Lynch Pressured Comey to Mislead

[Traveler]

Gee, there's a shocker!

http://dailycaller.com/2017/06/08/loretta-lynch-pressured-fbi-to-downplay-clinton-email-investigation-comey-says/

 

[Faster horses]

And then this good news:

http://dailycaller.com/2017/06/08/trey-gowdy-poised-to-be-new-oversight-committee-chairman/

Oh, what are the liberals to do now?

 

[lavacarancher]

The liberals have already put a spin on it that Trump is convicted. Sure not the way I heard the statements from Comey.

 

[Steve]

Comey said he gave a copy of the memo to a pal when Trump tweeted a suggested he might have taped their conversation. Comey told the Senate Intel Committee he wanted to get out into the public his version of what went down. "My judgment was I needed to get that out into the public square. And so I asked a friend of mine to share the content of the memo with a reporter. Didn't do it myself for a variety of reasons. But I asked him to…because I thought that might prompt the appointment of a special counsel."

"And he lied. NYT had the story re leak a day before that Trump tweet which was claimed to be the catalyst for the leak."

This is, however, not 100% certain because there are two NYT articles in question. Both seem like they were derived from Comey leaks, but we only know for certain that one was (the later one, published on May 16th after the Trump tweet), because Comey told us so today. However, a look at the timeline shows that it's likely that Comey was also behind the prior leak, before the Trump tweet, and he therefore lied to congress about his motivation for leaking.

MAY 11 — NYT reports that two Comey "associates" leaked information about a one-on-one dinner between Trump and Comey in which Trump asked for Comey's loyalty. The article makes no mention of a memo, but contains information about the private conversation so detailed that it would be weird if it weren't derived from a memo written by Comey after the dinner. It makes little sense that "associates" of Comey would remember the verbiage of the conversation with such detail, and then independently leak that verbiage without any direction from Comey himself, particularly when Comey admitted that he was willing to make such leaks only a week later.

May 12 — Trump tweets that Comey had better hope there weren't recordings of the dinner that would go against the quotes in the May 11 NYT article. That tweet makes a whole lot more sense now that Comey was leaking. Trump was saying to Comey: "I know you're the leak, and I might have recordings of our actual conversation that will prove that you're lying."

Somewhere in between May 12-May 16 — Comey, according to Comey, wakes up in the middle of the night and feels the sudden need to leak a memo from February to the NYT. The big question here is whether Comey also instructed his "associate(s)" to leak the information for the May 11 article. If he did, then he indeed lied to congress, as it would make no sense for him to be motivated by the Trump "tapes" tweet to begin the leaks, because indeed the Trump tweet would have occurred after the initial leak.

It seems very unlikely, given the pattern of events, that Comey was not the source of the leak for the May 11th article. The use of the word "associates" and the intimate detail recorded in the article make it seem like it was reported via the same exact pattern as the May 16th article — a memo read to the NYT via an associate of Comey's, at the direction of Comey himself. It was even written by the same reporter.

either way, he manipulated the press and political spectrum to do his bidding... Not once, but twice. He deserved to be fired.

 

[Steve]

Sharyl Attkisson, reporter for Full Measure News, tweeted her skepticism in light of these developments, including Comey's own testimony that he no longer has an original copy himself:


Sharyl Attkisson
✔
@SharylAttkisson

Seems strange that Comey wd give his memo to friend to give to NYT but not give to Congress; now says he has no copy https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/2017-06-08%20CEG%20DF%20LG%20SW%20to%20Richman%20(Comey%20Memos)_Redacted.pdf …
7:00 PM - 9 Jun 2017

 

[Steve]

Anyone notice a pattern,..

Recusel, special prosecutor?

During the hearing, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), held up a chart entitled "A Tangled Web…?" that showed the various connections between Ashcroft and White House officials, including Rove. Schumer, who had helped Comey become US attorney in New York two years earlier, pressed Comey on whether he would support the appointment of a special counsel in the leak case. Comey wouldn't comment on the particulars of the case or make a commitment. But he did say he believed in erring "on the side of caution" on ethics issues. "I don't care about politics," he noted. "I don't care about expediency. I don't care about friendship. I care about doing the right thing."

Comey was confirmed in early December. Schumer called with congratulations and told him that he had a month. That is, a month to do the right thing on the CIA leak case.

Comey discussed the case with Ashcroft, and on December 30, 2003, he called a surprise press conference to announce that in "an abundance of caution," Ashcroft and he had decided that the attorney general and his entire personal staff should recuse themselves. And there was more news: Comey was turning over the case to his close friend Patrick Fitzgerald, the US attorney in Chicago. Fitzgerald would assume control as a special counsel. This meant that Fitzgerald would not have report to Comey or anyone else at Justice about this inquiry. Comey was granting Fitzgerald tremendous powers held by no other federal prosecutor in the nation. Even independent counsels of the past, such as Kenneth Starr, had at least been accountable to a three-judge panel that oversaw their work. Fitzgerald would be answerable to no one.

Comey and Fitzgerald had years earlier worked on cases together at the US attorney's office in New York, and Comey noted that Fitzgerald had a "sterling reputation" and was "absolutely apolitical." Fitzgerald was, Comey remarked, "Eliot Ness with a Harvard law degree and a sense of humor."

Fitzgerald expanded the scope of the investigation beyond determining who had leaked the information and whether the leak was a violation of law. He got Comey to write him a letter (which wasn't made public at the time) noting that Fitzgerald had the authority to investigate not just underlying crimes connected to the leak but perjury, obstruction of justice, the destruction of evidence, and related crimes. Then Fitzgerald started hauling top White House officials before a grand jury.

On July 11, 2006, Robert Novak posted a column titled "My Role in the Valerie Plame Leak Story": "Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has informed my attorneys that, after two and one-half years, his investigation of the CIA leak case concerning matters directly relating to me has been concluded. That frees me to reveal my role in the federal inquiry that, at the request of Fitzgerald, I have kept secret." Novak dispels rumors that he asserted his Fifth Amendment right and made a plea bargain, stating: "I have cooperated in the investigation." He continues:

For nearly the entire time of his investigation, Fitzgerald knew — independent of me — the identity of the sources I used in my column of July 14, 2003

Comey and Fitzgerald used the investigation to undermine Bush/Chaney, and it worked to a certain extent.