Comey Deserved to be Fired, but so does Trump

[KeithE]

Comey deserved to be fired.

1) In July 2016, Comey gave Hillary a pass on gross mishandling of classified information. As one who has handled much classified data, I know I would have been relieved of duty if I had done such mishandling for mere convenience.

2) After announcing that decision not to prosecute Hillary, he sought to defend himself by chastising Hillary for negligence. Not professional.

3) In October 2016, he sought to absolve himself of further concealing Hillary email issues that came to his attention (within 2 weeks of the election) thinking to avoid any criticism of himself and in the process affected the election negatively for Hillary.

4) Why didn’t he feel it necessary to mention ongoing investigation of Trump for Russian collusion! Did he merely believe Hillary would win and therefore unconcerned about covering himself about what he knew about Trump?

5) At that time, he said his agents did not have time to rule of those new found Hillary issues, but they did by Nov 6.

6) He has not hustled the FBI investigation into Russian connections, when the nation clearly needs it to be finished.

7) He failed to accurately correct the partisan exaggeration of Ted Cruz when Cruz incorrectly said there were 100’s to 1000’s classified emails on Weiner’s computer; he merely said those numbers of emails were not necessarily classified. Later in that same day, the FBI agents looking into this matter said there were far fewer emails that reached Weiner’s computer.

8 ) Throughout this time, Comey has been making his decisions on public disclosures on trying to maintain a public stance of non-partisanship instead on the legal facts.

But Trump deserves to be impeached (and removed / fired ) on multiple bases.

In just this case, Trump was probably smoldering for months, and . Reading these letters: , , ),

we are asked to believe (1) that Trump was upset over Comey’s ill treatment of Hillary (does not meet the smell test) and (2) that the DoJ had told Trump three times that there was no case against Trump or his associates (subservients telling the boss what he wants to hear when that is clearly not the case).

And then Trump, Pence, Huckabee-Sanders have all lied about the chain of these events to the press (saying Sessions/Rosenstein initiated Comey's firing) - .

Then yesterday May 10 Trump , barring US news media, but allowing Russian media reporters and takes pictures in the meeting - a security flap for sure. And then we hear he gave the name of a country that heard a classified tip - a security volition for sure.

I’ll make a larger case at impeachment at a later time. and counting is big among them.

[Jon Estes]

[Jim]

[Haruo]

I'm inclined to view Obama a bit less negatively and Trump a bit more seriously than Jim, but overall I think there's a lot of truth in that last post.

[Sandy]

Comey had requested expansion of FBI resources for the Russian collusion investigation, because the department heads of the intelligence agencies all report there is evidence which needs to be investigated and evaluated. In response to a question from Senator Feinstein, Clapper acknowledged that the agencies had evidence to warrant an investigation. Apparently, there'e enough to start issuing subpoenas, and of course, they've already got the information on Manafort, Flynn and Page. Flynn has already jumped ahead and offered testimony in exchange for immunity from prosecution, and Page lawyered up.

To dismiss this as partisan resentment on the part of the Democrats over the election is to lack any kind of understanding of what is going on, and is buying into the conservative media's deception and deflection. Every intelligence agency head in the country has affirmed that the Russians were directly involved in hacking email accounts, including in the DNC, and dumping masses of fake documents purporting to be communication between party officials with the clear intent of swaying voters in the election. The only reason anyone would not be demanding an independent investigation into this whole thing, including the Trump campaign officials who were clearly involved, is that they are putting party over country. The old mantra of blaming the mainstream media for creating a crisis, and for having a liberal bias is a crock of baloney. Prove with facts that they are wrong and slanted. I've repeatedly said that here, and none of the conservatives have produced a scrap of evidence, in the face of facts that several of us post regularly. If the Democrats had done this, not only would the conservative media be playing the video clips 24/7, but the GOP would be screaming for an independent investigation. Look at all the taxpayer money and time they wasted on their eight or nine Benghazi investigations, when even the official one turned up nothing that warranted the hysteria. Noting that the Republicans have the power to shut down this entire investigation, there are only two things keeping it going. One is that the intelligence agencies keep turning up more evidence. The other is that public pressure is pushing Republicans to keep the House and Senate committees going.

After the campaign, I have a really hard time buying that Trump fired Comey because he mistreated Hillary Clinton by talking bad about her to Congress after releasing a report that cleared her. Comey signed off on a report that concluded, from the evidence gathered in the investigation, that there was not enough to support the charges and that all of the emails in her private server, including the 30,000 that Trump kept insisting were missing, had been accounted for, read, and determined not to be relevant. Then he went to Congress, and left the impression that there was more evidence than the report contained. That was bizarre, and improper, and probably a significant enough violation to warrant his dismissal then, since his comments were not consistent with the report that bore his signature. But the Trump campaign never acknowledge the facts of the report. So now he sympathizes, says she was mistreated and was wronged in order to throw Comey under the bus. Yeah, right.

[David Flick]

[JE Pettibone]

[Sandy]

Blaming the nebulous and undefined "mainstream media" actually goes back to Nixon, who didn't welcome the scrutiny. Over time, conservatives have made "mainstream media" a scapegoat to blame anything that doesn't suit their prejudices and biases. Even if the mainstream media were as bad, or as biased, as claimed, and I see no evidence offered whatsoever to prove that point, the response would not be to create a "conservative media" that is less professional, less factual, and more founded in commentary aimed at relegating those who hold a different perspective to second class status than to restoring balance and accountability.

Jim's rant is full of cliches and standard complains. Every president lies, everyone is corrupt, Washington is a swamp, everyone is out for themselves, and we ought to just sit down and take what we've got because it's not different than what we had, yadda, yadda, yadda. Those are easy things to say, but that whole attitude is a cop-out. It's an excuse to dismiss anything that you don't understand, or don't want to, and go back to your couch or chair to be willfully ignorant, and apathetically uninvolved. It's caving in to the idea that you're not going to make a difference anyway, so why try? It is an attitude based subjectively on feelings, and a perception based on picking and choosing what you want to hear, and what you don't. It's easy to sit around and whine, and it doesn't require anything of us. We live in an age where we can find straight up information, without any media interpretation, but that takes effort, and once we find the truth, it requires action, not a dismissive rant.

If you read much of what Jim posted here, related to politics, his comments and choice of words made his racial views very clear. Racial perspective has a powerful affect on perspective, it skews the ability to discern facts, and it destroys objectivity. Jim's obvious perspective on that subject singularly dismisses his credibility in that post above, as far as I am concerned. I'll make no further comment on that.

[KeithE]

[Sandy]

[KeithE]

[David Flick]

[Sandy]

Most polls that use similar methods and numbers of responses wind up in the same general ball park. Depending on the margin of error, Gallup and Quinnipiac usually run pretty close. The figure I hear cited regarding the percentage of Trump's base that continues to support him at this point, up until a couple of weeks ago, was 96%. But what does that actually say? Losing 4% of your base within 100 days of taking office isn't a good thing, especially when your candidacy only accounted for 46% of the total vote. Trump won electoral votes in 6 states by less than 4% of the vote, three of those by a fraction of one percentage point, so a 4% drop in base support would be significant.

There's no basis for questioning the accuracy of most polls, and Quinnipiac is right up there with some of the more well known pollsters. Factoring in their margin of error, they were as accurate as any other poll on election day. They had Clinton up by 2 nationally, getting that almost on the numbers. They picked every state easily within the margin of error, and got all but two of the Senate races correct, but still within the margin of error.

[Jon Estes]

[Sandy]

[KeithE]

[JE Pettibone]

[KeithE]

[JE Pettibone]

KEITH:: And now his loose lips.


Ed: Note KeiTh the report to which you have linked says "Two former officials knowledgeable of the situation confirmed to CNN that the main points of the Post story are accurate: The President shared classified information with the Russian foreign minister." The White House says the story is false. Sounds like "he said, she said ", to me. To accept the report I need to know more, who are the two former officials and why are they "former".

Freedom of the press also, requires a responciable press, and I am not persuaded that release of this story as quoted is responciable.

What do you think this morning after Trump's tweet?

Ed: Haven't seen it

[Sandy]

What McMasters is "denying" isn't the problem. Take a look and see what the facts are.

http://www.msnbc.com/the-last-word

It's in the segment called "White House Defends Trump." Seems like there's a little bit of diversion there away from the real issue.

[Jon Estes]

[Jon Estes]