Sean Davis: Comey Has a Long History as a Sneaky Political Operator More Loyal to Chuck Schumer Than the AG and President He Served During the Bush Administration

Must read.

Remember when John Ashcroft had taken ill and James Comey kinda-sorta just decided that he was now the AG? As a background to this, Comey had "ruled" that the Bush Administration's "Stellar Wind" program to detect terrorist threats was illegal, and... well, I guess Comey did not want his "ruling," made as a subordinate several steps down the actual command chain, to be "overruled" by his mere legal, constitutional superiors.

"[I] told my security detail that I needed to get to George Washington Hospital immediately. They turned on the emergency equipment and drove very quickly to the hospital," Comey testified. "I got out of the car and ran up -- literally ran up the stairs with my security detail."

"I was concerned that, given how ill I knew the attorney general was, that there might be an effort to ask him to overrule me when he was in no condition to do that," Comey said.

Comey's use of the phrase "overrule me" is especially noteworthy, given that the authority he referenced belongs not to the deputy attorney general, but to the attorney general himself. However, unbeknownst to anyone at the White House on that day, Comey had assumed for himself the authorities attendant to Ashcroft's position. Rather than personally informing anyone at the White House, including the president, the vice president, the White House chief of staff, or the White House counsel, the Department of Justice sent a mere fax to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue noting the change in power. For some reason, the newly designated acting attorney general didn't feel compelled to personally inform any of his superiors that he was now a cabinet official.

Davis then turns to Comey's own narration of this event, which reads like a lurid retelling of the Arthur Legend, with a death-stricken Uther Pendragon nodding to James Comey and saying "You the man now, Dog."

"And Attorney General Ashcroft then stunned me. He lifted his head off the pillow and in very strong terms expressed his view of the matter, rich in both substance and fact, which stunned me 00 drawn from the hour-long meeting we’d had a week earlier 00 and in very strong terms expressed himself, and then laid his head back down on the pillow, seemed spent, and said to them, 'But that doesn’t matter, because I'm not the attorney general.'

The land is Wounded and without a King, Arthur. Now you must Heal the Land.

[…]

And as he laid back down, he said, 'But that doesn’t matter, because I’m not the attorney general. There is the attorney general,' and he pointed to me, and I was just to his left. The two men did not acknowledge me. They turned and walked from the room. And within just a few moments after that, Director Mueller arrived. I told him quickly what had happened. He had a brief -- a memorable brief exchange with the attorney general and then we went outside in the hallway.

Comey's testimony was designed to smear Alberto Gonzales as unfit to continue serving as AG (apparently John Ashcroft's You The Man Now Dog crowning of Comey was not entirely permanent). His testimony was dropped as a bombshell, without warning -- arranged by Chuck Schumer's top aide Preet Bharara, you know, the guy who's been protecting Governor Andrew Cuomo forever and then suggested that it wasn't legal for Trump to fire him as a US Attorney.

"It felt to me that Jim's loyalty was more to his friend Preet Bharara and to Chuck Schumer," Gonzales later wrote in a memoir.

Meanwhile, Trey Gowdy hints at... something, I legitimately have no idea what, regarding Comey being compelled, for some reason, to exonerate Hillary Clinton-- I don't get this because the suggestion is that this has to do with Bill Clinton's tarmac meeting with Loretta Lynch. Why this compels him to exonerate Hillary, I have no idea.

Actually, Gowdy seems to be talking about why Comey arrogated to himself the powers of the AG to make the decision, not why he exonerated Clinton.

Hm -- Comey arrogating the powers of the AG to himself without any legal basis for doing so. Seems like a common move for him.

By the way, Comey was an important figure in the investigation of Bill Clinton's 11th-hour pardons of major campaign donor Marc Rich. Comey found that while "proper procedures" for the pardons were not followed, there was no evidence of a quid pro quo.

Sound familiar? No intent, you mean?

Comey and his friends seem to have a long history of White Knighting for Clintons.

posted by Ace at 03:21 PM

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