AG Barr: James Comey is a Serial Liar

He didn't put it so bluntly -- he said instead that what James Comey says "is simply not true" -- but the import is the same.

[Martha McCallum] then played a clip of Comey trying to distance himself from the investigation. Comey told Wallace, "As a director sitting on top of an organization with 38,000 people, you can't run an investigation that's seven layers below you. You have to leave it to the career professionals to do...If a director tries to run an investigation, it can get mucked up in other kinds of ways given his or her responsibilities and the impossibility of reaching the work being done at the lower levels."

MacCallum asked Barr, "Do you believe that?"

In his signature forthright manner, which I find both amusing and endearing, he said, "No."

Barr explained, "One of the problems with what happened was precisely that they pulled the investigation up to the executive floors, and it was run and birddogged by a very small group of very high-level officials. The idea that this was seven layers below him is simply not true."

St. James of the Redwoods -- lying?!

I shan't believe it. I simply shannot!

More: Barr says that he does not believe -- or rather, that he's investigating -- the claims made by the FBI about why they opened this investigation, and if it's true that they only opened it after the Downer tip, or if they had already been unofficially running spies at Trump people before then.

He is also baffled that the FBI continued its sham investigation even after they learned the entire basis for it was a fiction.

[MacCALLUM:] "Was in fact the comment by Papadopoulos the real predication or was it a pretext for a pre-existing desire to take a look at the Trump campaign?

Interesting, Barr said, "By the time the President entered office, it was becoming clear that there was no basis to these allegations. Not just the dossier falling apart, but the information that they were relying on as to Page and to Papadopoulos."

Barr also says this, about James Comey trying to wrap himself in the protective cloth of the FBI itself, always claiming "you're attacking the brave agents of the FBI" when people are plainly criticizing him and the gang of hyperpartisan criminals he assigned to the Trump coup (and before that -- the same crew assigned to the Hillary Clinton "matter").

MACCALLUM: Jim Comey came out after you gave your last interview. You responded to the IG Horowitz's report and spoke out about that. And then he spoke with Chris Wallace and he said that the 17 mistakes and omissions that were uncovered in the FISA process, he attributed it to sloppiness largely. What do you say to that?

BARR: I think there's some of them very hard to square with the idea that these were just mistakes and sloppiness. I have said that a number of these episodes leave open the possibility of inferring bad faith or improper motive. But I hasten to add that, as I've said all along, that I've reached no determination on that, nor do I think a final determination on that is appropriate until all the evidence is there. The -- Horowitz himself in his testimony, I think pretty well summed it up, which is this could be on the one hand, at the very least, gross incompetence. On the other hand, it could also be improper motive, and he was not in a position to make that call. And that's why we have the US attorney, John Durham, looking into this.

MACCALLUM: Yeah, and I want to ask you about that in a moment. Are you surprised that James Comey is so convinced himself that all of this was completely above board? He came out and said there was no treason and there's no spying at all on the president.

BARR: Well, I think the IG report and the recent letter from the FISA court I think pulls the rug out from under that analysis. There was serious misconduct, as the court itself has said. And one of the things that I object to is the tact being taken by Comey, which is to suggest that people who are criticizing or trying to get to the bottom of the misconduct are somehow attacking the FBI. I think that's nonsense. We're criticizing and concerned about misconduct by a few actors at the top of the FBI, and they should be criticized if they engaged in serious misconduct. That doesn't mean we're criticizing the FBI, and I think the tact of trying to wrap yourself in the institution and say, gee, people who are criticizing the decisions I made are attacking the institution. I noticed people don't that as far as I'm concerned, people feel free to criticize me. And I don't say, gee, you're attacking the honest men and women of the Department of Justice. I think leaders, you know, have to own their decisions and are fair game if they make bad decisions.

Thank you for calling out this criminal for that habit of wrapping himself in the flag.

As John Wesley "Jack" Walsh said, "There's been something I've been waiting to say to you for twenty years. You're under arrest."

posted by Ace of Spades at 04:19 PM

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