The Comey hearing will reveal to everyone how much a snake Comey really is.
- Thread starter jeffblue101
- Start date
annabenedetti
like marbles on glass
1. When will the MAGA base admit that Russia meddled in our election?
2. Comey would make a far better president than the one we have.
3. Comey says what the GOP is afraid to say: Trump is a liar.
4. Comey cares about our country, and it shows. Trump only cares about himself - and it shows.
5. Comey establishes obstruction of justice, but don't expect to see the GOP-controlled congress to do the right thing.
annabenedetti
like marbles on glass
3 winners and 3 losers from James Comey's testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee
Winner: James Comey
The clip that sums up Thursday’s hearing isn’t actually from the hearing at all. It’s from the moments before the hearing, as a low-grade hurricane of Senate business swirled around an implacable Comey at its eye.
[video]https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/O-On7EGjVEMqjakdWKG1X3jTSrI=/0x0:638x356/1520x0/filters:focal(0x0:638x356):gifv():no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/8652217/comeystaring.gif[/video]
That image — an unruffled professional, speaking on behalf of no one but himself and prompted by nothing but his own sense of right and wrong — is the one Comey projected throughout the hearing. It was a masterful performance.
Comey presented himself as a career government man who knew enough not to trust a strange new president already surrounded by scandal, but who nonetheless deferred to him, as president, up to the point where doing so would violate the law — and whose primary concern, even then, was to protect the investigation rather than to cause trouble he saw as unnecessary with the president.
In doing so, he made himself extremely hard to impugn. Even his toughest Republican questioners were forced to acknowledge his basic integrity, and take the gravity of his claims at least somewhat seriously. (One of the president’s most vociferous defenders, Sen. John Cornyn, ended up arguing that the president wasn’t guilty of obstructing justice because Comey disobeyed his request to drop the investigation into former National Security Adviser Mike Flynn.)
He won’t remain above the fray forever. Some of his answers about why he didn’t do more, at the time, to raise alarms about the president’s behavior aren’t likely to satisfy Republicans, and it’s likely they’ll paint him as a disgruntled ex-employee smearing his former boss (or as a “deep-state” mole opposed to Trump from the beginning).
But while his admission that “I could have been stronger” in pushing back against Trump in the moment might be a political liability for him, it rang true. It confirmed, as much as anyone has ever confirmed on the record, something that many people assume is true but few can prove: that this president is fundamentally not normal, that he fundamentally will not play by the rules that protect the integrity of his office and the government.
Faced with such a boss, we all think we’d be the first to blow the whistle. But many of us wouldn’t. Jim Comey simply admitted to it.
Winner: the FBI
Remember in the days before the election, when liberals were all worried that the FBI’s support for Trump had corrupted the agency’s law enforcement capabilities?
The FBI was never the most likely agency for critics of Trump to look to as the “resistance” within the federal government. But the president’s unseemly interest in the Russia investigation appears to have set them on edge — and firing their director only made the problem worse.
Comey made an impassioned case for the independence and professionalism of his former agency before the committee. “There is no one indispensable person,” he said in the hearing’s biggest humblebrag; the work of investigating the Trump campaign will continue.
The idea of the FBI as a bastion of integrity within the federal government isn’t just amusing because of the agency’s history (the shadow of J. Edgar Hoover still looms large, to the point where the founding director was mentioned in passing on Thursday as an example of inappropriate power over a president). It’s fascinating because, as recently as last fall, it really looked like the political persuasion of the agency’s field officers were going to undermine its commitment to investigating wrongdoing.
Instead, though, it appears that many FBI agents who had supported Trump are putting their agency over their party. They may not be as noble as Comey made them look Thursday, but they’re certainly looking better than one might have expected.
Winner: Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR)
You might be surprised to hear this, but senators like to hear themselves talk. They like to hear themselves talk on television and in the halls of Congress. If the members of the intelligence committee had used the opportunity of a televised committee hearing to grandstand about how terrible Trump was (or how terrible the media was) for seven minutes at a time, barely letting Comey get a word in edgewise, it would have made for deadly viewing.
That wasn’t what happened. Members of both parties managed to restrain themselves from pontificating about what they thought the problem was (with the exception of a little bit of Russia-bashing from ranking member Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA)). And members of both parties, but particularly Democrats, made a point of sticking to questions either that Comey could answer, or that his refusal or inability to discuss would be an answer of a different kind.
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) is a veteran of this kind of questioning. As one of the Senate’s leading critics of government surveillance, he’s well-trained in the art of asking a witness a question he knows the witness can’t answer publicly, as a way of flagging for the public that there is something of interest being kept from them.
On Thursday, he used those skills to extract one of the few genuinely new pieces of information from the hearing: that Comey had a reason, beyond what’s publicly been reported, to believe that Jeff Sessions would need to recuse himself from the Russia investigation.
Losers: Trump, Sessions, and the GOP. See link for the reasons why.
Winner: James Comey
The clip that sums up Thursday’s hearing isn’t actually from the hearing at all. It’s from the moments before the hearing, as a low-grade hurricane of Senate business swirled around an implacable Comey at its eye.
[video]https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/O-On7EGjVEMqjakdWKG1X3jTSrI=/0x0:638x356/1520x0/filters:focal(0x0:638x356):gifv():no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/8652217/comeystaring.gif[/video]
That image — an unruffled professional, speaking on behalf of no one but himself and prompted by nothing but his own sense of right and wrong — is the one Comey projected throughout the hearing. It was a masterful performance.
Comey presented himself as a career government man who knew enough not to trust a strange new president already surrounded by scandal, but who nonetheless deferred to him, as president, up to the point where doing so would violate the law — and whose primary concern, even then, was to protect the investigation rather than to cause trouble he saw as unnecessary with the president.
In doing so, he made himself extremely hard to impugn. Even his toughest Republican questioners were forced to acknowledge his basic integrity, and take the gravity of his claims at least somewhat seriously. (One of the president’s most vociferous defenders, Sen. John Cornyn, ended up arguing that the president wasn’t guilty of obstructing justice because Comey disobeyed his request to drop the investigation into former National Security Adviser Mike Flynn.)
He won’t remain above the fray forever. Some of his answers about why he didn’t do more, at the time, to raise alarms about the president’s behavior aren’t likely to satisfy Republicans, and it’s likely they’ll paint him as a disgruntled ex-employee smearing his former boss (or as a “deep-state” mole opposed to Trump from the beginning).
But while his admission that “I could have been stronger” in pushing back against Trump in the moment might be a political liability for him, it rang true. It confirmed, as much as anyone has ever confirmed on the record, something that many people assume is true but few can prove: that this president is fundamentally not normal, that he fundamentally will not play by the rules that protect the integrity of his office and the government.
Faced with such a boss, we all think we’d be the first to blow the whistle. But many of us wouldn’t. Jim Comey simply admitted to it.
Winner: the FBI
Remember in the days before the election, when liberals were all worried that the FBI’s support for Trump had corrupted the agency’s law enforcement capabilities?
The FBI was never the most likely agency for critics of Trump to look to as the “resistance” within the federal government. But the president’s unseemly interest in the Russia investigation appears to have set them on edge — and firing their director only made the problem worse.
Comey made an impassioned case for the independence and professionalism of his former agency before the committee. “There is no one indispensable person,” he said in the hearing’s biggest humblebrag; the work of investigating the Trump campaign will continue.
The idea of the FBI as a bastion of integrity within the federal government isn’t just amusing because of the agency’s history (the shadow of J. Edgar Hoover still looms large, to the point where the founding director was mentioned in passing on Thursday as an example of inappropriate power over a president). It’s fascinating because, as recently as last fall, it really looked like the political persuasion of the agency’s field officers were going to undermine its commitment to investigating wrongdoing.
Instead, though, it appears that many FBI agents who had supported Trump are putting their agency over their party. They may not be as noble as Comey made them look Thursday, but they’re certainly looking better than one might have expected.
Winner: Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR)
You might be surprised to hear this, but senators like to hear themselves talk. They like to hear themselves talk on television and in the halls of Congress. If the members of the intelligence committee had used the opportunity of a televised committee hearing to grandstand about how terrible Trump was (or how terrible the media was) for seven minutes at a time, barely letting Comey get a word in edgewise, it would have made for deadly viewing.
That wasn’t what happened. Members of both parties managed to restrain themselves from pontificating about what they thought the problem was (with the exception of a little bit of Russia-bashing from ranking member Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA)). And members of both parties, but particularly Democrats, made a point of sticking to questions either that Comey could answer, or that his refusal or inability to discuss would be an answer of a different kind.
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) is a veteran of this kind of questioning. As one of the Senate’s leading critics of government surveillance, he’s well-trained in the art of asking a witness a question he knows the witness can’t answer publicly, as a way of flagging for the public that there is something of interest being kept from them.
On Thursday, he used those skills to extract one of the few genuinely new pieces of information from the hearing: that Comey had a reason, beyond what’s publicly been reported, to believe that Jeff Sessions would need to recuse himself from the Russia investigation.
Losers: Trump, Sessions, and the GOP. See link for the reasons why.
annabenedetti
like marbles on glass
James Comey is no showboat
The former FBI director is a giant of a man with an even bigger heart.
“I wonder what her story is,” FBI Director James Comey said to no one in particular as our motorcade rolled through Lower Manhattan, past an elderly woman on a bench embracing a swaddled child.
“Everyone has a story and I bet her story is incredible.”
This was not an unusual musing from our now departed leader — a giant of a man with an even bigger heart, whose focus was always on trying to understand and improve the lives of others.
This particular visit centered on a meeting in New York with counterterrorism officials. Afterward, rather than head back to the airport, Comey asked to be taken to the local FBI office so he could visit “the troops.” As the head of a deployed organization with offices nationwide, he would utilize any visit outside Washington to connect with our people. He walked the building floor by floor, meeting colleagues at their desks, extending his hand and offering a simple thank you for their service.
To say his firing jarred much of the FBI family would understate the varying levels of sadness, anger and confusion that followed the sudden dismissal of a man held in such high regard throughout American law enforcement. With the election and its aftermath consuming the national psyche, it may be hard to see past current headlines to reflect upon the incredible impact he had on our organization — but his legacy is a story worth telling.
How does one describe the impact someone like Comey had on the FBI? You start by doing something he would have shunned: highlighting his success. Like his predecessor, who faced and tackled challenges unique to his era, Comey took on growing problems within the organization in key areas such as leadership, agility and diversity. It might seem strange to call a respected leader a maniac, but Comey was nothing short of maniacal in driving change throughout the organization in order to right an off-axis leadership selection process, make the FBI more agile, and correct a major diversity problem.
Comey’s servant leadership principles were contagious and spread like wildfire throughout our organization. He purposefully populated our senior ranks with leaders who were kind but tough, confident yet humble. He cultivated a cadre of team-oriented field commanders who were not threatened by the notion that their subordinates might know more than they did.
Realizing he himself could never stop improving, he fought to ensure he would not get trapped in a bubble devoid of varying perspectives, or become comfortable with the trappings of power. He got his own lunch, placed his own calls, and had zero patience for ego or arrogance. Any of our 36,000 employees could email him directly and he would respond. His servant leadership style was reflected in those who surrounded him: senior staff who shared his passion for the rule of law; junior staff like myself who never once felt hesitant to speak up to challenge him with a differing point of view; and, as would prove his most important picks, an accomplished deputy director and senior executives who are now successfully navigating us through transformational waters.
Concerned the bureau was not as agile as it could be in adjusting to address emerging threats, Comey worked tirelessly to ensure that new ideas and inventive ways of doing business were not only accepted, but embraced. As he would passionately admonish new recruits during regular visits to the FBI Academy: “Do not let the grumpy old people crush your spirits! I’m a grumpy old person, and I can’t see us as freshly as you do. Study us and make us better.”
Comey looked at the organization and realized we soon risked a proverbial fall down the stairs. Our agent population had become increasingly white and change was needed. As he would say, not only is focusing on diversity the right thing to do, it is also an issue of effectiveness. If we do not accurately reflect the communities we serve, we risk being less effective. He assembled a machine of personnel and resources dedicated to attracting diverse talent. Indeed, his personal commitment to diversity was illustrated in the reason we flew 2,000 miles to Los Angeles on the day he was fired — so he could attend a diversity recruitment event and personally pitch talented young people on joining the FBI.
When asked how he wanted to be remembered, Comey would quip that he wanted to be forgotten. He imagined finally getting us to a place where the solutions to our leadership, agility and diversity challenges were so ingrained in our culture, we would no longer remember even having a problem. Those of us shaped by him will tirelessly work to ensure his goals are achieved — although he will not soon be forgotten.
It’s strange writing about Comey in the past tense, because it feels like writing an obituary. In a way I am doing just that, because despite curious observations from outsiders regarding Comey’s standing among our FBI family, we are very much an organization in mourning. Fortunately for the FBI, his legacy of leadership and service will permeate our great institution for generations to come as the countless young leaders he touched rise in the organization. Although we must eventually move on and accept recent events — the security of the American people demands our focus on mission — many of us will never stop celebrating the legacy of our seventh director. Like the woman on the bench we passed that day in Manhattan, Director Comey has a story, and it’s incredible.
Joshua Campbell is a special agent with the FBI who served as special assistant to former FBI director James Comey. The opinions expressed here are his own and do not represent those of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
The former FBI director is a giant of a man with an even bigger heart.
“I wonder what her story is,” FBI Director James Comey said to no one in particular as our motorcade rolled through Lower Manhattan, past an elderly woman on a bench embracing a swaddled child.
“Everyone has a story and I bet her story is incredible.”
This was not an unusual musing from our now departed leader — a giant of a man with an even bigger heart, whose focus was always on trying to understand and improve the lives of others.
This particular visit centered on a meeting in New York with counterterrorism officials. Afterward, rather than head back to the airport, Comey asked to be taken to the local FBI office so he could visit “the troops.” As the head of a deployed organization with offices nationwide, he would utilize any visit outside Washington to connect with our people. He walked the building floor by floor, meeting colleagues at their desks, extending his hand and offering a simple thank you for their service.
To say his firing jarred much of the FBI family would understate the varying levels of sadness, anger and confusion that followed the sudden dismissal of a man held in such high regard throughout American law enforcement. With the election and its aftermath consuming the national psyche, it may be hard to see past current headlines to reflect upon the incredible impact he had on our organization — but his legacy is a story worth telling.
How does one describe the impact someone like Comey had on the FBI? You start by doing something he would have shunned: highlighting his success. Like his predecessor, who faced and tackled challenges unique to his era, Comey took on growing problems within the organization in key areas such as leadership, agility and diversity. It might seem strange to call a respected leader a maniac, but Comey was nothing short of maniacal in driving change throughout the organization in order to right an off-axis leadership selection process, make the FBI more agile, and correct a major diversity problem.
Comey’s servant leadership principles were contagious and spread like wildfire throughout our organization. He purposefully populated our senior ranks with leaders who were kind but tough, confident yet humble. He cultivated a cadre of team-oriented field commanders who were not threatened by the notion that their subordinates might know more than they did.
Realizing he himself could never stop improving, he fought to ensure he would not get trapped in a bubble devoid of varying perspectives, or become comfortable with the trappings of power. He got his own lunch, placed his own calls, and had zero patience for ego or arrogance. Any of our 36,000 employees could email him directly and he would respond. His servant leadership style was reflected in those who surrounded him: senior staff who shared his passion for the rule of law; junior staff like myself who never once felt hesitant to speak up to challenge him with a differing point of view; and, as would prove his most important picks, an accomplished deputy director and senior executives who are now successfully navigating us through transformational waters.
Concerned the bureau was not as agile as it could be in adjusting to address emerging threats, Comey worked tirelessly to ensure that new ideas and inventive ways of doing business were not only accepted, but embraced. As he would passionately admonish new recruits during regular visits to the FBI Academy: “Do not let the grumpy old people crush your spirits! I’m a grumpy old person, and I can’t see us as freshly as you do. Study us and make us better.”
Comey looked at the organization and realized we soon risked a proverbial fall down the stairs. Our agent population had become increasingly white and change was needed. As he would say, not only is focusing on diversity the right thing to do, it is also an issue of effectiveness. If we do not accurately reflect the communities we serve, we risk being less effective. He assembled a machine of personnel and resources dedicated to attracting diverse talent. Indeed, his personal commitment to diversity was illustrated in the reason we flew 2,000 miles to Los Angeles on the day he was fired — so he could attend a diversity recruitment event and personally pitch talented young people on joining the FBI.
When asked how he wanted to be remembered, Comey would quip that he wanted to be forgotten. He imagined finally getting us to a place where the solutions to our leadership, agility and diversity challenges were so ingrained in our culture, we would no longer remember even having a problem. Those of us shaped by him will tirelessly work to ensure his goals are achieved — although he will not soon be forgotten.
It’s strange writing about Comey in the past tense, because it feels like writing an obituary. In a way I am doing just that, because despite curious observations from outsiders regarding Comey’s standing among our FBI family, we are very much an organization in mourning. Fortunately for the FBI, his legacy of leadership and service will permeate our great institution for generations to come as the countless young leaders he touched rise in the organization. Although we must eventually move on and accept recent events — the security of the American people demands our focus on mission — many of us will never stop celebrating the legacy of our seventh director. Like the woman on the bench we passed that day in Manhattan, Director Comey has a story, and it’s incredible.
Joshua Campbell is a special agent with the FBI who served as special assistant to former FBI director James Comey. The opinions expressed here are his own and do not represent those of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Whether he trusts Trump should be beside the point. His office is supposed to be largely independent and isolated from the executive authority. The fact that Trump engaged directly with him so much was a breath of protocol.
jeffblue101
New member
bigger heart:rotfl: how about snake who is also a self admitted coward.
:rotfl:
jeffblue101
New member
show me in the Constitution or U.S laws that state a US president can not have private meetings with the head of the FBI.
:rotfl:
jeffblue101
New member
glorydaz
Well-known member
That's Comey's claim, but the fact is the FBI is not supposed to be "independent" of the Justice Dept. or the President. Comey just wanted to be the next J. Edgar.
It's merely a protocol, established by the Justice Department to protect the administration of justice, and also to protect against accidental crimes. It's not against the law to breach these protocols in itself, but it can be quite suspect, and it's also a lot easier for crimes to be committed, as it seems happened here.
If you had a problem with Bill Clinton meeting Loretta Lynch while Hillary was under investigation, you have to also have a problem with this, as it's a breach of the same protocol except in a much more suspect way.