‘Comey just thinks he’s always right, and … it doesn’t matter if everyone else concludes he did wrong…’
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) A preponderance of evidence, including the report of the Justice Department’s own inspector general, points to a culture of systemic bias, bordering on corruption, under former FBI Director James Comey’s watch.
But after his recent appearances before a joint Congressional committee examining the FBI’s role ignoring Hillary Clinton’s potential criminal activity while setting up the Trump campaign during the 2016 election, a defiant Comey continued his series of withering attacks on Republicans for turning the investigative lens on him.
Comey whined that it was the executive and legislative branches that were, in fact, responsible for a loss of public faith in the intelligence community.
Today wasn’t a search for truth, but a desperate attempt to find anything that can be used to attack the institutions of justice investigating this president. They came up empty today but will try again. In the long run, it’ll make no difference because facts are stubborn things.
— James Comey (@Comey) December 8, 2018
Since President Donald Trump fired Comey in 2017, triggering the continuing investigation by special counsel—and Comey pal—Robert Mueller into potential Trump violations, evidence has come to light implicating the FBI in a litany of cover-ups, entrapment schemes and other various conspiracy and collusion to influence the outcome of the 2016 election.
It is a web so tangled—and enmeshed with bad hombres—that two years of inquiries and hearings by the House joint Oversight and Judiciary committees seem only to have scratched the surface. But as the Republican leadership of those Congressional committees prepares for a turnover of power, their last-ditch efforts to seek the truth appear to have moved the chains very little.
Despite two full days and hundreds of pages of transcribed testimony from Comey’s recent appearances, the disgraced ex-spook continued to stonewall, prompting criticism from both the Congressional committees and the White House.
Oversight Chair Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., called Comey an “amnesiac with incredible hubris” in a Fox News interview, as reported by The Daily Caller.
“Comey just thinks he’s always right, and … it doesn’t matter if everyone else concludes he did wrong,” Gowdy said.
Trump tweeted that Comey’s selective memory was a clear indicator of his dishonesty.
On 245 occasions, former FBI Director James Comey told House investigators he didn’t know, didn’t recall, or couldn’t remember things when asked. Opened investigations on 4 Americans (not 2) – didn’t know who signed off and didn’t know Christopher Steele. All lies!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 9, 2018
He also criticized Comey, who once claimed to be a Republican, for his bias during and after the recent midterms. (Comey gave considerable amounts to Democratic candidates in Virginia while publicly advocating that voters boot Republicans out of office.)
James Comey just totally exposed his partisan stance by urging his fellow Democrats to take back the White House in 2020. In other words, he is and has been a Democrat. Comey had no right heading the FBI at any time, but especially after his mind exploded!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 11, 2018
Comey, for his part, fired back at Trump for questioning the FBI’s raid of his former attorney, Michael Cohen.
This is from the President of our country, lying about the lawful execution of a search warrant issued by a federal judge. Shame on Republicans who don’t speak up at this moment — for the FBI, the rule of law, and the truth. pic.twitter.com/c5dhQBnmyi
— James Comey (@Comey) December 16, 2018
Despite the dubious pretenses of the raid, which Trump has criticized as a fishing expedition and part of a broader “witch hunt” to impugn him and undermine the executive office, Cohen’s subsequent plea arrangement has yielded the Mueller investigation’s only publicly reported link so far between Trump and any sort of alleged wrongdoing.
Although unrelated to the Russian collusion Mueller is tasked with investigating, the special counsel’s office, along with federal prosecutors in New York, charged Cohen with providing hush-money payoffs to former Playboy bunny Karen McDougal and porn star Stormy Daniels in an extortion scheme over sexual trysts they claimed to have conducted with Trump 10 years prior to the election.
Trump and others have pointed to parallels in cases involving former presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, along with former vice presidential nominee John Edwards. None of the three Democrats were found guilty of criminal misconduct, despite major scandals, widely ignored by the media, involving hush-money payoffs and campaign-finance violations.
White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said on Twitter that Comey’s corrupt stewardship helped to explain the double-standard in the partisan investigations.
Republicans should stand up to Comey and his tremendous corruption – from the fake Hillary Clinton investigation, to lying and leaking, to FISA abuse, and a list too long to name. The President did the country a service by firing him and exposing him for the shameless fraud he is
— Sarah Sanders (@PressSec) December 18, 2018
She followed up in a Fox News interview, criticizing the Comey-led FBI specifically for setting up former Trump adviser Michael Flynn as part of a perjury trap.
Flynn, who briefly served as national security adviser, was set to be sentenced on Tuesday for lying to the FBI about conversations with a Russian envoy during the transition of power.
“The FBI broke every standard protocol that they have, and we know that because of James Comey’s actual comments that they threw FBI protocol out the window,” Sanders told Fox News, “for one reason and one reason only: because it was the Trump administration and they thought they could and they thought they could get away with it.”
Sanders continued saying that the White House was “100 percent” sure Trump was right to fire Comey—a decision that has generated some claims on the Left of “obstruction of justice” although most argue it was the president’s prerogative to do so.
“Every single day we learn more and more all of the things that he [Comey] did that were so far out of bounds for what the FBI director should do,” Sanders said.