"Breathtaking Duplicity:" Comey's Claims vs. Reality

That characterization from Joe DiGenova.

Comey's Claims:

Comey claimed falsely that the Steele Dossier was initially funded "by Republicans." When it was pointed out the Free Beacon said they had funded Fusion GPS but had not paid for the Steele Dossier, he went into his Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer act and claimed he only knew what he saw in the media.

Also echoing Obama, he claimed he did not know that the DNC and Hillary Clinton had funded the Steele Dossier. He claimed he'd only heard that in the media, but did not know it for a fact. Bizarrely, he did not seem to think it was necessary to find out who the actual parties were behind the dossier. He claimed that it was enough for him to know that political opponents of Trump had funded it.

He did not tell Trump about who funded it. Of course, he dismisses this as irrelevant.

He claimed that Cheryl Mills really was Hillary Clinton's lawyer. He also says Mills had been "scrubbed" as a target in the email investigation so I guess whoever Hillary wants in the room with her is fine, so long as Comey's dream team had "scrubbed" her.

He claimed, falsely, that the Steele Dossier was only a minor part of the FISA application and that there was much, much more information included in it. This is false, as Congressional disclosures have shown.

Why did he claim this? Is he lying or just spectacularly uninformed? Is he being okey-doked by more plugged-in Obama sleeper agents?

After first denying meeting with Clapper and Brennan together -- I sense that he sensed that someone had a report ready to run on this -- he then admitted they had just had dinner together. With their spouses, he added. He denied using that as an opportunity to talk shop about Trump.

He claims he didn't leak the dossier briefing to CNN and doesn't know who did. He got shifty here, claiming that he thought Bret Baier was asking who had leaked the "non-classified public document" (the Steele Dossier) to the media. He pretended to think Baier was asking about that, instead of asking about who had leaked the existence of the briefing. (Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer again.) When asked if he had bothered to investigate who had leaked the fact of the dossier briefing, he said he hadn't, and that it didn't matter. He then pretended that this was just about a "nonclassified public document" rather than a very classifed briefing of the president.

He claimed, farcically, that Trump was briefed on the dossier to the exact extent that Obama was, that Obama had no informational advantage here. Brett Baier, to his discredit, did not bring up the Susan Rice "by the book" memo about Obama's order to keep as much of the Russia investigation from Trump. As Brett Baier didn't ask about this, Comey couldn't be asked how he could square his claim that Trump was just as well-briefed as Obama when Obama had his highest-ranking people in a special meeting telling them to keep as much from Trump as possible.

Catherine Herridge points out that Comey admitted to passing his stolen memos to three people -- his "friend" Richman, his godson-turned-lawyer Patrick Fitzgerald, and a third lawyer who he either didn't name or whose name I just forget.

Herridge points out that he admitted that two of those memos were later classified by the FBI, and his lawyers had to turn them over to the FBI.

But that doesn't cure the leak of classified information -- when Comey passed those memos to unauthorized persons, he committed a leak of classified information.

posted by Ace of Spades at 07:03 PM

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