Who Ya Gonna Believe, James Comey or Two Lying Transcripts of James Comey's Congressional Testimony?

Last week, the House released a transcript of James Comey testifying that the interviewing agents briefed him that they had seen no indications of deception in Michael Flynn's testimony.

Former FBI Director James Comey testified to the House Intelligence Committee that FBI agents did not believe that Michael Flynn, who was national security adviser, intentionally lied about talks with Russia’s ambassador, according to a newly unredacted report from the committee.

"Director Comey testified to the Committee that 'the agents…discerned no physical indications of deception," said a new version of the report obtained by Fox News on Friday. "They didn’t see any change in posture, in tone, in inflection, in eye contact. They saw nothing that indicated to them that he knew he was lying to them.'"

However, when later asked about this last month by Brett Baier, Comey claimed he'd never said that, never heard that, and didn't know how that particular #FakeNews got into the media.

"No, I saw that in the media,” Comey said last week on Fox News' "Special Report." "Someone misunderstood something I said. I didn’t believe that and didn’t say that."

Well, if the House transcript wasn't enough, how about the Senate transcript, too?

In a letter to the FBI and the Justice Department seeking documents, Mr. Grassley relates that Mr. Comey "touched on" the Flynn case before the Judiciary Committee on March 15, 2017. A "career, non-partisan law enforcement officer" was present and took notes. "According to that agent's contemporaneous notes," Mr. Grassley writes, "Director Comey specifically told us during that briefing that the FBI agents who interviewed Lt. General Michael Flynn, 'saw nothing that led them to believe [he was] lying.'"

Mr. Grassley says this contradicts Mr. Comey's "public statements during his current book tour denying any memory of those comments," and that Mr. Comey "led us to believe during that briefing" that "the Justice Department was unlikely to prosecute [ Mr. Flynn ] for false statements made in that interview."

The House Intelligence Committee has released a transcript of Mr. Comey saying the same thing about Mr. Flynn, so this is the second time Mr. Comey has been contradicted on the point.

The Wall Street Journal writes that the Form 302 interview record forms -- the only records the FBI maintains of interviews, remember -- are probably among the documents that are being sought from Rod Rosenstein, and can help us find out whether Comey was lying then, or lying now.

And of course Rod Rosenstein is citing Important National Security Concerns as a reason to withhold such documents from Congress.

Not to protect his friend Comey or anything.

By the way -- the WSJ says that the testimony they cite occurred March 19, 2017 -- over a month before Mueller was appointed Special Counsel (on May 17, 2017).

And what happened soon after that?

The FBI advised Comey to coordinate with Mueller about his then-pending June 2017 testimony.

I wonder if this coordination with Mueller helped Comey remember -- or unremember -- important facts between March and June of 2017.

You know who used to lie all the time, too? Comey's protege Jesus of Nazareth.

posted by Ace of Spades at 07:10 PM

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