Well, he could re-state the facts as he knows them, and conclude that no prosecutor would be likely to advance a criminal case. And then editorialize on the propriety of Trump’s actions in tones of such stern disapproval that one might fairly conclude that he regretted that no such prosecution was likely.
Worked before.
Most witnesses in a given trial are not attorneys who have a great deal of experience as prosecutors (and not bound by a prohibition against opining on ultimate issue type answers). I think it’s a certainty that if Comey testifies that Trump “requested”, with or without the quotation marks, that Comey shut down the FBI investigation, the immediate question from a Democratic senator will be whether, in Comey’s opinion, that could constitute obstruction of justice. He would probably decline to say, in which case he would likely be asked a few dozen hypotheticals to see if he would give that opinion about any sort of similar scenarios.
OK so what’s been reported so far, has gone as far as to pretty much put quotation marks around Trump saying three times, DeNiro style, I hope you can see your way to letting it go, etc.
So some Dem senator(s) is going to have the opportunity to ask Comey for his best recollection of the exact quotes.
And then the same Dem senator is going to have to opportunity to ask Comey if his impression was that Trump:
[ul]
[li]Wanted the Flynn investigation shut down[/li][li]Was asking him to shut it down[/li][li]Was ordering him to shut it down[/li][/ul]
Posed that way, in that order, Comey can pretty easily answer the first two questions with a “Yes,” it’s there in plain English.
On the third, he has four choices:
[ul]
[li]Directly “Yes”[/li][li]Directly “No”[/li][li]Dodge it and say he can’t read Trump’s mind.[/li][li]Indirectly “Yes,” with a statement that implies a quid pro quo, such as “I can’t read his mind, but he was my boss and [whatever] and you saw the result. I got fired.”[/li][/ul]
If Comey doesn’t answer with a direct or indirect “Yes,” then a Dem senator will furnish the answer for him.
But anything other than a direct “Yes,” from Comey himself to question 3 and Trump skates (relatively speaking) in terms of the potential damage from this hearing.
My sense is that this is going to feel a lot like the confirmation hearings for a SCOTUS justice. The person being quizzed is about 1,000 times smarter than any of the quizzers (especially as regards legal matters) and is unlikely to get tripped up or forced to say something he didn’t mean to say (you can’t handle the truth!).
Perhaps he’ll say something like: I’d love to help you out, Senator, but I’m saving all the good stuff for my book-- available from Amazon on Aug 1.
I’m sure the Republicans have been working overtime digging into Comey’s past. If he ever cheated playing marbles at recess, they’re going to find it. Maybe one of them will ask him what time it is, and if he says 1:30, they’ll ask him again a half hour later and he’ll say 2:00. Then they’ll say “what is it, first you said 1:30 and now you say 2:00?” Then the Fox channel will have a crawl at the bottom, continuing for the next week “COMEY CAUGHT IN LIE IN TESTIMONY”.
Of all the needle in a haystack tasks: finding dishonesty and impropriety in Comey’s pre-2016 past.
Well, at least it’ll keep those termites busy and away from further damaging America…
Basketball. I think he got called for traveling once in high school.
The investigation may continue, but it only matters if people understand why they should care, and it’s not clear that they do or that they ever will. Meanwhile, Democrats are hopelessly distracted by Trump’s scandals. They have no message right now, and without that, they can’t win, and they can’t remove Trump from office.
You said that testifying that there had been obstruction of justice would make Comey look like an idiot.
Then you changed it to “He wouldn’t testify that he was told to do so”.
That’s so what?
I’m pretty sure that after 2 it’s already obstruction of justice.
You misspelled Republicans. Nothing is going to get done while this scandal looms overhead. Their only agenda is cutting taxes for the wealthy and they can’t even do that while their felon-in-chief is slowly twisting in the wind.
It’s no secret that Traitor Trump is mobbed up. Don’t be surprised if Comey is suddenly found dead or disappeared.
It’s nice to be a member of the reality-based community here.
Well, you’re wrong. Trump is in charge of the FBI and he can legally ask for something to be shut down.
Of course the last president who ordered an stop to an investigation lost his presidency.
The question will probably be something like:
Mr.Comey, we understand that the president asked you if you could end the investigation into <whoever>. Did that come across as the president ordering you to do so?
I can’t say for sure, but it’s hard for me to imagine Comey answering “yes” to that.
He might even believe that. Given his level of sophistication and intelligence, he might even believe that its totally legit for the Prez to talk to his good buddy, the FBI director, and ask for a friendly accomodation. Like, he was asking him, right? Just, you know, could he see it, as a possibility, cut the guy some slack.
I mean, if a guy says something nice, a compliment, say…like “This is a real nice army base you got here, be a shame if something were to happen to it”. You’d take that as some kind of threat?
Since the exact words used and their context will be extremely important, either Comey’s description of the conversation will come in his opening statement or through a more open-ended question, like - “Please describe to us the conversation you had with the president about the investigation on Day X.” Since there have been only rumors about any such conversation, facts will be need to be established before Comey is asked about conclusions.
You can bet that some of the conclusion questions following a detailed description of that or any other conversations will be 1) whether Comey has ever experienced or heard about any other similar request to shut down a specific investigation from a president before, 2) his opinion about the propriety of a president making such a request when the investigation is related to the president, 3) how he interpreted that conversation (and Trump’s reaction following any rejection of such a request) as it related to his other conversation with Trump in which Trump allegedly demanded some kind of personal loyalty pledge and Comey only offered a pledge to be truthful, and 4) whether Comey feels like he was abruptly fired because he refused to shut down the FBI investigation and refused to give some kind of loyalty oath to Trump personally and not merely the office of the president.
True, but he was facing strong opposition in congress. Trump has allies in congress. In fact, Trump was made possible in large part because of the Republican party’s 20-30 year destruction of truth in political discourse. Trump’s not really an outlier when you look at the Republican party as a whole – most of the party now either is extremist or tolerates extremists. Extremism is mainstream GOP now. They have too much to lose to stand by and watch the Constitutional process take its course.
Yeah of course. So Trump is obviously guilty because Nixon.