Big Takeaways from Comey's Testimony

I leaked like a boat made out of spaghetti strainers. Comey admits he leaked his memo to a "friend" for purposes of that friend then leaking it to the New York Times.

"I asked a friend of mine to share the content of the memo with a reporter," Comey said. "I didn't do it myself for a variety of reasons."

Marco Rubio asks a damn fine question. Noting Comey's pre-written testimony, Rubio noted that Comey had three big things to say: Trump asked for his loyalty; Trump said he hoped Comey could let the Flynn matter go; and Trump was, just as Trump said, not the subject of an investigation.

Why, Rubio asked, did only two of those items leak? Why was the third such a closely-held government secret while the first two were freely shared with the press?

This wasn't in Comey's testimony, but the Daily Caller reports that state officials say that throughout 2015 and 2016 Obama told them there was no threat of Russian hacking.

Comey said that Trump never asked him to stop the investigation, nor did anyone from his administration.

Comey revealed that Loretta Lynch -- not Trump, but Loretta Lynch -- sought to interfere in an FBI investigation, by demanding he only refer to the Hillary Email investigation as "a matter," in accordance with the Hillary Clinton campaign's spin that this was just a "matter of looking into things," rather than an actual criminal investigation.

When Comey asked Lynch if she was going to authorize him to confirm the existence of the Clinton email investigation, her answer was, "Yes but don't call it that. Call it a matter." When Comey asked why, he said, Lynch wouldn’t give him an explanation. "Just call it a matter," Lynch said.

Comey added later that he was concerned about that direction as it was false. He was further concerned because it aligned with the Clinton campaign’s spin on the investigation.

Lynch's order, Comey said, "concerned me because that language tracked the way the campaign was talking about the FBI's work and that’s concerning."

Comey's big complaint seems to be that Trump said bad things about him. Go figure that was this beanstalk Reverend Parris' big complaint.

"And although the law required no reason at all to fire an FBI director, the administration then chose to defame me and more importantly the FBI, by saying that the organization was in disarray, that it was poorly led, that the workforce had lost confidence in its leader," Comey said in his opening remarks at the hearing.

NBC reporter takes Comey's revelation about Lynch improperly telling Comey to refer to Hillary investigation as only "a matter," and claims Trump told Comey to only refer to Trump investigation as "a matter."

posted by Ace at 12:39 PM

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