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Official James Comey testimony thread

Tony Stark said:
You literally said that "the president cannot obstruct justice". The obstruction he likely would have been prosecuted for if not for the pardon occurred while he was president.
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Once he is out of office, he is no longer president and cant stop being charged for committing obstruction while president.
 
BobTheCoward said:
Once he is out of office, he is no longer president and cant stop being charged for committing obstruction while president.
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Your original claim was that the president can't commit obstruction. Not that he can stop himself from being charged for obstruction.
 
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Trump is claiming that the statement totally vindicates Trump.

I guess it vindicates his claim that Comey told Trump he wasn't personally the subject of investigation. But Trump also denies that he asked for Comey's loyalty or for him to drop the Flynn investigation.
 
Tony Stark said:
Trump is claiming that the statement totally vindicates Trump.

I guess it vindicates his claim that Comey told Trump he wasn't personally the subject of investigation. ...
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I saw tonight on Rachel or O'Donnell an explanation for possibly one of the claimed "three" instances... though it shows Trump to be either an ass in the extreme, or a willful idiot.

In Comey's released notes today, he describes Trump asking him to prove the "salacious" claims (hookers etc in Moscow) didn't happen.
Comey claims he explained both the difficulty in proving the negative, and that it would appear that he/they were investigating Trump himself, which would not be the case.

That would seem to be one of the "three". If that makes sense.
No idea yet about the other two, or if they're repetitions of the first.
 
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I helped prosecute Watergate. Comey’s statement is sufficient evidence for an obstruction of justice case.

Philip Allen Lacovara, a former U.S. deputy solicitor general in the Justice Department, served as counsel to Watergate special prosecutors Archibald Cox and Leon Jaworski.

In prepared testimony released on the eve of his appearance Thursday before the Senate Intelligence Committee, former FBI director James B. Comey placed President Trump in the gunsights of a federal criminal investigation, laying out evidence sufficient for a case of obstruction of justice.

Comey proved what Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats and National Security Agency Director Michael S. Rogers carefully avoided admitting in their testimony on Wednesday — that the president had specifically attempted to shut off at least a major piece of what Trump calls the “Russia thing,” the investigation into the misleading statements by fired national security adviser Michael Flynn concerning his role in dealings with the Russians. This kind of presidential intervention in a pending criminal investigation has not been seen, to my knowledge, since the days of Richard Nixon and Watergate.
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BobTheCoward said:
I think in the classic tradition of "two tiered justice system" the level of deference given to Trump on the obstruction accusations is far less than what the DoJ requires to begin harassing someone poor or they don't like for obstruction.
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Maybe I'm reading this wrong but are you saying extremely rich and powerful people are given LESS deference?
 
logger said:
Then mr comedy will be in legal jeopardy, at the very least a case can be made for it.
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Make your case.

(I am almost certain that I know what you will say and it will be wrong, as usual).
 
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logger said:
This explains it much better then I could.
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2017...ll-put-himself-in-serious-legal-jeopardy.html
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So yes you're parroting the exact same nonsense that I knew you would. FAKE NEWS

There are two obvious reasons why this statute does not apply to Comey's situation.

First, note the word "concealment." This is a stand-alone element of the offense, not just a superfluous verbal flourish restating the point that one must report. Just look at any federal pattern jury instruction: affirmative steps to conceal are required, not just the fact of failing to report the crime. See, e.g., Lancey v. United States, 356 F.2d 407, 4010 (9th Cir. 1966) (silence alone, without affirmative act of concealment, is insufficient). There is no basis for claiming that Jim Comey took affirmative steps to conceal any alleged obstruction by Donald Trump. To argue that Comey somehow affirmatively concealed something by taking care with who got to see his memo entirely collapses this distinction, and would extend liability for misprision to just about every criminal investigator and prosecutor in this country (given how routine it is for both investigators and prosecutors to create but limit circulation of documents with evidentiary content in this sense).

Second, and more fundamentally, Jarrett's op-ed implies that the obligation to report runs specifically to Justice Department prosecutors. That's not what the statute says, however, and of course the more obvious recipients for any such notificiations would be...the FBI. Jim Comey was, of course, FBI Director at all relevant times, and deeply engaged in supervision of existing, related criminal (and probably also counterintelligence) investigations. It's more than a stretch to suggest that the misprision statute somehow creates a "two-person" requirement for knowledge of possible federal crimes, such that it is not enough for one FBI person to be aware of the possible criminal behavior. A "crooked cop" scenario would of course be different, but no one is alleging (nor could they) that Jim Comey was in cahoots with a plan to obstruct the Flynn investigation.

Third, even if misprision concerns required Jim Comey to convey knowledge of Trump's actions to others at FBI, it remains quite possible that he did exactly this.
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https://www.lawfareblog.com/no-jim-comey-not-legal-jeopardy

As for the last part, Comey did tell others at the FBI about Trump trying to get him to drop the Flynn investigation.
 
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That Jarret opinion piece had a lot more in it then the first one, you need to read it. It just came out yesterday.
 
logger said:
That Jarret opinion piece had a lot more in it then the first one, you need to read it. It just came out yesterday.
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Jarrett's piece is fake news ntended to fool credulous morons. His "arguments" have already been destroyed.
 
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