Trump 19: Please Cry for Us Montenegro (and We Are so Sorry!)

[GreyhoundFan]

This is nauseating -- Agent Orange spoke before a group of evangelical leghumpers. "Trump to conservatives: 'We are under siege'"

Spoiler

Washington (CNN)President Donald Trump, speaking Thursday at the Faith & Freedom Coalition conference in Washington, said he would never let the evangelical community down, saying that "we are under siege" but that "we will come out bigger and better and stronger than ever."

The speech to a fawning audience, which came as fired FBI Director James Comey testified about Trump before the Senate, provided the President with positive feedback on what otherwise was a politically trying day.

"You didn't let me down and I will never, ever let you down, you know that," Trump said to applause.

"We will always support our evangelical community and defend your right and the right of all Americans to follow and to live by the teachings of their faith," he said. "And as you know, we are under siege. You understand that. But we will come out bigger and better and stronger than ever, you watch."

The withering criticism facing Trump around Washington was nowhere to be found during his speech, where the President received sustained applause every time he trumpeted one of his achievements. Like he did during the campaign, Trump left the podium multiple times to bathe in the applause he was receiving.

Not once did Trump mention Comey's testimony, where the former FBI director suggested Trump was a liar and left the door open to an obstruction of justice investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller.

"In my first 100 days and I don't think anybody has ever done more or certainly not much more," Trump said during a speech that primarily served as a Trump victory lap of his first five months in office. The President touted action on abortion policy, his move to allow preachers to talk politics from the pulpit and getting Neil Gorsuch named to the Supreme Court.

One of the biggest applause lines of the day came when Trump touted his decision to leave the Paris climate agreement, the sweeping international effort that aims to curb carbon emissions and stymie rising global temperatures.

"To protect those jobs and the sovereignty and freedom of the United States, I followed through on my promise to withdraw from the Paris climate accord," Trump said, leaving the podium to accept the applause. "Thank you. You understand it. You understand how bad it was for our country."

The event, where Trump was introduced by Faith & Freedom Coalition founder Ralph Reed, served as a mood boost for the president.

"We have taken a very strong position," he said of his decision to allow pastors to weigh in on politics. "You picked a winner."

Trump, seemingly aware that his legislative agenda is stalled in Congress as Washington's focus remains on Comey and Russia, also urged the conservative supporters to keep up their work and try to win more seats in the House and Senate.

"We have to build those numbers up because we are just not going to get votes" from Democrats, Trump said, blaming the opposing party with harming the country.

"If we had a plan that gave you the greatest health care ever in history, you wouldn't get one Democrat vote because they are obstructionists," Trump said. "They are bad right now for the country. They have gone so far left that I don't know if they can ever come back."

Good freaking grief. His pathological need for ego-stroking is ridiculous. And, evangelicals aren't "under siege", the American people are under siege.

[VixenToast]

1 hour ago, sawasdee said:

 

@VixenToast It's not Shakespeare! It's an old oral tradition - and the original would have been in Norman French anyway. Jean Anouilh used it - back in French - in his play "Becket" in the late 1950s.

The only contemporary record we have is by Edward Grim, and he says that the words were (translated)

"What miserable drones and traitors have I nourished and brought up in my household, who let their lord be treated with such shameful contempt by a low-born cleric?"

Doesn't have the same ring...

And Grim was at the murder, not the outburst by the King.

Forgive me, after rereading it does seem like I meant it was attributed to Shakespeare. I meant more like loving Shakespearean words, not just Shakespeare. I can't friggin type on this thing. I'm sorry, that came out so unclear, I feel so embarrassed. 

Blah, What I meaaaaan, is I like Turbulent better out of troublesome and meddlesome. It sound so kick ass and Shakespearean and somehow more threatening and irritating and terrible than the other two adjectives combined. 

But but but, apocryphal is always worded so much better. :'( 

[sawasdee]

Sorry @VixenToast didn't mean to nitpick!

I grew up hearing 'troublesome', 'meddlesome' and 'turbulent' - and you're right, turbulent is the best!

[onekidanddone]

I have an early morning appointment so I need to go to bed only I can't stop refreshing the UK elections.  Looks like, fingers crossed, another one of TT's buddies is going down. 

Soon Putty Poot is going to be one of his only foreign leader friends. Ugh. 

How many days until November 9, 2020?  I had the code in HTML I used for Bush 2 fora a count down clock but I think the file was deleted when I got a new computer.

[VixenToast]

Omg my mom is on the phone with my very conservative aunt and they are debating. Omg. I'm just gonna keep lurking on the interwebs to ignore. Wow. This never happens.

[JMarie]

Someone being interviewed by Rachel Maddow made a comment about today being seven months since election day.

IT'S ONLY BEEN SEVEN MONTHS, AND LOOK AT THE CONFUSION HE'S MANAGED TO CREATE!!!!!!!

[Cartmann99]

2 hours ago, apple1 said:

I had those thoughts - and I have not personally experienced sexual abuse, but certainly the powerless feeling and the attempt to neither encourage nor offend in a variety of situations is completely familiar - and I suspect, familiar to all who find themselves in situations of lacking power or control, many kinds of those situations.

When I first read that Comey asked not to be left alone with Trump, my first thought was of someone being sexually harassed. There were times today during Comey's testimony, when the questions being asked of him made me feel very uncomfortable for him. He obviously felt trapped, and didn't know how to deal with Trump. Watching some of the Senators be all "Well, I just wouldn't have put up with that!" made me want to smack them. 

[sawasdee]

@onekidanddone I'm the same - I need to see the results!  I LOVE Corbyn - he's real Labour, the party I grew up with, and was a member of for almost 25 years. Blair made me resign membership.

If he can get it to a hung Parliament, from being 20%+ behind - he's the best leader we've had in years!

[candygirl200413]

@Cartmann99 I was thinking the same thing while watching the testimony today. I was also on twitter and there were many republican reporters who were like "well why did he keep calling him if he didn't want to be alone with him?" I was like wow where has this narrative been heard before? Especially because while this is going on, there has been coverage in my area about the Cosby trial simultaneously.

[WhatWouldJohnCrichtonDo?]

I like this sign better. One like it was at the church my kids went to for Vacation Bible School this week.

Spoiler

I always like seeing these around our neighborhood. I need to get one!

[fraurosena]

This made me giggle.

And this made me raise my eyebrows. If true, his conduct has truly had very far-reaching consequences.

 

[fraurosena]

A new Keith Olbermann!

 

[nvmbr02]

And someone got his phone back...

Complete vindication? I don't think he knows what vindication means. 

[formergothardite]

Complete vindication? Not hardly. That must be what his handlers are telling him to lower the chances of a tantrum. 

[GreyhoundFan]

Yeah, Twitler is a bit mistaken: "Trump thinks he got ‘total vindication’ from Comey. Except he didn’t."

Spoiler

As former FBI director James B. Comey tells it, the president pursued him with an almost singular focus to say one thing publicly: President Trump is not under investigation.

Trump finally got what he wanted Thursday, when Comey testified to the Senate Intelligence Committee. Here's an excerpt of an exchange between Comey and Trump ally Sen. James E. Risch (R-Idaho):

RISCH: I gather from all this that you're willing to say now that, while you were director, the president of the United States was not under investigation. Is that a fair statement?

COMEY: That's correct.

See? In Trump's view, that's “complete and total vindication.”

Except the president is completely missing the point of Comey's testimony in the first place.

As usual with Trump's tweets, there's so much packed into 140 characters. So let's take things one by one.

Reason No. 1 Trump shouldn't feel vindicated: Comey wasn't testifying about whether Trump was under investigation

Comey didn't agree to nearly three hours public of hearings to talk about whether the president was/is under investigation by the FBI, as it relates to Russia meddling in the U.S. election. He was testifying that the president tried to interfere in that investigation, especially as it relates to Trump's former national security adviser, Michael Flynn.

Comey made clear he's pretty sure the president inappropriately meddled in the FBI investigation. And Comey did everything but directly accuse the president of obstruction of justice.

“I took it as a very disturbing thing, very concerning,” Comey testified when he says the president asked him in a private Oval Office meeting to drop the investigation into Flynn. “But that's a conclusion I'm sure the special counsel will work toward to try and understand what the intention was there, and whether that's an offense.”

Reason No. 2: Comey may be a “leaker,” but it didn't turn out well for the president

Comey said he decided to take the extraordinary step to share with the New York Times his secret memos of the president's conversations because the president was so out of his lane. “I thought that might prompt the appointment of a special counsel,” Comey told senators.

Guess what? Now we have a special counsel, who has wide latitude and the FBI's resources to investigate whatever he wants under the umbrella of Trump and Russia, including any potential obstruction of justice.

Reason No. 3: Others in the FBI opposed telling Trump he wasn't under investigation 

If Comey hadn't been FBI director, Trump might have never received assurance, privately or publicly, that he wasn't under investigation.

Comey testified Thursday that it was a controversial decision among senior FBI leadership to tell the president he wasn't under investigation. But Comey ultimately decided to oblige if the president asked.

“I thought it was fair to say what was literally true,” Comey said. “There was not a counterintelligence investigation of Mr. Trump, and I decided in the moment to say it, given the nature of our conversation.”

Reason No. 4: Votes cast and cast votes are two different things

Another reason Trump may be feeling vindicated: Comey testified that he saw no evidence that any Russia meddling changed votes after they were cast.

That backs up a key Trump/Republican talking point: When Trump finally acknowledged the intelligence community's universal conclusion that Russia interfered in the U.S. election, he did it with a “yeah, but” clause — the “yeah, but” being that there's no evidence any votes cast were changed by Russian hacking afterward.

But Trump wants to take the evidence further than the intelligence community is willing to go. Trump's lawyer said this Thursday: “He also admitted that there is no evidence that a single vote changed as a result of any Russian interference.”

That's not quite true. Comey and other intelligence chiefs have testified to Congress that it's possible (and nearly impossible to quantify) that Russia's campaign of fake news and hacking of Democratic emails changed the way some people decided to cast their vote.

This isn't the first time Trump has said he feels vindicated about facts that don't really line up.

Remember earlier this year, when House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) trekked up the White House to tell the president that some of his campaign had been caught up in U.S. spying of foreigners? Well, afterward, in response to a reporter's question, Trump said this:

...

Which, again, totally missed the point of what Nunes found.

Trump had never said anything publicly about whether his team was caught up in incidental collection that needed vindication. Trump had accused President Barack Obama of directly wiretapping Trump Tower. Nunes's “findings” (which The Post reported came from White House aides) do nothing to back that claim up. Nunes ended up temporarily stepping down from his committee's Russia investigation for briefing the president on all this, and there is still zero evidence to Trump's wiretapping allegations:

...

Trump may have got closer to what he wanted Thursday, when Comey testified that the president isn't under investigation. But in focusing on that, Trump is totally missing the point of why Comey testified in the first place.

 

[FeministShrew]

@WhatWouldJohnCrichtonDo? thanks for posting that! I was behind a car yesterday with that on it as a sticker, but it was too small to read.  I need to get one for my truck. 

 

[Destiny]

3 hours ago, nvmbr02 said:

Complete vindication? I don't think he knows what vindication means. 

Uh. Does he need to go find an adult to help him with the dictionary? Cos that's not what vindication means. Bless his heart. 

[sawasdee]

Off topic slightly, but can anyone tell me if there have been ads run against a Congressional witness before? This strikes me as utterly bizarre!

[fraurosena]

This is the government of stupid, according to this bipartisan article.

Spoiler

Restraint is a conservative value. It’s also a tremendous tool in strategy and planning. And it’s exactly the thing that partisans seem to have in short supply.

In the days leading up to the three hour testimony of former FBI director, James Comey, speculation and anticipation mounted. CNN had an actual countdown clock. Twitter was on fire. But I had some words of caution for those expecting a courtroom drama that ended with Donald Trump being taken away in impeachment handcuffs: Lower your expectations.

It’s fascinating watching everyone stake out their positions the night before testimony. Each declaring vindication.

It hasn’t started.

— Ben (@BenHowe) June 8, 2017

Few listened of course. Each side preemptively declared victory after Comey released his opening statement on Wednesday and then, following the hearing, declared victory again. Opinions vary on what conclusion can actually be drawn, but to me it’s obvious.

Everyone is stupid.

The Democrats are stupid because they’ve spent the last several months firing their entire arsenal at every Trump ice cream cone and declaring the scoops to have been ordered by the Kremlin. I have my own opinions on Russia’s love of all things Trump (and vice versa), but tend to treat them as speculative opinions. I don’t pronounce him a Russian spy or declare that Vladmir Putin is controlling Trump via voice command through a surreptitious earpiece. Though believe me, some people do.

It’s not that I think accusations of collusion or involvement are without merit. Certainly there’s a lot of smoke – a ton of smoke – for there to be no fire at all. But it’s just common sense to keep powder relatively dry as the facts unfold. In the meantime, I focus on what we know based on evidence: Trump is a moronic, childish, buffoon who is in over his head and has a dangerous tendency to listen to no one except his own gigantic gut.

If evidence of legitimate, genuine Russian collusion had come out, I’d be shouting “impeach!” from the mountaintops. But when you shout “impeach!” from the mountaintops before the evidence is in, you set yourself up for two things: 1) Potentially eating crow when the evidence doesn’t cooperate with your presumption or 2) Undermining other important stories because you went straight for the top shelf and now no one remembers that there was a baseline expectation.

That baseline expectation being the moronic, childish, buffoonish behavior that we’ve all come to know and disdain from President Trump.

The revelations of Comey’s testimony are primarily not, in fact, revelations. But they were confirmations. Confirmations that Donald Trump is exactly as inadequate at his job as we believed he would be. Confirmation that sometimes his buffoonery rubs elbows with illegality, or at least breathes the same air. Confirmations of all the things that detractors such as myself claimed would be the downfall of his presidency.

But thanks to the so-called “resistance”, and the incessant need of every single action by Trump to be analyzed as Russian code, the whole “he’s an idiot” thing is treated more like a known known that no one really cares about. The given quantity.

The underpinning of this hearing was “Well, we all already know he’s an idiot, but did he do anything illegal?”

When the current answer to that question is “no”, and you’ve made “yes” your hill to die on, it’s pretty nearly impossible to pick your marker back up and hedge to “well he’s still an idiot who screwed up.” Who will listen? Or care?

For any president in recent memory, this testimony would have been disastrous. It shows incompetence and bad character. It shows him as being petty, untrustworthy, and not overly concerned with ethical behavior. But instead of that being the story, and a big one, this is already met with a yawn by a public and even press that already knows he’s an unscrupulous liar and were busy salivating about treason or spying or other fanciful hopes that were pinned on Comey’s testimony.

So way to go, organized “resistance” fighters: barring any new information from the current ongoing investigations, you’ve de-toothed your entire effort.

Restraint. Look into it.

It’s not all bad news for Democrats, however. Luckily for them, their opposition is the stupidest party in the history of the Stupid Party.

The suffering Republicans will endure is farther in the future but obvious and easy to see coming. They aren’t even denying Trump is a pompous, lying, windbag who is so far out of his depth that being in his cabinet has all the hallmarks of parenting a toddler. A rich toddler who can declare you an enemy combatant.

Sure, some Republicans like Chris Christie have tried to build bridges with the collapsing infrastructure of White House credibility by saying Trump is an outsider dealing with a steep learning curve. But no one believes that. No one.

I’ve yet to speak to one Trump supporter that believes he’s not a habitual liar. The best response is usually “Well he’s not the first lying politician.”

They KNOW he’s a liar. But you know… Hillary.

So how does the party think that will play in 2018? Or 2020? I hate to say I told you so, but what I have been shouting from the mountaintop since he first threw his hat in the ring is that Donald Trump as president will deliver on short-term wants at the cost of long term needs.

He’s making the party so toxic and unpalatable to the public that at this rate, we’ll be lucky to have Republican representation at all in the coming elections and years, much less conservative representation.

And the GOP response to that? “GOOD!” They love it. They think it’s high time someone didn’t give two craps what the polls say.

“THEY WERE WRONG LAST ELECTION!”

True. They were wrong. But what they were wrong about, and what they were right about, should be a warning to Republicans. A warning they won’t heed.

The polls were wrong about a lot of the votes on the edges of some key states which ultimately flipped the electoral college in Donald Trump’s favor. What they were RIGHT about, was that Hillary Clinton was ahead in national popular vote by about 3 million votes.

And this was when Donald Trump was measurably more popular than he is right now.

Given these facts, what will alter the course? Certainly not Donald Trump. If you don’t know by now that this man doesn’t change, I can’t help you.

You can point to Neil Gorsuch all you want, but in the end, the Republican party is still propping up a buffoon who can’t even exert enough self control to avoid making threats using verifiably false information. Who can’t survive an intel meeting with a foreign adversary without leaking classified information that another country was kind enough to give us. Who doesn’t know how to talk to the Director of the FBI about an investigation without accidentally potentially obstructing justice.

If in two years the best response to all of that is “but Gorshuch!” then, my friends, the #NeverTrump you mock as being on the wrong side of history will be writing your epitaph.

He has some valid points, about republicans, yes. But it was what he said about democrats that I found quite insightful. I hadn't looked at things in that light before. 

 

12 minutes ago, sawasdee said:

Off topic slightly, but can anyone tell me if there have been ads run against a Congressional witness before? This strikes me as utterly bizarre!

And a private citizen to boot! 

[47of74]

I saw Seth Myers describe Agent Orange as "your druggie cousin who can no longer surprise you."

It's about 4:50 into the video.

LOL

[GreyhoundFan]

"There’s no indication Comey violated the law. Trump may be about to."

Spoiler

President Trump’s declaration that the Thursday testimony of former FBI director James B. Comey was a “total and complete vindication” despite “so many false statements and lies” was the sort of brashly triumphant and loosely-grounded-in-reality statement we’ve come to expect from the commander in chief. It was news that came out a bit later, news about plans to file a complaint against Comey for a revelation he made during that Senate Intelligence Committee hearing meeting, that may end up being more damaging to the president.

CNN first reported that Trump’s outside counsel, Marc Kasowitz, plans to file complaints with the inspector general of the Justice Department and the Senate Judiciary Committee about Comey’s testimony. At issue was Comey’s revelation that he provided a memo documenting a conversation with Trump to a friend to be shared with the New York Times.

As the news broke, I was on the phone with Stephen Kohn, partner at a law firm focused on whistleblower protection. We’d been talking about where the boundaries lay for Comey in what he could and couldn’t do with the information about his conversations with the president. Kohn’s response to the story about Kasowitz, though, was visceral.

“Here is my position on that: Frivolous grandstanding,” he said. “First of all, I don’t believe the inspector general would have jurisdiction over Comey any more, because he’s no longer a federal employee.” The inspector general’s job is to investigate wrongdoing by employees of the Justice Department, of which Comey is no longer, thanks to Trump.

“But, second,” he continued, “initiating an investigation because you don’t like somebody’s testimony could be considered obstruction. And in the whistleblower context, it’s both evidence of retaliation and, under some laws, could be an adverse retaliatory act itself.”

In other words, Comey, here, is an employee who is blowing the whistle, to use the idiom, on his former boss. That boss wants to punish him for doing so. That’s problematic — especially if there’s no evidence that Comey actually violated any law that would trigger punishment.

This is where my original line of inquiry to Kohn comes back into play.

Comey testified under oath that, following a conversation with Trump in the Oval Office, he wrote a memo documenting what was said. Last month, he provided that memo to a friend and asked that it be shared with the New York Times.

That, as described, is not illegal, Kohn said.

“Obviously you can report on a conversation with the president,” he said. “What the president does isn’t confidential or classified.” There is the principle of “executive privilege,” which protects the president’s deliberative process as he does his job. But that wouldn’t cover a conversation like the one between Comey and Trump.

In a piece he wrote for The Post on Thursday, Kohn described a 2003 case involving Robert MacLean, an air marshal who was fired for leaking information about a Homeland Security Department decision. That case established a relevant precedent for the Comey question. The Supreme Court determined that the DHS rule prohibiting leaks was insufficient cause for firing in the whistleblower context, since it wasn’t a law. By extension, even if Trump tried to argue that Comey violated executive privilege, that, too, is not codified in law.

If the information in that memo Comey gave to his friend was classified, the situation changes. But in his testimony, Comey described how he protected classified information in memos he wrote documenting conversations. There’s no indication, despite Trump’s lawyer’s cleverly worded statement on Thursday, that Comey crossed that important legal line.

Comey gave nonclassified notes about a conversation he had with the president to a friend with the express purpose of releasing that information to the media. In Kohn’s eyes, there’s nothing remotely illegal about that — making the new “frivolous grandstanding” from Kasowitz particularly problematic.

“The constitutional right to go to the press with information on matters of public concern, as long as you’re not doing it in a way that will bring out classified information,” Kohn said, “the reason why that is protected constitutionally is that the courts — including the U.S. Supreme Court — have ruled that the public has a constitutional right to hear this information.” In other words, it’s constitutionally protected speech.

...

It’s also worth noting that Trump’s tweeted attacks on the veracity of Comey’s testimony are also unlikely to bear much fruit. Making a mistake in testimony is not in itself illegal. When Comey made such a mistake last month, the FBI corrected his statement after the fact. Perjury requires a demonstration of intent, that the person meant to lie. That would be a difficult case to make legally.

We can safely assume, though, that Trump’s team is aware that Comey likely didn’t violate any laws, and that they are simply using these arguments as a tool for undermining the parts of his testimony that they didn’t like. How they’re doing it, though, could make their problems worse.

Kohn summarized the new minefield into which Trump and his lawyer might be walking.

“They know that they’re not going to get anything out of Comey on this, because there’s no evidence,” he added. “But they’re clearly trying to create a chilling effect. Not a chilling effect on classified information. … This is a chilling effect on people not to talk about conversations they had with the president that are not classified as a matter of law.”

“That is illegal,” he said. “That is unconstitutional.”

"Frivolous grandstanding" -- describes TT to a T.

[December]

They must be very dedicated to keeping those tourism $$$ out! 

Signs like these may be more bold than usual, but only slightly more so, judging from what I've seen in NC and other states (and I don't just mean Southern ones). 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Mr. Comey and All the President’s Lies"

Spoiler

Weeks after being described by Donald Trump as a “nut job,” James Comey on Thursday deftly recast his confrontation with the president as a clash between the legal principles at the foundation of American democracy, and a venal, self-interested politician who does not recognize, let alone uphold, them.

In sworn testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Mr. Comey, the former F.B.I. director, made clear that he had no confidence in the president’s integrity. Why? “The nature of the person,” he said. Confronted with low presidential character for the first time in his career, Mr. Comey began writing meticulous notes of every conversation with Mr. Trump. “I was honestly concerned that he might lie about the nature of our meeting,” he said.

Mr. Comey said he was stunned during one Oval Office meeting by Mr. Trump’s request — which he very reasonably understood as an order — to drop the F.B.I. investigation into Michael Flynn. Mr. Flynn had been forced to resign as national security adviser the day before, after lying about his contacts with Russia. And Russia, Mr. Comey usefully reminded the senators, had gone to unprecedented lengths to disrupt the 2016 presidential election, using “overwhelming” technological firepower.

“This is about America,” Mr. Comey kept saying. Russia “tried to shape the way we think, we vote, we act — that is a big deal,” he added. “They’re coming after America. ... They want to undermine our credibility in the face of the world.”

And yet Mr. Trump, the beneficiary of Moscow’s meddling, has never appeared even slightly concerned by this Russian attack. He told Mr. Comey to stand down and fired him when he refused. “I was fired because of the Russia investigation,” Mr. Comey testified. “That is a very big deal.” As he decried Russia’s attempt to “dirty” American democratic institutions, Mr. Comey could as well have been talking about Mr. Trump’s behavior.

With restrained fury, Mr. Comey described President Trump’s remarks last month that the bureau was a mess and that the director had lost the trust of his agents as “lies, plain and simple.”

Confronted later with the sworn testimony of a dignified and affronted lawman, the White House press office, its own credibility in tatters, was left to feebly insist, “The president is not a liar.”

Mr. Comey is a wily bureaucratic infighter, a sometimes self-righteous official who wrote his notes with care so they would remain unclassified, and therefore eligible to be released to the public. He acknowledged that he engineered some of the notes’ release, which The Times reported last month, to spur the appointment of a special counsel in the Russia investigation. After firing Mr. Comey, Mr. Trump thought he’d cow him by tweeting about the possibility that their private conversations were taped. Mr. Comey bested him with a single sentence on Thursday, telling the panel he hoped there were tapes, as “corroboration” of the abuse of power he’d witnessed.

Republicans asked Mr. Comey why he didn’t say publicly that Mr. Trump wasn’t under investigation, which is just what Mr. Trump wanted. He replied that he didn’t want to reverse himself should Mr. Trump later come under investigation. Republicans asked why he didn’t try to educate a president so ignorant of the F.B.I.’s role that he risked incriminating himself. But Mr. Comey wasn’t suggesting Mr. Trump was foolhardy or inexperienced: He portrayed him as an unscrupulous leader whose request put the nation at risk. The Russia investigation, he said, is “an effort to protect our country from a new threat that quite honestly will not go away anytime soon.”

There is an aspect to public servants like Mr. Comey that Mr. Trump and his administration seem unable to comprehend, to their peril — a dedication to their roles that places service above any president’s glory.

When Mr. Trump demanded that Mr. Comey pledge his personal “loyalty,” he refused, offering only his “honesty.” When Loretta Lynch, President Barack Obama’s attorney general, asked him last year to call the criminal investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server “a matter,” he reluctantly complied, but he was repelled by the “political” nature of the request, he said Thursday.

The F.B.I.’s mission, Mr. Comey declared, “is to protect the American people and uphold the Constitution of the United States.” Let’s hope that the principles he articulated, and those who hold them, guide this investigation in the days ahead.

Interesting point: "...wrote his notes with care so they would remain unclassified..." Yes, the notes were written well and with a thought that they'd need to get released publicly to have an effect.

[fraurosena]

Wowsers. Speaking of obstruction of justice!

From the letter:

"Today I write to urge you to encourage cooperation with congressional oversight [...] and to alert you to a bureaucratic effort by the Office of Legal Counsel to insulate the Executive Branch from scrutiny by the elected representatives of the American people." 

"I know from experience that a partisan response to oversight only discourages bipartisanship, decreases transparency, and diminishes the crucial role of the American people's elected representatives."

"Therefore I respectfully request that the White House rescind this OLC opinion and any policy of ignoring oversight requests from non-chairmen. [...] It obstructs what ought to be the natural flow of information between agencies and committees, which frustrates the Constitutional function of legislating."

 

What is utterly amazing, yet not, is the fact that Grassley has to explain how trias politica works, and more importantly, how the Constitution works.  That's just 

[fraurosena]

1 hour ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"There’s no indication Comey violated the law. Trump may be about to."

  Hide contents

President Trump’s declaration that the Thursday testimony of former FBI director James B. Comey was a “total and complete vindication” despite “so many false statements and lies” was the sort of brashly triumphant and loosely-grounded-in-reality statement we’ve come to expect from the commander in chief. It was news that came out a bit later, news about plans to file a complaint against Comey for a revelation he made during that Senate Intelligence Committee hearing meeting, that may end up being more damaging to the president.

CNN first reported that Trump’s outside counsel, Marc Kasowitz, plans to file complaints with the inspector general of the Justice Department and the Senate Judiciary Committee about Comey’s testimony. At issue was Comey’s revelation that he provided a memo documenting a conversation with Trump to a friend to be shared with the New York Times.

As the news broke, I was on the phone with Stephen Kohn, partner at a law firm focused on whistleblower protection. We’d been talking about where the boundaries lay for Comey in what he could and couldn’t do with the information about his conversations with the president. Kohn’s response to the story about Kasowitz, though, was visceral.

“Here is my position on that: Frivolous grandstanding,” he said. “First of all, I don’t believe the inspector general would have jurisdiction over Comey any more, because he’s no longer a federal employee.” The inspector general’s job is to investigate wrongdoing by employees of the Justice Department, of which Comey is no longer, thanks to Trump.

“But, second,” he continued, “initiating an investigation because you don’t like somebody’s testimony could be considered obstruction. And in the whistleblower context, it’s both evidence of retaliation and, under some laws, could be an adverse retaliatory act itself.”

In other words, Comey, here, is an employee who is blowing the whistle, to use the idiom, on his former boss. That boss wants to punish him for doing so. That’s problematic — especially if there’s no evidence that Comey actually violated any law that would trigger punishment.

This is where my original line of inquiry to Kohn comes back into play.

Comey testified under oath that, following a conversation with Trump in the Oval Office, he wrote a memo documenting what was said. Last month, he provided that memo to a friend and asked that it be shared with the New York Times.

That, as described, is not illegal, Kohn said.

“Obviously you can report on a conversation with the president,” he said. “What the president does isn’t confidential or classified.” There is the principle of “executive privilege,” which protects the president’s deliberative process as he does his job. But that wouldn’t cover a conversation like the one between Comey and Trump.

In a piece he wrote for The Post on Thursday, Kohn described a 2003 case involving Robert MacLean, an air marshal who was fired for leaking information about a Homeland Security Department decision. That case established a relevant precedent for the Comey question. The Supreme Court determined that the DHS rule prohibiting leaks was insufficient cause for firing in the whistleblower context, since it wasn’t a law. By extension, even if Trump tried to argue that Comey violated executive privilege, that, too, is not codified in law.

If the information in that memo Comey gave to his friend was classified, the situation changes. But in his testimony, Comey described how he protected classified information in memos he wrote documenting conversations. There’s no indication, despite Trump’s lawyer’s cleverly worded statement on Thursday, that Comey crossed that important legal line.

Comey gave nonclassified notes about a conversation he had with the president to a friend with the express purpose of releasing that information to the media. In Kohn’s eyes, there’s nothing remotely illegal about that — making the new “frivolous grandstanding” from Kasowitz particularly problematic.

“The constitutional right to go to the press with information on matters of public concern, as long as you’re not doing it in a way that will bring out classified information,” Kohn said, “the reason why that is protected constitutionally is that the courts — including the U.S. Supreme Court — have ruled that the public has a constitutional right to hear this information.” In other words, it’s constitutionally protected speech.

...

It’s also worth noting that Trump’s tweeted attacks on the veracity of Comey’s testimony are also unlikely to bear much fruit. Making a mistake in testimony is not in itself illegal. When Comey made such a mistake last month, the FBI corrected his statement after the fact. Perjury requires a demonstration of intent, that the person meant to lie. That would be a difficult case to make legally.

We can safely assume, though, that Trump’s team is aware that Comey likely didn’t violate any laws, and that they are simply using these arguments as a tool for undermining the parts of his testimony that they didn’t like. How they’re doing it, though, could make their problems worse.

Kohn summarized the new minefield into which Trump and his lawyer might be walking.

“They know that they’re not going to get anything out of Comey on this, because there’s no evidence,” he added. “But they’re clearly trying to create a chilling effect. Not a chilling effect on classified information. … This is a chilling effect on people not to talk about conversations they had with the president that are not classified as a matter of law.”

“That is illegal,” he said. “That is unconstitutional.”

"Frivolous grandstanding" -- describes TT to a T.

I agree. Frivolous and grandiose. 

From the way he is trying to defend himself, it seems as if he's attempting to win in the court of public opinion. It worked for him against Hillary in the elections - or so he thinks - and he believes that he can win this argument that way too. 

Boy is he going to get a rude awakening when he finds out that public opinion won't matter in cases of legality...