July 12, 2017
By Ellen Nakashima and Karoun Demirjan
Christopher A. Wray, (click here) President Trump’s nominee to head the FBI, told a Senate panel that if the president tried improperly to get him to drop an investigation, he would first try to talk him out of it-- and if that failed, resign.
He also testified that no one has asked him for any loyalty oath as part of his nomination. “And I sure as heck didn’t offer one,” he said.
Wray, a low-key former senior Justice Department official, was nominated after Trump abruptly fired FBI Director James B. Comey in May amid a bureau investigation into potential collusion between Trump associates and the Kremlin to interfere in last year’s presidential election.
His remarks at his confirmation hearing underscored the concerns senators have about his ability to be an independent leader, resistant to political pressures — including from the White House.
In his opening remarks, he said he would never allow the bureau’s work to be driven by “by anything other than the law, the facts and the impartial pursuit of justice.”...
No one is going to tell me Comey was fired for good cause. Not by Trump. If Clinton were in the White House having lost innumerable down ballot races, I would say there is reason for his firing, but, not Trump. Comey effected the election. He simply did. There is no reason for Trump to fire him, nor was there a valid reason given.
There is something here. Trump is manipulating his way out of something. He is creating VULNERABILITY FOR THE USA to prevent a personal tragedy. That is what Comey's firing was. It was creating a vulnerability for the USA that lessens the focus on him as a potential treasonist.
I am sure Christopher Wray is very qualified, but, given the problems the FBI is now facing it is far more ethical to advance from within the agency. There should be long term employees brought in to the Director's office. And forget McCabe, he is the Acting Director, but, is under investigation himself.
Ask Former Ambassador Joe Wilson. Ask him to head the FBI for the interim.
Yes, there is a double standard, "The Trump Standard" and the one for the rest of us. The majority Republicans in the House and Senate are afraid of Trump.
22 March 2017
By Jim Stinson
Washington, D.C. has reversed its thinking (click here) on the seriousness of federal government leaks with President Donald Trump in the White House.
Leaks of classified federal information are now treated as not a big deal — so long as they are damaging to Trump. Damaging leaks of classified information seem to be the preferred way to pry information from Trump, a Republican, no matter the slippery slope that federal workers head down when they unleash the documents.
A transcript of the president’s call to a foreign leader? No problem. Unmasking the name of an American citizen as he spoke to the Russian ambassador? That sounds fine to many. So long as it zings Trump....
...On July 14, 2003, columnist Robert Novak revealed that an Iraq War critic, Ambassador Joseph Wilson, had traveled to Africa in February 2002 to look into claims Iraq was buying yellowcake uranium from Niger....
...David Corn, a left-wing journalist now with Mother Jones, insisted the law had been broken in the leak to Novak. The political drumbeat began, the CIA asked for action, and in September 2003, President Bush and his attorney general named a prosecutor....
...And Lawrence O'Donnell, now with MSNBC, made an infamous whiff of a prediction: "[A]t least three high-level Bush Administration personnel indicted and possibly one or more very high level unindicted co-conspirators."
But no one was indicted for the leak itself. Scooter Libby, chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, was indicted for misleading federal investigators in 2007. Perhaps realizing the political nature of the case, President Bush commuted Libby's sentence....
...The seriousness of the leaks involving Flynn helped build tremendous disappointment on Monday, when FBI Director James Comey, acting oddly as usual, said he could not even confirm an investigation into the leaks....
...What if, the former intel operative wondered, the Bush administration's National Security Council had received incidental collection on the Obama campaign in late 2008, and not informed the congressional oversight committees?
There would be hell to pay, he said.
So what is the media doing in 2017? They are asking for more leaks of classified documents. Some newspapers have even set up anonymous online "dropboxes."
And the Democrats? They are nowhere to be seen on the issue.
Any Democratic silence on this is standard. No one ever hears from a single Republican in the throws of an investigation.
