Sunday, September 27, 2020

Why should anyone believe James Comey?

Fired FBI Director James Comey is having another moment in the spotlight with the premiere of a new movie, The Comey Rule, on Showtime.

The Clinton email decision, as I describe in my own book, Obsession: Inside the Washington Establishment's Never-Ending War on Trump, spurred some of President-elect Trump's closest advisers, including Rudy Giuliani, Chris Christie, and Jeff Sessions, to urge him to fire Comey immediately upon taking office.

Among other things, Comey wrote that Trump, when the two were alone, asked for loyalty, asked for Comey to end the Michael Flynn investigation, and pressed Comey to announce that he, Trump, was not under FBI investigation.

The New York Times, in first reporting the existence of the Comey memos, noted that Comey wrote immediately after meeting the president and added: "An FBI agent's contemporaneous notes are widely held up in court as credible evidence of conversations."

"Every time we talked about Comey, I said the guy's gonna turn on you. There's something wrong with him." Chris Christie said of Comey, "If he stays, and he's a loose cannon like that while Obama's in office, why would we think he'd be any different when President Trump was in office?" Christie told Trump that, "You have to either develop a trusting relationship with Comey or you need to get rid of him right at the beginning if you don't trust him. Once you take the oath, if you keep him, he's yours."

Who could? Even as Trump took office, Comey was making notes of their conversations for future use.

If those notes mangled the meaning of those conversations, and if Comey viewed even straightforward talks with his superiors in a sinister light, who would know? The conversations were just Comey and Trump, and Comey had all the authority of American law enforcement - plus a decidedly unskeptical media - on his side.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/why-should-anyone-believe-james-comey 

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