James Comey has submitted written testimony and answered about 2 1/2 hours of public questions from senators in the intelligence committee hearing. Democrats hunted for the silver bullet that will make all of their dreams of impeaching President Trump come true. Republicans tried to trip up James Comey as best they could, through it all he presented a calm and rational case, though. The one that he wanted to present. He was not swayed to jump to conclusions or step outside of his comfort zone. He was a rock, the committee were crashing waves.
The thing that should strike you is that James Comey has made record of each and every solo interaction with President Trump. It has been lost on almost no one so far. But an honest answer has not been offered as to why. The Republicans would like the answer to be because James Comey has some reason to dislike Donald Trump and is in some way deranged and untrustworthy. The Democrats would like the answer to be that he has "the goods" and is out to show it off. Neither are the truth.
To understand Mr. Comey's behavior, you should understand his work experience and who he is. He is a career prosecutor, former Deputy Attorney General, and former FBI director. His instinct is to build cases over long periods of time protect the integrity of witnesses and then present the strongest case possible. That is how he has been trained and that is his primary setting. Until he realizes his role is different in that process.
Take a piece of his written testimony, excerpted for clarity and retrieved here:
I first met then President-Elect Trump on Friday, January 6 in a conference room at Trump Tower in New York. I was there with other Intelligence Community (IC) leaders to brief him and his new national security team on the findings of an IC assessment concerning Russian efforts to interfere in the election. At the conclusion of that briefing, I remained alone with the President-Elect to brief him on some personally sensitive aspects of the information assembled during the assessment.
The IC leadership thought it important, for a variety of reasons, to alert the incoming President to the existence of this material, even though it was salacious and unverified. Among those reasons were: (1) we knew the media was about to publicly report the material and we believed the IC should not keep knowledge of the material and its imminent release from the President-Elect; and (2) to the extent there was some effort to compromise an incoming President, we could blunt any such effort with a defensive briefing.
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When the FBI develops reason to believe an American has been targeted for recruitment by a foreign power or is covertly acting as an agent of the foreign power, the FBI will “open an investigation” on that American and use legal authorities to try to learn more about the nature of any relationship with the foreign power so it can be disrupted. In that context, prior to the January 6 meeting, I discussed with the FBI’s leadership team whether I should be prepared to assure President-Elect Trump that we were not investigating him personally. That was true; we did not have an open counterintelligence case on him. We agreed I should do so if circumstances warranted. During our one-on-one meeting at Trump Tower, based on President-Elect Trump’s reaction to the briefing and without him directly asking the question, I offered that assurance.
So it is at this meeting when he is briefing the president on the dossier with the pee tape that Comey decides to offer an, otherwise unprompted, assurance that Mr. Trump is not under investigation. There is clearly a level of intuition here that causes Mr. Comey to do that. His behavior since, recording all interactions in the form of unclassified memos, making those memos available to the public and prosecutors, and preserving his integrity as a witness, all shows that he knew he would one day be called to testify regarding these interactions. He begins to act as a witness while he is still at his job as FBI Director, even at the expense of some of his duties. He intended for all of the memos to be unclassified but he typed the first one out on a classified machine, why? Because he knew he had to record the January 6th meeting immediately to keep it "present sense." He was simply preparing a witness rather than trying to stop any misdeeds.
Many of the Senators were interested, some even mezmorized, by Mr. Comey's inability to call out the President, his boss and the most powerful man in the world, for these inappropriate behaviors. While it would be both difficult because of the disorienting nature of Mr. Trump, and take the courage of standing up to your new boss, it just as easily could have been a third reason, its hard to remain a credible witness if you had begun to take part in, or shape, the inappropriate behavior rather than just witness it. Mr. Comey risked losing his credibility and integrity on the witness stand. He was out to better prepare himself than that.
I don't believe that today's testimony was even the one he was preparing himself for. He leaked the unclassified memos for the express purpose of triggering a special prosecutor. There may be more said behind closed doors today, but a few things are clear. Mr. Comey intended to be a witness, he had a long term plan to see a case built over time, and he believes that only a special prosecutor can properly execute it.
What is not clear is what Mr. Comey believes will come of his testimony, how much more interesting stuff he still has to say, if anything at all, or if the special prosecutor will actually turn up anything actionable against anybody.
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