By Leah Barkoukis |Townhall
President Trump pushed back hard against
former FBI Director James Comey Friday morning over his book that portrays him
as an unethical leader who’s “untethered to truth.”
The president tweeted:
______________
James Comey is a proven
LEAKER & LIAR. Virtually everyone in Washington thought he should be fired
for the terrible job he did-until he was, in fact, fired. He leaked CLASSIFIED
information, for which he should be prosecuted. He lied to Congress under OATH.
He is a weak and.....
....untruthful slime ball who was, as time
has proven, a terrible Director of the FBI. His handling of the Crooked Hillary
Clinton case, and the events surrounding it, will go down as one of the worst
“botch jobs” of history. It was my great honor to fire James Comey!
________________
Comey’s book, “A Higher Loyalty,” will be
released next week but excerpts have come out that, in addition to portraying
him as a compulsive liar, argue he’s “ego driven,” his presidency is like a
“forest fire,” and that his interactions with the Trump
administration remind him of his “earlier career as a prosecutor against
the Mob.”
"The silent circle of assent. The boss
in complete control. The loyalty oaths. The us-versus-them worldview,"
Comey reportedly says in the book. "The lying about all things, large and
small, in service to some code of loyalty that put the organization above
morality and above the truth."
___________________________________
Here’s What FBI Director James Comey Admits
In His New Book—And Why Some Liberals Are Infuriated By It
By Matt Vespa | Townhall
Former FBI Director James Comey’s new book
will be released next week. It’s already causing a buzz in the D.C. swamp.
Both
sides have vilified Comey.
The Right thinks Comey should have prosecuted
Hillary Clinton for mishandling classified information, which was sent through
her private, unsecure, and unauthorized email server. Clinton used this for all
official business as out secretary of state.
The Left thinks the email probe is
what caused Hillary to lose, especially when the embattled director informed
Congress that emails from then-Secretary Clinton were found on the laptop of
Anthony Weiner, husband to Hillary top aide Huma Abedin.
In the book, he described President Trump as
mafia boss, who is “untethered to truth” (via AP):
Former
FBI Director James Comey blasts President Donald Trump as unethical and
“untethered to truth” and calls his leadership of the country “ego driven and
about personal loyalty” in a forthcoming book.
Comey
reveals new details about his interactions with Trump and his own
decision-making in handling the Hillary Clinton email investigation before the
2016 election. He casts Trump as a mafia boss-like figure who sought to blur
the line between law enforcement and politics and tried to pressure him
regarding his investigation into Russian election interference.
The
book adheres closely to Comey’s public testimony and written statements about
his contacts with the president during the early days of the administration and
his growing concern about the president’s integrity. It also includes
strikingly personal jabs at Trump that appear likely to irritate the president.
The
6-foot-8 Comey describes Trump as shorter than he expected with a “too long”
tie and “bright white half-moons” under his eyes that he suggests came from
tanning goggles. He also says he made a conscious effort to check the
president’s hand size, saying it was “smaller than mine, but did not seem
unusually so.”
The
book, “A Higher Loyalty,” is to be released next week. The Associated Press
purchased a copy this week.
The New York Times went
a bit further detailing
the book, namely his reactions to former top Bush officials, and his
annoyance with former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who more than hinted that
Comey should refer to the Hillary email probe as a “matter” and not an
investigation, which it was—but there was something else he admitted that was
bound to set off liberals [emphasis mine]:
A
Higher Loyalty” also provides sharp sketches of key players in three
presidential administrations.
Comey draws a scathing portrait of Vice President
Dick Cheney’s legal adviser David S. Addington, who spearheaded the arguments
of many hard-liners in the George W. Bush White House; Comey describes their
point of view: “The war on terrorism justified stretching, if not breaking, the
written law.”
He depicts Bush national security adviser and later Secretary of
State Condoleezza Rice as uninterested in having a detailed policy discussion
of interrogation policy and the question of torture.
He takes Barack Obama’s
attorney general Loretta Lynch to task for asking him to refer to the Clinton
email case as a “matter,” not an “investigation.” (Comey tartly notes that “the
F.B.I. didn’t do ‘matters.’”)
And he compares Trump’s attorney general, Jeff
Sessions, to Alberto R. Gonzales, who served in the same position under Bush,
writing that both were “overwhelmed and overmatched by the job,” but “Sessions
lacked the kindness Gonzales radiated.”
Comey
is what Saul Bellow called a “first-class noticer.” He notices, for instance,
“the soft white pouches under” Trump’s “expressionless blue eyes”; coyly
observes that the president’s hands are smaller than his own “but did not seem unusually
so”; and points out that he never saw Trump laugh — a sign, Comey suspects, of
his “deep insecurity, his inability to be vulnerable or to risk himself by
appreciating the humor of others, which, on reflection, is really very sad in a
leader, and a little scary in a president.”
[…]
As
for his controversial disclosure on Oct. 28, 2016, 11 days before the election,
that the F.B.I. was reviewing more Clinton emails that might be pertinent to
its earlier investigation, Comey notes here that he had assumed from media
polling that Clinton was going to win.
He has repeatedly asked himself, he
writes, whether he was influenced by that assumption:
“It is entirely possible
that, because I was making decisions in an environment where Hillary Clinton
was sure to be the next president, my concern about making her an illegitimate
president by concealing the restarted investigation bore greater weight than it
would have if the election appeared closer or if Donald Trump were ahead in all
polls. But I don’t know.”
Yeah, the head of our nation’s preeminent
federal domestic law enforcement agency decided to uphold the rule of law by
polling.
That’s messed up, though liberals seem to be more incensed.
Comey also delved into the tension between
the FBI and the DOJ over the Clinton probe, with the former FBI Director
worried that the DOJ would “screw around” on whether to issue and indictment or
not. Either way, he knew that any decision was going to be viewed as political.
There was no winning this one (via Fox
News):
Defending
his July 2016 public statement about the Hillary Clinton email case, then-FBI
Director James Comey told senior agents later that year he worried the Justice
Department would "screw around" with a decision on whether to
prosecute her, and he said that regardless of what happened, "we knew it
was going to suck in a huge way," according to an FBI transcript reviewed
by Fox News.
In
October 2016, Michael Kortan, who was serving as the FBI's public affairs chief
but has since retired, shared the transcript of Comey's comments on the Clinton
case delivered behind closed doors to special agents in charge. Based on the
email date and time stamps, it appears the comments were made three weeks
before the presidential election. With Comey now launching a media tour to
promote his book, "A Higher Loyalty," the transcript provides a
window into his thinking and decisions during critical period before the
election.
[…]
Comey's
decision to deviate from standard procedures is central to the Justice
Department inspector general's investigation into the FBI's and DOJ's handling
of the Clinton email case.
Comey
said he thought the FBI should have taken the lead because following standard
procedures was not an option. "...what will happen to us is the Department
of Justice will screw around it for Lord knows how long, issue probably a one
sentence declination, and then the world will catch on fire, and then the cry
in the public will be where on the earth is the FBI, how could the FBI be part
of some corrupt political bargain like this, there's no transparency
whatsoever..."
He
continued, "We knew it was going to suck in a huge way. I knew. Nothing's
(sic) that's happened, by the way, the storm has been outside my expectations.
I knew what was going to happen, but I also knew after a lot of reflection that
we would do far more damage to our beloved institution if we did the normal
thing."
Okay—I can see why liberals would be mad at
the blasé attitude towards the October letter to Congress.
It was later
discovered that Weiner and Abedin shared the computer. The laptop was being
analyzed by the FBI, who were investigating Weiner for inappropriate communications
with an underage girl. Yeah, Carlos Danger was back.
Still, the fact remains that pollsters really
don’t know if the letter had any impact at all.
Clinton still had no message,
no charisma, no political skill, and called roughly half the country deplorable
for supporting Donald Trump.
She didn’t campaign as hard in the Rust Belt. She
didn’t laser focus on winning back working class voters—all of this contributed
to her defeat.
It’s her fault, which she admits after blaming The DNC, Comey,
FBI, the Media, Russia, sexism, misogyny, Obama, Biden, and Sanders.
____________________________
Oof: RNC Launches Website Dedicated to 'Lyin'
Comey'
By Katie
Pavlich | Townhall
In just a few days former FBI Director James Comey will be
on television screens across America promoting his new book, A Higher
Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership. I
It is expected Comey goes after
President Trump in the text and will no doubt do the same during a marathon of
media interviews.
Ahead of the launch date, the Republican National
Committee is playing offense and has launched a new website titled "Lyin'
Comey."
The site, LyinComey.com, quotes a number of Democrats
like Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Democrat Congresswoman Maxine Waters and
failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton slamming the FBI and Comey himself.
"May he's not in the right job," Pelosi is
quoted as saying."
"[He] badly overstepped his bounds," a Clinton
quote says.
Fox News has the scoop on the development:
“James
Comey’s publicity tour is a self-serving attempt to make money and rehabilitate
his own image,” an RNC official told Fox News. “Comey is a liar and a leaker,
and his misconduct led both Republicans and Democrats to call for his firing.
If Comey wants the spotlight back on him, we’ll make sure the American people
understand why he has no one but himself to blame for his complete lack of
credibility.”
The
official told Fox News that the RNC has prepared a rapid response team to
respond to claims made in Comey’s book, compiled a research team to fact check,
and created a “war room” to monitor his appearances.
Comey was abrubtly fired by President Trump last year and
has been unpopular on both sides of the political aisle.
