Sheesh.
IANAL, but seems like he violated federal law in order to interfere in an election. He had nothing, he should have kept his mouth shut and his department in line, and he failed at both. Seems likely he won’t keep his job, but are his actions prosecutable?
What in the holy fuck does he think he accomplished with this stupid ploy??
He thinks he might have thrown the election to Trump. And he might be right.
As I heard one pundit explain it, his original letter 9 days ago was put out in order to protect the FBI and to protect himself from charges of delaying the potentially incriminating evidence until after the election. While this sounds a sort of reasonable motivation, what Comey apparently forgot is that his job, and the job of the FBI, is not to protect its own image and reputation, it is to act always in the best interests of the country. So perhaps he made an error in judgment, on a par with Hillary’s original lapse in using a private email server while she was SoS, and once he realized that he did his best to undo the damage (too late, but perhaps he tried) before the election.
This sounds like a reasonable explication of the events of the past 9 days.
If I were Clinton I would not fire Comey, or have him fired, and I would do my best to prevent him from resigning. I would make sure he had really learned this lesson and have him work to root out* any remaining rabid anti-liberal bias in the department.
*“Root out” in the sense of strongly enforcing the idea that we (the FBI) don’t care what your political affiliations or views are, but if you violate our rules for any political or any other reason you will be disgraced and probably fired.
I guess I basically disagree with this. Even assuming for the sake of argument that Comey’s motivations were pure, there are DOJ guidelines and federal laws in place to prevent this sort of poor judgment on the part of civil servants from unduly impacting an election. He ignored those guidelines and laws, and rumors have it that a number of lower-ranking FBI officers have done so as well. They should all be rooted out, fired, and potentially prosecuted. We have to take this sort of meddling extremely seriously, or see it escalate.
Trump hasn’t said anything, but his surrogates have reversed their praise for Comey after having reversed their disapproval of his clearing her.
Trump has accused Clinton of “cheating” because she’s bringing celebrities to her rallies.
Words. Do they have meaning any more?
Jason Miller(Trump Communications Director, he of the big head and tiny face) claimed that Trump never criticized Comey. I wish CNN would keep video clips queued up for the most likely lies.
“When I use a word,” Humpty Trumpty said in rather a scornful tone. “It means just what I choose it to mean - neither more or less.”
I’m not sure how to feel about Comey. I think his message was less damaging than if it had been leaked last week without his statement. Imagine Trump saying “The FBI has evidence they were going to cover up to protect Hillary!” That would have been far, far worse.
So Comey had to say something, I think, in order to mitigate the potential downsides. I’m just not sure he said the right thing. He should have said something like “While additional emails have come to my attention, I have no information that would change my prior statements or recommendations.” Equally true as the statement he did release, but a lot less room for wild media speculation.
I’m not sure whether he should be fired or retained in his position. The real people who need to be fired are the Republicans in Congress who first insisted that he make the recommendation on prosecution and then attacked him for making a recommendation on prosecution. As long as those people are in Congress, no part of the government is going to be able to do its job properly.
Comey is required by federal law (Hyde Amendment) and DoJ guidelines to keep his mouth shut. He should have kept it shut in July, he should have kept it shut in Oct., he should be keeping it shut now.
Of course, Loretta Lynch also shouldn’t have met with Bill Clinton in the middle of a campaign to put Hillary Clinton into the White House. This (what appeared to be) apparently improper attempt to influence the investigation is what caused Comey to think he had to say something in July. Still, it was the DoJ that should have made any statement in the first place; the FBI is supposed to just shut up and do its job.
In Comey’s defense, he seems to have thought he should, ethically, notify Congress when the Weiner investigation turned up more on Hillary–but he has been trying to downplay that and keep it from throwing the election for no reason.
I get how passionate Clinton’s partisans can be, but I don’t know that there’s conscious malice on Comey’s part. Maybe there’s some unconscious party bias, maybe he was just trying to cover bases in case something damning did turn up later.
As a Clinton partisan, my anger at Comey doesn’t require conscious malice on his part (though I wouldn’t be surprised if he actually was intentionally trying to influence the election here.) It requires only that he illegally commented on an ongoing investigation, multiple times, when federal law and DOJ procedure forbid such actions from civil servants. He should not have substituted his judgment of what was right for what the law required him to do. And he should face consequences for that. For one, that’s how our system works: break the law, face consequences. It may also be necessary to send a message to future FBI Directors, military leaders, etc that electoral meddling will be punished.
This whole damned election has been glorious.
I understand Comey’s position halfway. He needed to be publicly seen not hiding something that could later be twisted into an accusation. That doesn’t explain why he handled the incident so incredibly badly, in a way that led every single person on all sides to twist it into an accusation. I could find a hundred ways of writing that letter that would have said, “We have been told of possible additional material. We have not seen any of it. In any normal process this would be routine. I understand that speculation may inevitably arise, but the FBI always strongly discourages speculation when the material is entirely unknown. For Pete’s sake, we don’t even have a warrant yet. We know nothing. Neither do you. STFU.”
The Hyde Amendment?
I think they were thinking of the Hatch Act&oq=Hyde+Amendment)&aqs=chrome…69i57&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#q=hatch+act).
I’m assuming he means the Hatch Act. I can’t find any mention of Hyde that would be relevant. But IANAL and he is, so I’ll wait until he comes back to explain.
Assuming for the sake of argument that Comey’s error was honestly mis-guided and not at all malicious, then as a chastened man he could be more effective in cleaning up the FBI than a newcomer might. Also, for optics, not firing him prevents a lot of right-wing blather about revenge, witch hunts, covering up and so on.
On the other hand, if he was malicious, well, you know what they say about where to keep your enemies.
If I really were Clinton, I would listen to a lot of advice from a lot of wise people whom I trust before making a decision one way or the other. I would expect both of our points of view to be represented among those wise people.
Yeah. Brain doesn’t work well at my age any more. <sigh> :smack:
Cheer up! Your memory is shot, so, really, you don’t know if it ever did!