Tag Archives: James Comey

International news

How’s Trump playing abroad? Not well, apparently

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I have to share this e-mail, which landed in my inbox overnight from a friend who lives in Australia.

He’s a former journalist and is an astute observer of U.S. politics.

Here is part of what he wrote:

“To describe today’s events in the House Committee hearing as ‘riveting’ wouldn’t even begin to capture the breadth, depth, scope and implications of what is unfolding your way.Ā 

“How long can Trump continue in this bubble, immune to the consequences of his words and deeds? By the looks of things, indefinitely… while his enablers continue catching his flak and dissembling incessantly.

“Surely after (FBI Director James) Comey’s testimony and its likely implications, half the bloody administration is likely to be marched out of the White House in handcuffs sometime soon to the nearest penitentiary to await trial for treason!!! For the life of me, I do not know how the country is still functioning in the midst of this. This must sit somewhere between Watergate and the Civil War in terms of crisis to the union.”

To my friend, and I’m sure he knows this, the country is “functioning” because the presidency is just one element of our government. Thank goodness for that.

Should we care what citizens of other countries think of what’s happening with Donald Trump and all this Russia business?

Uh, yeah! The president is managing to wreck the credibility of the high office he occupies.

That credibility involves our geopolitical relationships with other countries all over the planet … and that includes Australia, one of this nation’s staunchest allies and whose head of government received a tongue-lashing from the president, whoĀ hung up on him.

legal news, media news

So long, Judge Napolitano

Readers of this blog know that I am not likely to offer many compliments to the Fox News Channel.

I am about to break tradition and declare that Fox has done the right thing by taking a loudmouth “legal analyst” off the air for blabbing something utterly irresponsible.

Andrew Napolitano has been yanked off the air indefinitely by Fox for declaring on the air that a British intelligence agency was complicit in wiretapping Donald J. Trump’s campaign office in New York City. The agency, according to the former judge, was working at the behest of former President Obama; Napolitano, therefore, was giving credence to the scurrilous charge leveled by Trump that Obama had ordered the wiretap at Trump Tower.

FBI Director James Comey debunked Trump’s tweet today in a congressional hearing.

Fox gives judge the boot.

Meanwhile, we have this (so-called) judge keeping this lie alive by suggesting that the Brits played a role in an event that — according to Comey — did not occur.

I hope Fox boots this clown off the air for keeps, even though he most likely would end up somewhere else spouting such reckless right-wing bile.

media news

Apologize, Mr. President, just say you’re sorry

Dear Mr. President,

I have no idea whether you or your staff reads the stuff that comes from this blog, but I’ll offer this bit of advice anyway.

Say you’re sorry for defaming Barack Obama. Admit you made a mistake. Come clean with an admission that you woke up one morning, that you weren’t quite awake or alert before you blurted out that tweet in which you accused the former president of wiretapping your campaign offices at Trump Tower.

The jig’s up, Mr. President. The FBI director, the guy who many Democrats believe torpedoed Hillary Clinton’s campaign with that e-mail-related letter to Congress on the eve of the election, has just blown your wiretapping tweet to bits.

He said he has no information to confirm what you have alleged. He said the Justice Department has no information either in any of its branch offices.

I get that you don’t apologize. I’ve heard all that stuff about you — and from you, sir. I have read about how you said you’ve never sought forgiveness.

Take my word for it, Mr. President: an apology doesn’t signal weakness. On the contrary, it signals strength. It tells us that you are man enough to own up to making a mistake.

Mr. President, you need a serious reset here. These tweets of yours are damaging the country at many levels. They compromise our national security; they send bizarre messages to our allies; they make you sound like a know-nothing teenager.

In the case of the Obama wiretapping allegation — which the FBI director has shot down in flames — they expose you to accusations of slander and defamation.

C’mon, Mr. President. Just say you’re sorry. Pledge to us you’ll close your Twitter account, and then do it.

The presidency deserves to be occupied by a grownup.

So far, sir, you aren’t acting like one.

legal news, national news, political news

Collusion or not? Let’s wait for the FBI to do its job

FBI Director James Comey today dropped two more live grenades into our laps.

The first one is that the FBI can find no evidence, zero, that President Barack Obama ordered a wiretap of Donald J. Trump’s campaign office in Trump Tower. He cannot locate any indication that any order was given by a federal judge; he cannot find evidence of any sort of surveillance.

So …

The suggestion that the president of the United States essentially defamed his predecessor — when he tweeted the allegation of wiretapping — now has been given some credence.

The bigger grenade might be the second disclosure that Comey made to the U.S. House Intelligence Committee.

It is that the FBI is investigating whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Russian government to influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential election.

Comey said FBI policy usually doesn’t allow comment on active investigations. The director made an exception in this case. The public interest is too great to ignore, he said.

What in the world does that mean?

I believe that if the FBI determinesĀ there was collusion, that the Trump campaign worked actively with Russian spooks/goons/intelligence officers to torpedo the campaign of Hillary Rodham Clinton … well, I think we have a certifiable impeachable offense on our hands.

To be fair, there hasn’t been a shred of evidence presented yet to suggest any such collusion. There’s been a lot of chatter, gossip and what might be called charitably “circumstantial evidence.” We cannot go on circumstance, however. We need incontrovertible proof, man!

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Comey told committee members that this probe willĀ require lots of time to complete. It’s complicated and detailed, he said.

Take all the timeĀ you need, Mr. FBI Director. I think we can wait for a detailed answer, no matter your conclusion.

legal news, national news, political news

Rep. Schiff: We’re at the ‘bottom’ of wiretap story

Adam Schiff strikes me as a thoughtful young man.

He’s the ranking Democrat on the U.S. House Intelligence Committee. He and the Republican chairman, Deven Nunes, also of California, have become a sort of tag-team that seeks to get Donald Trump to produce proof of a dangerous allegation he has made about former President Obama.

Today, Schiff said on “Meet the Press” that Congress appears to have reached “the bottom” of the president’sĀ assertion — that Obama ordered a wiretap of Trump’s offices in New York City.

There is no “bottom,” Schiff said. No proof. No evidence. No substantiation. The president, said the congressman, has now introduced a dangerous new standard for recklessness that could have profound impact on any business the United States seeks to conduct at home or abroad.

Indeed, how are our allies going to react to anything that comes from the president’s Twitter account? He’s already dragged the British intelligence network into this tawdry matter, asserting that the Brits had a hand in the alleged wiretap.

He stood with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and sought to lure her into the ongoing matter, suggesting that Obama had wiretapped Merkel and other European allies.

The president is not backing off. He’s offering not a hint of proof. Nor is he offering the scent of contrition.

What in the world is this man — the president of the United States — going to do next? Who else is he going to slander?

We might find out plenty this week when FBI Director James Comey walks onto Capitol Hill to testify about what he knows and whether there was any authorization given to do what Trump has accused the former president of doing.

I would think the FBI boss would know.

If not, well,Ā Rep.Ā Schiff is right. We’ve found the bottomĀ of this story. And as the late Gertrude Stein once said of Oakland, Calif.: We’ve found “there is no there there.”

legal news

Big week awaits the president

Donald “Smart Person” Trump is going to have a big week.

Part of it might bode well for the president. The rest of it, well, possibly not so well.

* Neil Gorsuch takes the stand this coming week as the Senate Judiciary Committee grills him on why he should take a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Gorsuch is Trump’s choice to fill the seat vacated by the sudden death of conservative icon Justice Antonin Scalia — more than a year ago! The seat should have been filled by President Obama, who picked Merrick Garland, but the Republicans who control the Senate stonewalled the president and blocked Garland’s confirmation.

Now we have Gorsuch. He’s a solid jurist. He’s a bit too conservative for my taste, but hey, Trump’s the president, not me. He gets to pick someone for the high court. The American Bar Association has declared Gorsuch to be “well qualified.”

* Then we get to hear from FBI Director James Comey, who’s going to have a thing or three to say about wiretapping and whether Trump has the goods on whether President Obama ordered the bugging of Trump’s offices in New York.

Comey has hinted broadly that Trump has fabricated the assertion thatĀ Obama committed a felony, which to my way of thinking is a defamatory accusation. Senators will get to grill Comey heavily on all of that.

It’s ironic in the extreme that Comey would turn on Trump, given the manner in which he torpedoed Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign 11 days prior to Election Day with that letter to Congress announcing he was taking a fresh look at those “damn e-mails” that dogged Hillary’s campaign from its outset. Trump was ecstatic about the disclosure of the letter and just couldn’t say enough positive things about the FBI director.

I wonder what he’s going to say if and/or when Comey debunks this ridiculous notion that President Obama bugged Trump Tower.

Let’s all stay tuned. Get the popcorn ready.

national news

Waiting for an apology that’ll never arrive

I am going to give tons of credit to an Oklahoma congressman.

Rep. Tom Cole, a Republican, wants Donald J. Trump to say he’s sorry for defaming President Barack H. Obama. He says the current president should apologize to his immediate predecessor for leveling a charge that he hasn’t proved — and will never be able to prove.

Wait for it, Rep. Cole. Wait a long, long time. It won’t arrive.

The president doesn’t apologize for anything.

Not even when he’s dead wrong.Ā Or when he defames someone, as he has done with President Obama.Ā Or when — in the minds of some constitutional scholars — he could face a potentially impeachable offense.

Not this guy. Not Trump.

The president has yet to say anything resembling contrition for suggesting the former president ordered a wiretap of the Trump campaign’s offices in Trump Tower. Never mind the laughable and ludicrous assertion from White House spokesmen that the president didn’t mean actual wiretapping, even though he said it in a series of tweets. Trump put the wordsĀ  in quote marks, the argument goes, suggesting that he didn’t mean it, um, literally.

Of course he did!

What the president hasn’t done is tap into the vast intelligence network at his disposal to back up what he has alleged.

Why is that? Because he made it up. All of it. Every single word of it.

As Politico reports: “Obama and his former director of national intelligence, James Clapper, both publicly denied the claim quickly after Trump raised it, while FBI Director James Comey, also saying it was not true, privately urged Trumpā€™s Justice Department to refute it.

“This week, the leaders of both the House and Senate intelligence committees have also come out and said they have found no evidence to suggest that the allegation is true.”

Should the president apologize, as Rep. Cole has suggested? Yes. Will he do so? I am not going to keep the light on waiting for it.

International news, national news, political news

By all means, subpoena those FBI records

You go, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham!

The South Carolina Republican has said that he is ready to demand records from the FBI for any warrant requests that would have been made to wiretap Donald John Trump’s offices in Trump Tower.

Graham, along with Rhode Island Democratic U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, have asked the FBI for any information regarding the outrageous claim that Trump made asserting that former President Obama wiretapped his offices.

One big problem exists regarding what Trump has alleged. He has offered not a shred of evidence to back up what he has said via Twitter. Nothing, man! No proof. No basis.

Graham and Whitehouse are as alarmed as millions of other Americans — such as yours truly — about what Trump has done. He has accused his predecessor as president of the United States of breaking the bleeping law!

It is that assertion for which Graham wants some documentation. Either the president can prove what he has alleged or he cannot. If he can prove his offices were bugged, then we have a scandal of major proportions. If he cannot prove it, well, then we have another scandal of major magnitude.

“We request that the Department of Justice provide us copies of any warrant applications and court orders ā€” redacted as necessary to protect intelligence sources and methods that may be compromised by disclosure, and to protect any ongoing investigations ā€” related to wiretaps of President Trump, the Trump Campaign, or Trump Tower,” Graham and Whitehouse wrote.

If the FBI doesn’t deliver the goods on request, Graham said he is ready to order those papers delivered to Capitol Hill.

national news, political news

Trump is going where no one can survive … politically

Donald J. Trump is now waging open warfare against the media, the FBI, his immediate predecessor, congressional Democrats and now quite possibly a growing number of congressional Republicans.

I wonder who and/or what is next for this president.

He has accused former President Obama of breaking the law by ordering a wiretap of Trump Tower. FBI Director James Comey reportedly has stated he is “incredulous” at what Trump has alleged. Congressional Democrats are livid and they want heads to roll. Congressional Republicans are more tepid in their response, but are suggesting they have “seen no evidence” of an illegal wiretap.

The media? They merely are reporting all of this.

Trump ignores analysis by his national security and intelligence team and is relying on “news” coming from right-wing outlets such as Breitbart. com and a bevy of radio talk-show hosts whoseĀ self-proclaimed mission is to discredit a presidentĀ — Barack Obama — who they detest.

The danger of Trump’s mindless blathering is beginning to frighten a lot of observers in this country and perhaps beyond our borders.

This all takes me back to the campaign we’ve just endured.

Weren’t there warnings issued by folks who questioned the temperament and fitness of the man who would be elected president? Didn’t these critics tell us that Trump was not capable of managing his own narrative, let alone crafting an agenda that would govern the greatest nation on Earth?

We are witnessing a remarkable coming apart of a still-young presidency. The president himself is dismantling his administration with this ridiculous assertion that Barack Obama has broken the law, which stipulates that the president cannot “order” a wiretap.

No proof has come forward. No evidence has been presented. This allegation is as specious as the many other lies he has told ever since he declared his presidential candidacy.

The birther baloney, the Muslims cheering the fall of the Twin Towers on 9/11, the illegal immigrants voting for Hillary Clinton … all of them and more! They are lies.

As for Obama — who’s now officially a “private citizen” — the thought occurs to me: Does he have grounds to sue his successor for slander, for defamation? Would he take this clown to court?

legal news, national news, political news

Are the wheels flying off Trump’s ‘fine-tuned machine’?

“A fine-tuned machine” does not experience the kind of malfunctions we are witnessing within Donald J. Trump’s administration.

For instance, it doesn’t produce an FBI director asking the Justice Department to dismiss an explosive allegation coming from the president of the United States against his immediate predecessor.

FBI Director James Comey wants the Justice Department to toss out Trump’s allegation — delivered this weekend in a tweet — that Barack Obama ordered spooks to wiretap Trump’s offices in Trump Tower.

Why would they do such a thing, which they have denied doing? It would be to look for evidence that Trump’s campaign was colluding with Russian officials to interfere with the U.S. presidential election.

Trump calls it a “fact” that such a thing occurred. Comey, in an apparent act of open rebellion against the president, says, um, no it isn’t. It didn’t happen. At this moment, DOJ officials haven’t done as Comey has asked.

Ladies and gents, we are witnessing perhaps the first shots of open warfare within the Trump administration. It might be Trump v. Comey in this fight.

Ex-DNI denies wiretap allegation.

Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said on “Meet the Press” this morning that any such order to wiretap Trump’s office would have had to come from a federal judge, who would have determined probable cause to issue such an order. The DNI, said Clapper, would be made aware of it.

Clapper said it never occurred during his time as DNI.

Comey has taken up Clapper’s side in this fight.

The “fine-tuned machine” — which is how the president described his administration during that infamous press conference a couple of weeks ago — appears set to explode in flames.

What happens now? The president might fire Comey. What do you suppose would be the public reaction to such an event?

The president, moreover, is reportedly furious at Attorney General Jeff Sessions for recusing himself from an investigation into Russia’s alleged effort to influence the presidential election.

Does that sound to you like a “fine-tuned machine” that is humming along on all cylinders? Me neither.

My … goodness.

***

Comey’s request of the DOJ to drop this wiretap nonsense is fascinating at another level as well. The FBI directorĀ heaved that political grenade into Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign 11 days before Election Day informing her of a letter he had sent to Congress asking for a re-examination of that e-mail controversy that dogged her all along the way.

Clinton blames that letter for stopping her momentum and for giving Trump the ammo he needed to blast her presidential campaign to smithereens.

Now he turns on the individual he supposedly helped get elected?

Lock ‘n load!