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Official James Comey testimony thread

Skeptic Ginger said:
Friday May 12th Trump Tweet
Monday May 15th Comey gives memos to Professor in reaction to the Tweet
Tuesday May 16th NYT reports that a source read some of the memos to their reporter

Would someone please cite whatever NYT article Fox News et al keep claiming is some sort of evidence Comey lied about when he leaked the memos?

Not to mention, it's possible the NYT source was someone else who knew about the memos. I don't get this right wing talking point yet I keep hearing it.
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Presumably this one: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/11/us/politics/trump-comey-firing.html

But it doesn't even mention memos.
 
Tony Stark said:
Presumably this one: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/11/us/politics/trump-comey-firing.html

But it doesn't even mention memos.
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Just as I thought:
according to two people who have heard his account of the dinner
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That differs from the May 16th NYT story:
Mr. Comey shared the existence of the memo with senior F.B.I. officials and close associates. The New York Times has not viewed a copy of the memo, which is unclassified, but one of Mr. Comey’s associates read parts of it to a Times reporter.
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I expect it on Fox but it's so annoying to listen to CNN and MSNBC give these Trump mouthpieces a platform to assert all the reasons Comey has been proved to be a liar and Trump vindicated. They sound like all went to the Kellyanne Conway school of asserting alternative facts with rhetorical confidence (ie superlatives) and a straight face.


Edited to add: all the MSN sources print and broadcast have headlines Trump will repeat his claims about the Comey meetings under oath ... as if.

Al Franken said about that on MSNBC, "Well yeah you can take that to the bank." Then he laughed.
 
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Paul Ryan claims that the GOP wouldn't pursue impeachment if a Democratic president did the same thing as Trump. An extremely obvious lie.


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Emily's Cat said:
The items that Comey drafted on the classified laptop are ones that he himself refers to as being classified documents.
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Did he? Got a cite?

I do not believe he has admitted to being any part of any leak of classified information, nor am I aware of any classified data that was in his possession that subsequently got to the press. If I missed something, I would like to be informed.
 
portlandatheist said:
http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/09/politics/comey-tape-request-congress/index.html?adkey=bn
This will be fun to watch. House and Senate investigators have formerly requested any records, including tapes. If these tapes actually exist, then great. If not, then Trump will say something like he never said there were any tapes or something along those lines
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To be fair Trump never said there were tapes. Trump said Comey better hope there are no tapes of talks.

So really he just implied there were for intimidation purposes. Aka bluffing.
 
Comey 'queasy' over Lynch's handling of Clinton probe

James Comey officially testified yesterday that:

Former FBI Director James Comey said Thursday he felt “queasy” last year when former Attorney General Loretta Lynch urged him to reword how his agency characterized the Hillary Clinton email probe, asking that he refer to it as a "matter" rather than an investigation.

Comey said Lynch requested he “just call it a matter,” during his hearing on Russian election meddling before the Senate Intelligence Committee.
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Comey said the tarmac meeting influenced his decision to go public with the news of the email probe. He acknowledged that other things "contributed" to this decision, adding that the committee has already been briefed on the one "significant item" that he cannot publicly disclose.

Comey said this meeting pushed him to "step away from the department" and conduct a separate investigation in order to close the case "credibly."
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let me know if you need cites to the official transcript of James Comey's testimony yesterday.
 
The_Animus said:
To be fair Trump never said there were tapes. Trump said Comey better hope there are no tapes of talks.

So really he just implied there were for intimidation purposes. Aka bluffing.
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It's a weird bluff.

If Comey's telling the truth, then he knows that tapes won't contradict his claims and won't be cowed by the bluff.

There are three options.

(1) Comey's not telling the truth, so the bluff really has the potential to scare Comey.

(2) Comey's telling the truth, but Trump's bluff was not directed at Comey. It was directed at the general public, so that we might doubt Comey's claims.

(3) Comey's telling the truth, but Trump is just too addleheaded to understand bluffing.
 
phiwum said:
It's a weird bluff.

If Comey's telling the truth, then he knows that tapes won't contradict his claims and won't be cowed by the bluff.

There are three options.

(1) Comey's not telling the truth, so the bluff really has the potential to scare Comey.

(2) Comey's telling the truth, but Trump's bluff was not directed at Comey. It was directed at the general public, so that we might doubt Comey's claims.

(3) Comey's telling the truth, but Trump is just too addleheaded to understand bluffing.
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Accept that Trump just says things mostly designed to make himself feel better. Expecting coherent strategy from him is a lost cause.
 
Emily's Cat said:
1) The assumption is that Trump intended to purposefully do something improper... which may not have been the case. Regardless of what happened, clearing the room of those particular people does NOT show intent to do something improper. Those people should NOT be in the room during any discussion of the investigation, regardless. Clearing the room doesn't indicate intent of impropriety. In particular, failing to clear the room for a discussion about the investigation would definitely have been improper.
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Again, you are reasoning in the wrong direction. He DID do something improper, so the clearing of the room has to be viewed in light of that.

Look, you've painted yourself into a corner: If Trump's statement - I hope - was just a meaningless plea to the gods, then there's no reason to clear the room. He could say that on national tv, "I hope nothing comes of the Flynn investigation."

2) You're also working from the assumption that Trump's comment was impossible to be anything other than a direct order to stop the investigation. Comey interpreted it as a request to drop that investigation... but Comey's interpretation is not necessarily reality. Likely, yes, but not definitive. It is plausible that Trump did not intend it as an order. I don't think that's likely, personally, but I think any half-way decent lawyer can easily make that case. Unless the jury has ESP, there's no clear way to know. And given that Trump did not take any other actions to impede to halt the investigation, I think you're going to have a hard time proving that intent.
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We aren't on the jury, we aren't in a court of law, use your common sense. The meaning is obvious. Every attempt you've made so far to give it different meaning has been laughable.

You don't clear a room to say something so meaningless. Sessions and Kushner aren't nervous about leaving and try to stay around to stop Trump from saying something innocuous. Put the evidence together.

Is it proven beyond a reasonable doubt? Probably not, right now, but we don't know everything. Is it more likely than not, hell yes.

3) There is no need to prove (or even suggest) that Comey lied about anything at all. Comey's testimony can be 100% accurate. At the moment, I'm inclined to view it as accurate. But the accuracy of Comey's statement is irrelevant to your interpretation of that information. Comey wrote a memo about a meeting he had with Trump, where he felt that it might have been an improper request. "He wrote a memo about it!" doesn't make it obstruction. "I felt like he might have been asking me to do something improper, but I'm not certain" doesn't make it obstruction.
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This makes no sense. Of course Comey writing a memo doesn't make it obstruction, the obstruction makes it obstruction.

If Comey is right, Trump endeavored to inhibit an investigation. He pressured Comey, demanded a loyalty oath, asked him to stop a criminal investigation, then fired him when he didn't do any of that.

This is not complicated. Your efforts have fallen laughably short.

4) Comey seemingly contradicts himself on this point. Read the testimony. At one point he says that no, he didn't think Trump was asking him to stop the investigation... then at a later point following a leading question he said that he felt it might have been an attempt to pressure him to drop the investigation, but wasn't certain.
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Comey was very clear about this - he did not think that Trump was asking him to stop the broader investigation into Russia's involvement in the election; he is very clear that Trump asked him to drop the investigation into Flynn.
 
Emily's Cat said:
<snip>

3.I will not reveal, by any means, any information or material from or related to FBI files or any other information acquired by virtue of my official employment to any unauthorized recipient without prior official written authorization by the FBI.
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Loophole - he didn't release that information until after he'd been fired. he wasn't an FBI employee at the time he went public with it. I'm not sure how binding those rules are post employment.
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Not sure if it counts as a loophole or not (a somewhat loaded term), but if he needed official authorization I wonder what authority he could go to to obtain that while he was still with the FBI.

The Director, mebbe?

Ought to be a high enough authority.
 
phiwum said:
It's a weird bluff.

If Comey's telling the truth, then he knows that tapes won't contradict his claims and won't be cowed by the bluff.

There are three options.

(1) Comey's not telling the truth, so the bluff really has the potential to scare Comey.

(2) Comey's telling the truth, but Trump's bluff was not directed at Comey. It was directed at the general public, so that we might doubt Comey's claims.

(3) Comey's telling the truth, but Trump is just too addleheaded to understand bluffing.
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"Lordy, I hope there are tapes.", stated while under oath, don't sound like the words of a scared man.

So Option 1 seems a bit unlikely.
 
Yeah, Comey was SUPER careful about making sure he could publicize his memos:

By causing memos about conversations between Trump and Comey to become public, Comey had committed an “unauthorized disclosure of privileged information,” Kasowitz claimed. On a day characterized by hubris remarkable even for Washington, the blatant wrongheadedness of this “privilege” claim still stands out. In fact, executive privilege almost certainly does not cover the Comey memo. And even if it did, disclosing it without authorization isn’t illegal.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/post...e-privilege-hes-wrong/?utm_term=.8fb3dfcc1051

Whole article is good.

Trump's only tactic is to attack. This generally works when you're strong-arming idiots in the real estate business, but Comey has been at ground zero for a dozen serious Washington scandals. Whatever you want to say about the guy, he was very careful once he realized Trump was dangerous.
 
Also, good rundown of ****** GOP arguments (some of which are on display here):

Just last year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit upheld the conviction of a Dallas police officer on four federal obstruction counts. He was found guilty of trying to suppress evidence that he had exchanged law enforcement intelligence with a prostitute for sexual favors. When the FBI was closing in, the crooked cop had told the young lady in a recorded conversation: “I’m just hoping you haven’t told anyone anything.” The appeals court opinion said that such circumstantial evidence was sufficient to prove that the cop had “acted with the intent to impede that investigation.” (As an attorney, Risch should have been able to look up this and similar cases before posing his silly question.)
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http://www.nationalmemo.com/comeys-testimony-stumps-trump-defenders/

Ton more good stuff in the linked article.
 
phiwum said:
It's a weird bluff....
(3) Comey's telling the truth, but Trump is just too addleheaded to understand bluffing.
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It's not that he doesn't understand a bluff. It's that he can't always distinguish between what he fantasizes and what is actually true.
 
TraneWreck said:
We don't need to question the structure, whether clearing a room necessarily implies an intent to do something improper because we already know something improper was done. You're just flagrantly conflating necessary and sufficient conditions.

The clearing of the room shows intent, which is the only remaining relevant variable in an obstruction charge unless you're prepared to argue that Comey is just lying about everything.
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How do we "already know something improper was done"? There were 2 people in the room, and I would choose Comey's word over Trump's any day of the week, but that's all it would be - and that's not enough evidence to convict someone of obstruction, IMO. It's completely circular to say he cleared the room because he was about to do something improper, and we know it was improper because he cleared the room.

I haven't read the whole thread so apologies if this has been addressed, but again IMO, there is no smoking gun. Personally I want Trump out of office ASAP, but I doubt if this is the issue that will bring about his fall. I could be wrong.
 
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