, researching, and reporting on white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and others it describes as “hate and antigovernment extremist groups” that “make up some of the most extreme elements of the hard right.”
The charges. The Justice Department revealed April 21 that a grand jury had returned an indictment charging the SPLC with “11 counts of wire fraud, false statements to a federally insured bank, and conspiracy to commit concealment money laundering.” DOJ alleges that by using paid informants to infiltrate hate groups, the SPLC “secretly funneled more than $3 million in donated funds to individuals who were associated with various violent extremist groups” from 2014 to 2023, including to one individual who “was a member of the online leadership chat group that planned the 2017 ‘Unite the Right’ event in Charlottesville, Virginia, and attended the event at the direction of the S.P.L.C.” Blanche claimed in a press release that SPLC was “manufacturing racism to justify its existence,” while Patel alleged the group “engaged in a massive fraud operation to deceive their donors.”
The underlying right-wing media narrative. As the American right adopted positions previously espoused only by explicit white supremacists, the SPLC drew its ire by expanding its monitoring to include “extreme” right-wing elements that were nonetheless accepted within its mainstream, like Turning Point USA. Right-wing media figures denounced SPLC’s characterizations of TPUSA after the assassination of its founder, MAGA operative Charlie Kirk, in September 2025, and the following month, Patel said the FBI was cutting ties with the group, which he described as a “partisan smear machine.” Right-wing media figures have also pushed back hard against links between Trump and the deadly Charlottesville event, and described white supremacy itself as a “hoax.”
The response from legal experts.The SPLC indictment “may contain serious legal defects that could lead to a full or partial dismissal because it struggles to articulate the elements of the alleged crimes,” CBS News reported after consulting former federal prosecutors. “Legal experts say it is not clear exactly how the SPLC's statements to donors represent material falsehoods or omissions, or why its past use of paid informants would run counter to its mission of dismantling white supremacist groups, a tactic that federal and local law enforcement also utilize to infiltrate and break up criminal organizations,” the report added. Andrew Weissmann, who led the DOJ Fraud Section from 2015 to 2019, likewise wrote in a piece for Just Security that DOJ’s claims “may sound superficially plausible in a press release against an organization dissimilar to the SPLC, but nothing in the speaking indictment against the Center appears to meet the legal standard required” for the charges.
The response from the MAGA right.Right-wing pundits have gleefully parroted the DOJ allegations, using them both to the SPLC and to suggest that the Charlottesville “Unite the Right” rally had been a false-flag hoax instigated by the left as a way to sabotage Trump. Fox personalities alone have mentioned the SPLC nearly 400 times since the indictment’s release, according to a Media Matters review. (The indictment was “huge breaking news,” as Hannity put it before hosting Patel to accuse the SPLC of the “ultimate definition of hypocrisy.”) Trump himself has picked up the story, rambling about how “Southern Law” is a “total scam” in an interview with CBS over the weekend. The president said in part:
I see these No Kings which are funded just like the Southern Law was funded. You all that Southern Laws, financing the KKK and lots of other radical, terrible groups. And then they go out and they say, oh, we’ve got to stop the KKK. And yet they give them hundreds of thousands and even millions of dollars. They work. It’s a total scam run by the Democrats. It shows you that, like Charlottesville, Charlottesville was all funded by the Southern Law. That was a Southern Law deal, too. And it was done to make me look bad. And it turned out to be a total fake. It basically was a rigged election. This was a part of the rigging of the election. And that’s what you really should be doing. I mean, I hope one of your 60 Minutes episodes, which really hasn’t changed very much for the last few years, I’m surprised. But one of those episodes should be on Southern Law, and the fact that they spent millions and millions of dollars on absolute far right and just bad, bad groups, and then they’d use those groups and they’d say, these are Republican groups, and we’re coming to your rescue, and they’re the ones that have funded it, and they’re the ones that kept them, keep them going. Pretty sad.
NYT 4 20 26
As a sprawling inquiry expands into whether former federal officials committed crimes in investigating President Trump, two unusual factors could ease the way toward securing the indictments he craves.
A former lawyer for Mr. Trump’s campaign, Joseph diGenova, has been selected to lead the inquiry after a career prosecutor in Miami was removed from that post this week, a senior law enforcement official said on Saturday.
And at least part of the investigation appears to be using a grand jury based in Fort Pierce, Fla., overseen by a federal judge, Aileen M. Cannon, who issued rulings favorable to Mr. Trump during the classified documents case against him, the official added. Mr. diGenova is expected to split his time between Miami and Fort Pierce.
Together, the moves show how the Justice Department under Mr. Trump’s control has been willing to embrace politically charged tactics and unorthodox personnel decisions in its efforts to satisfy his demands to prosecute his perceived foes — even as other prosecutors loyal to him have encountered forceful pushback from courts against his wide-ranging retribution campaign.
Mr. diGenova, 81, who served as a U.S. attorney in the Reagan era, has been given the title of counselor to the attorney general and detailed to the Southern District of Florida, where the U.S. attorney, Jason A. Reding Quiñones, another Trump loyalist, is supervising the inquiry.
Mr. diGenova’s appointment comes after Maria Medetis Long, a senior career prosecutor in Miami who had been in charge of the investigation, was abruptly removed from the case. Ms. Medetis Long, who leads national security investigations for Mr. Quiñones’s office, is said to have objected to moving forward with a portion of the inquiry focused on John O. Brennan, the former C.I.A. director.
The law enforcement official familiar with the matter spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive internal issue.
Because Judge Cannon is the only federal jurist in the Fort Pierce courthouse, she could be in a position to make critical decisions if Mr. diGenova uses the grand jury there to subpoena documents or witness testimony and the recipients balk, asking her to quash the demands.
Judge Cannon was criticized by an appeals court in 2022 after she effectively stalled the investigation into Mr. Trump’s mishandling of classified documents by appointing a so-called special master to sort through reams of materials seized from Mar-a-Lago, his private club and residence in Florida. Later, Mr. Trump praised her lavishly, calling her “strong” and “brilliant,” after she tossed out the indictment altogether, ruling that Jack Smith, the special counsel who filed the charges, had been improperly appointed.
In another unusual move, Christopher-James DeLorenz, who worked as a law clerk for Judge Cannon during the documents case and later served as an aide to Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, was sent from the Justice Department’s headquarters in Washington to Mr. Quiñones’s office earlier this year and is working on the portion of the inquiry that is focused on Mr. Brennan, the official said.
Mr. diGenova will work on the Brennan matter, too, but also the broader inquiry.
Last year, Mr. Trump’s allies began pushing for what they referred to as a “grand conspiracy” case that would portray all of the criminal inquiries of Mr. Trump as a unified plot to violate his constitutional rights. The conspiracy, by their telling, began with the investigation into Russia and its potential ties to the 2016 Trump campaign, then extended to the classified documents and 2020 election indictments.
That far-fetched theory would allow the Justice Department to scrutinize in a single case matters that would normally be barred by the five-year statute of limitations. It would also give Mr. diGenova and Mr. Reding Quiñones the authority to scrutinize events that took place in Washington from their jurisdiction in Florida.
The Justice Department has also given Mr. Reding Quiñones special authority under a statute known as Section 515, the official said. That would enable him to bring indictments in jurisdictions where he is not the U.S. attorney.
While many details remain unknown, Mr. diGenova is inheriting an inquiry whose most developed portion appears to be focused on trying to find a basis to charge Mr. Brennan with lying to Congress over a January 2017 intelligence community assessment. It concluded, among other things, that Russia had interfered in the 2016 election in part because Moscow hoped to improve Mr. Trump’s chances of winning.
As the top federal prosecutor in Washington in the 1980s, Mr. diGenova secured an espionage conviction against Jonathan Pollard, a former U.S. Navy intelligence analyst who passed sensitive information to Israel. He later became a political commentator who gravitated toward Mr. Trump during his first term in the White House.
Mr. diGenova has claimed the Russia investigation was a law-enforcement plot to frame Mr. Trump and keep him out of the White House during his first presidential campaign. In 2020, as part of the legal team for the Trump campaign, Mr. diGenova said that Christopher Krebs, a cybersecurity official who had contradicted false pro-Trump claims of election fraud, should be “shot.” (Mr. diGenova later apologized.)
A special counsel appointed by Attorney General William P. Barr in Mr. Trump’s first term, John H. Durham, already scrutinized the actions of senior law enforcement and intelligence officials involved in the early stages of the Russia investigation.
Image
John O. Brennan testifying during a 2017 Senate hearing on possible Russian interference in the 2016 election.Credit...Al Drago/The New York Times
When that inquiry began in 2019, Mr. diGenova was among the Trump supporters who celebrated, telling Fox News that he believed people like Mr. Brennan, James R. Clapper, the former director of national intelligence, and James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director, would go to prison.
“James Comey, Brennan and Clapper have said to themselves, ‘Which one of us is going to pay the Barr bill?’” Mr. diGenova said, adding, “This conspiracy began with John Brennan and ends with John Brennan.”
But Mr. Durham, who completed his investigation in 2023, did not find a basis to prosecute any of them, and Mr. Barr later said the Durham investigation found that the C.I.A. had “stayed in its lane.”
Grand jury subpoenas already issued under Mr. Reding Quiñones have sought records related to the 2017 intelligence community assessment. The effort appears focused on trying to build a perjury case against Mr. Brennan over a 2023 deposition to Congress. At the time, he discussed the relationship between the assessment and the Steele dossier, a compendium of later-discredited political opposition research making various claims about Mr. Trump and Russia.
The F.B.I. had wanted to include information from the dossier in the intelligence community assessment, but C.I.A. analysts balked. Mr. Brennan, in his testimony, told lawmakers that “the C.I.A. was very much opposed to having any reference or inclusion of the Steele dossier in the intelligence community assessment.” Ultimately, as a compromise, a summary of the dossier was attached to the assessment as an appendix, as Mr. Brennan had long said.
Documents the Trump administration declassified last year complicated that account by showing that a sentence in the main body of the assessment alerted readers to the existence of the appendix, although they also showed the appendix had a header stating that its claims did not contribute to the judgment. Released files also showed that C.I.A. analysts had objected to the appendix, too, but portrayed Mr. Brennan as having pushed back in support of the compromise arrangement with the F.B.I.
Last October, Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio and a Trump ally, made a criminal referral, saying Mr. Brennan’s statement about the C.I.A.’s opposition amounted to a false statement. Mr. Brennan’s lawyer, Kenneth L. Wainstein, has said it did not.
Last December, Mr. Wainstein wrote to the chief federal judge in South Florida, Cecilia M. Altonaga, urging her to block the Justice Department from steering the case to Judge Cannon. The Justice Department, he wrote, appeared to be planning to “manipulate grand jury and case-assignment procedures” to put the investigation under her.
It has not been clear whether Judge Altonaga took any action. But the broader investigation has since expanded, including with subpoenas issued earlier this year for documents about the F.B.I.’s investigation into ties between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russia.
Charlie Savage writes about national security and legal policy for The Times.
Alan Feuer covers extremism and political violence for The Times, focusing on the criminal cases involving the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and against former President Donald J. Trump.
---}:
DEM DOCL
A former Trump campaign lawyer who backed President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss has been appointed to a Florida-based U.S. attorney’s office leading a sprawling probe into a slate of former federal officials who investigated Trump.
Joseph diGenova’s appointment to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida comes shortly after journalistsreported that he is taking over the “grand conspiracy” investigation into intelligence and law enforcement officials, against whom Trump has long vowed to seek retribution.
In announcing the appointment Monday, Jason Reding Quiñones, U.S. attorney for southern Florida, said on social media that diGenova would be “stepping into a senior advisory role on key legal, policy, and enforcement matters.”
“With decades of experience—including serving as U.S. Attorney for D.C. under Ronald Reagan—diGenova brings deep expertise in federal prosecution and high-stakes investigations,” Quiñones said.
DiGenova’s appointment to oversee the conspiracy probe marks another significant blow to the DOJ’s longstanding independence from the White House. It comes just over a week after acting Attorney General Todd Blanche publicly claimed that Trump has a “right” to order investigations into his enemies.
Though Quiñones said that diGenova would help “advance the Department’s mission to protect Americans, enforce the rule of law, and ensure impartial justice,” the grand conspiracy investigation into Trump enemies features many hallmarks of past politically motivated probes initiated by Trump.
Jason Reding Quiñones (right0, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida, shaking hands with former Trump campaign attorney Joseph diGenova in Florida on April 20, 2026. (Photo: U.S. Attorney’s Office Southern District of Florida)
DiGenova joined the U.S. attorney’s office after Maria Medetis Long, the previous senior federal prosecutor overseeing the probe, was removed from the case. She had questioned the legal viability of future charges, the New York Times reported.
Specifically, Medetis Long objected to moving forward with a portion of the inquiry focused on John Brennan, the former CIA director.
Her removal echoed personnel changes that placed Trump’s former personal attorney at the helm of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia before it pursued criminal charges against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James. Both of those criminal cases were dismissed by a federal judge last year.
Comey, whom Trump has branded a “dirty cop” and “leaker” for initiating the FBI’s probe into alleged links between his 2016 presidential campaign and Russia, has received a subpoena in the grand conspiracy investigation.
The exact parameters of the investigation are unclear, but prominent allies of the president and Quiñones have said it centers on the far-fetched claim that the former officials allegedly conspired to prevent Trump from exercising his constitutional and federal rights starting from his election in 2016 through his federal indictments in 2023.
While the statute of limitations on most federal crimes is five years, Quiñones’ office has been able to scrutinize actions beyond those limits by alleging a conspiracy against Trump.
In total, prosecutors overseeing the sprawling investigation have issued over 130 subpoenas so far.
Part of the investigation appears to be using a grand jury seated in Fort Pierce, Florida, overseen by Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee who showed the president unusual deference while presiding over special counsel Jack Smith’s classified documents investigation against the president after his first term in office.
In 2020, DiGenova and his wife, lawyer Victoria Toensing, were part of a legal team that included Rudy Giuliani, then Trump’s personal attorney, challenging the results of the 2020 election. He also pushed conspiracy theories alleging election fraud during that vote.
Before that, diGenova and Toensing reportedly collaborated with Giuliani in efforts to extract compromising information on Joe Biden from Ukrainian officials during the last years of Trump’s first term. At the time, Toensing categorically denied their involvement.
That attempt to undermine Biden’s candidacy in the 2020 vote would eventually lead the House of Representatives to impeach Trump.
AN 1 26
Judge tells DOJ to hand over or destroy materials used to score Comey indictment
AN 1 26
Trump DOJ fires attorney who refused to prosecute James Comey - Alternet.org
AN 12 25
Ex-assistant AG says Trump DOJ 'going to re-indict' after Halligan flubs
an 11 25
U.S. District Judge Cameron McGowan Currie ruled that U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan was not legitimately appointed to her position and, as such, all of her cases, like those against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, are dismissed "without prejudice." The judge cited the legal precedent set by President Donald Trump's own case.
In Florida, Judge Aileen Cannon ruled in U.S. v. Trump that the U.S. Senate did not appoint special counsel Jack Smith and, as such, was not a legitimately appointed prosecutor. She then dismissed the case involving the classified documents.
"So that is the nail in the coffin," CNN's Katelyn Polantz explained. Both cases have the same problem, with Halligan, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.
Halligan was "placed there on an interim basis" after the previous U.S. attorney said there was not enough evidence to charge James or Comey.
The last remark in the court decision is "invalidating the acts performed by Ms. Halligan and dismissing the indictments, returning Ms. James to the status she occupied before being indicted. Which was not being an employee of the Justice Department, she was an employee of the White House."
"The judge in this case is saying that James and Comey ... cannot face these charges because the prosecutor was invalid and is basing that largely upon the Trump case," she added. "So, a really interesting correlation there."
AN 11 25
Trump DOJ 'may not get Comey case to trial': CNN reporter
Sarah K. Burris
AN 11 25
A federal judge in Virginia on Thursday heard arguments in a bid from formerFBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James to disqualify President Donald Trump-appointed prosecutor Lindsey Halligan. And, according to a CNN report, the judge's questioning of the Department of Justice at times
from courthouse observers.
Attorneys for Comey and James argue Halligan was hand-picked by Trump to prosecute his perceived political enemies. They allege she is serving as interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia unlawfully.
CNN's crime and justice correspondent Katelyn Polantz described how Judge Cameron McGowan Currie, "a laid back questioner, a very concise questioner," led "a grilling of the Justice Department if I have ever seen one before from a judge like this."
Polantz detailed the judge's last question to the Justice Department, noting Currie asked: "Do you believe theU.S.v. Trump was wrongly decided?"
Polantz said that question was telling.
The federal case in Washington D.C., related to efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, was dismissed in November 2024 by Judge Tanya Chutkan at the request of special counsel Jack Smith.
Polantz explained Trump "won his case by having the prosecutor, Jack Smith, tossed off of it in Florida in a set of arguments very similar to this."
"And Judge Curry is now asking the Justice Department, 'Are you guys against that now?' as the Justice Department is wanting these cases against James Comey and Letitia James to go forward," the reporter said.
"The Justice Department lawyer responded, 'that's a different thing. That was a different situation. That doesn't apply here,' Polantz reported. "But that was quite a question that elicited gasps across the courtroom from a lot of people that were listening to this hearing."
:{---
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?
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//
- ### Fox News panel expresses extreme skepticism on Comey charges: “I don't think this case even gets to trial”
09/26/25 12:02 PM EDT
- ### Media Matters weekly newsletter, September 26
09/26/25 10:50 AM EDT
- ### Fox News' Howard Kurtz says the Comey indictment was “completely and totally orchestrated by President Trump”
09/25/2
MMA
- ### Fox contributor on the Comey indictment: “I don't think there's a case. ... It seems to be premised on something that is not true."
09/26/25 9:26 AM EDT
- ### Newsmax host says the James Comey indictment “does feel like retribution, does feel like they saw a man and they looked for a crime. And that's likely happening.”
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
- ### Fox News' Howard Kurtz says the Comey indictment was “completely and totally orchestrated by President Trump”
09/25/25 7:25 PM EDT
- ### Fox News' Jonathan Turley says Donald Trump “seemed to pressure indictments against individuals, including Comey”
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
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."
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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.
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
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.
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.”
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.”
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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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2 days ago - Justice Department officials are investigating a years-old classified Russian intelligence document leak and whether former F.B.I director ...
www.nationalreview.com › news › department-of-justice-investigating...
DOJ Is Investigating Comey's Role in Leak of Classified ...
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2 days ago - Department of Justice prosecutors reportedly are investigating the possibility that former FBI director James Comey leaked a classified Russian intelligence document to the media during the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s emails, according to a Thursday report from the New ...
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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Aug 29, 2019 - The Department of Justice will not prosecute former FBI director James Comey for leaking memos detailing his interactions with President ...
www.reuters.com › article › us-trump-russia-comey › doj-declines-to-...
DOJ declines to prosecute Comey despite finding that he ...
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Aug 29, 2019 - DOJ declines to prosecute Comey despite finding that he leaked info. Andy Sullivan. 6 Min Read. WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Justice ...
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
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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