A must-read in the New York Times:
“As the F.B.I. investigated Hillary Clinton and the Trump campaign, James Comey tried to keep the bureau out of politics but plunged it into the center of a bitter election.”
A must-read in the New York Times:
“As the F.B.I. investigated Hillary Clinton and the Trump campaign, James Comey tried to keep the bureau out of politics but plunged it into the center of a bitter election.”
FBI Director James Comey said Americans “should be aware of foreign efforts to undermine confidence in U.S. elections and mindful of the possibility that what they’re reading might be part of an organized disinformation campaign,” the AP reports.
Said Comey: “The most important thing to be done is people need to be aware of the possibility that what they’re reading has been shaped by troll farms looking to push a message on Twitter to undermine our confidence.”
FBI Director James Comey wanted to write a New York Times op-ed revealing Russia’s campaign to influence the U.S. presidential election back in the summer of 2016 — but then-President Obama stopped it, according to Newsweek.
“Comey pitched the idea of writing an op-ed about the Russian campaign during a meeting in the White House Situation Room in June or July.”
Said one source: “He had a draft of it or an outline. He held up a piece of paper in a meeting and said, ‘I want to go forward.’”
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A new Harvard-Harris Poll survey finds that FBI Director James Comey is unpopular across the political spectrum, with voters having a negative opinion of him by a more than two-to-one margin.
Just 17% have a favorable view of Comey, compared to 35% who have a negative view of him.
Just two hours before FBI Director James Comey testified before Congress, a White House official told Ryan Lizza that Comey would confirm that Trump campaign officials had no contact with Russia.
“The large gap between what the White House believed about the F.B.I. investigation and the actual facts of that investigation reveals several things. First, Comey has been successful in concealing details from Trump’s closest advisers. One of the reasons that Trump and the White House have been exuding a smokescreen of misinformation is because they are as clueless about what Comey knows as everyone else is.”
“In fact, there are very few officials who understand the true extent of the investigation.”
Rick Klein and Shushannah Walshe: “Then there’s the oddity of now knowing that both major candidates were under FBI investigation during the last campaign. The only one to pay a price was the one who was formally exonerated – not once, but twice.”
Ahead of a Capitol Hill hearing where FBI Director James Comey is expected to publicly reveal for the first time whether the FBI is investigating Trump campaign ties to Russia, President Trump called it “fake news” in a series of early morning tweets:
James Clapper and others stated that there is no evidence POTUS colluded with Russia. This story is FAKE NEWS and everyone knows it!
The Democrats made up and pushed the Russian story as an excuse for running a terrible campaign. Big advantage in Electoral College & lost!
The real story that Congress, the FBI and all others should be looking into is the leaking of Classified information. Must find leaker now!
FBI director James Comey said he plans to serve his entire 10-year term as FBI director in his remarks at a conference on cybersecurity, Politico reports.
Said Comey: “You’re stuck with me for another six and a half years.”
Comey noted that he would neither take questions from the press nor questions that he didn’t want to talk about: “I’m very slippery.”
FBI Director James Comey “asked the Justice Department this weekend to publicly reject President Trump’s assertion that President Barack Obama ordered the tapping of Mr. Trump’s phones,” the New York Times reports.
“Mr. Comey has argued that the highly charged claim is false and must be corrected… but the department has not released any such statement.”
“A statement by the Justice Department or Mr. Comey refuting Mr. Trump’s allegations would be a remarkable rebuke of a sitting president, putting the nation’s top law enforcement officials in the position of questioning the truthfulness of the government’s top leader.”
FBI Director James Comey “told his top agents from around the country that he had been asked by President Trump to stay on the job running the federal government’s top law enforcement agency,” the New York Times reports.
“A decision to retain Mr. Comey would spare the president another potentially bruising confirmation battle. It also would keep Mr. Comey at the center of the F.B.I.’s investigation into several Trump associates and their potential ties with the Russian government.”
“Embattled FBI director James Comey has refused to clarify whether his organization is investigating Donald Trump’s ties to Russia in a closed briefing on Friday for members of Congress, angering legislators who recall his high-profile interjections about Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential campaign,” the Guardian has learned.
“Comey’s lack of candor in a classified setting, intended to brief members on the intelligence agencies’ assessment that Russia interfered in the election to benefit Trump, follows a public rebuff this week to senators seeking clarification.”
Washington Post: “Justice officials laid out a number of arguments against releasing the letter. It violated two long-standing policies. Never publicly discuss an ongoing investigation. And never take an action affecting a candidate for office close to Election Day. Besides, they said, the FBI did not know yet what was in the emails or if they had anything to do with the Clinton case.”
“Remarkably, the country’s two top law enforcement officials never spoke. As Comey’s boss, Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch could have given the FBI director an order to not send the letter. But Lynch and her advisers feared that Comey would not listen. He seemed to feel strongly about updating Congress on his sworn testimony about the Clinton investigation. Instead, they tried to relay their concerns through the Justice official whom the FBI had called.”
New York Review of Books: “The announcement predictably played right into the hands of Trump, who immediately took the occasion to repeat his charge that Clinton should be locked up. None of this should have happened; under long-standing Justice Department practice, Comey should have kept silent about the fact of further investigation, especially so close to an election.”
“Whether Comey’s imprudent intervention changed the outcome of the presidential election, the damage to the integrity of both the political and criminal processes has been done. The criminal process has been politicized, and the political process has been tainted by misuse of official power. The question that remains is what should happen now. At a minimum, the Justice Department policies that Comey violated must be strengthened and formalized to ensure that this never happens again.”
Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) blasted FBI Director James Comey, accusing him of being a “Republican operative” who caused Hillary Clinton to lose the election to Donald Trump, The Hill reports.
Said Reid: “It’s easy to second-guess what Hillary did. I love Hillary Clinton, I am sorry she lost. I did everything I could to help … but there is no question in my mind she would have won this election without any problem if Comey had not been the Republican operative that he is.”
He added: “He can be fat and happy in his office there for seven more years after having thrown the election to Donald Trump. If he feels good about that — that’s nice.”
Former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski said FBI Director James Comey’s letter to Congress in the final days of the election helped Trump win the election, the Telegraph reports.
Said Lewandowski: “With eleven days to go, something amazing happened. The FBI’s director James Comey came out on a Friday and he said they may be reopening the investigation into Crooked Hillary’s emails. What that did was remind people that there are two different rules in Washington – those of the elites, and the privileged and those for everybody else.”
Navin Nayak, the head of Clinton’s opinion research division, sent an email to senior campaign staff last night sharing initial takeaways from the bruising election loss.
Wrote Nayak: “We believe that we lost this election in the last week. Comey’s letter in the last 11 days of the election both helped depress our turnout and also drove away some of our critical support among college-educated white voters — particularly in the suburbs.”
She added: “We also think Comey’s 2nd letter, which was intended to absolve Sec. Clinton, actually helped to bolster Trump’s turnout.”
Reuters: “FBI Director James Comey was driven in part by a fear of leaks from within his agency when he decided to tell Congress the FBI was investigating newly discovered emails related to Hillary Clinton, law enforcement sources said on Thursday…”
“Two law enforcement sources familiar with the FBI’s New York Field Office, which initially discovered the emails, said a faction of investigators based in the office is known to be hostile to Hillary Clinton. A spokeswoman for the FBI’s New York office said she had no knowledge about this.”
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.
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