Comey

I spent most of the day watching CNN. I came to this same conclusion before reading this article. For the record, I have thankfully never been the victim of sexual harassment.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/08/opinion/women-say-to-comey-welcome-to-our-wor...

It's more than ironic that Republicans are asking why Comey didn't stand up to Trump. Today, he delivered a verbal drone strike on Trump and Apologist of the House Paul Ryan said, basically, "Trump doesn't know how to be President, no biggie."

"May 16, 2017: Two sources close to Comey say that Trump asked him to close down the FBI's investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn a day after Flynn was let go. Comey, who was still FBI director at the time, wrote a memo about the exchange immediately after the Oval Office conversation in February, an associate of Comey's told NPR."

http://www.npr.org/2017/05/15/527773206/what-just-happened-the-james-comey-saga-...

18 U.S. Code § 641 - Public money, property or records

"Whoever embezzles, steals, purloins, or knowingly converts to his use or the use of another, or without authority, sells, conveys or disposes of any record, voucher, money, or thing of value of the United States or of any department or agency thereof, or any property made or being made under contract for the United States or any department or agency thereof; or

"Whoever receives, conceals, or retains the same with intent to convert it to his use or gain, knowing it to have been embezzled, stolen, purloined or converted—

Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; but if the value of such property in the aggregate, combining amounts from all the counts for which the defendant is convicted in a single case, does not exceed the sum of $1,000, he shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both.

The word “value” means face, par, or market value, or cost price, either wholesale or retail, whichever is greater.
(June 25, 1948, ch. 645, 62 Stat. 725; Pub. L. 103–322, title XXXIII, § 330016(1)(H), (L), Sept. 13, 1994, 108 Stat. 2147; Pub. L. 104–294, title VI, § 606(a), Oct. 11, 1996, 110 Stat. 3511; Pub. L. 108–275, § 4, July 15, 2004, 118 Stat. 833.)

5 U.S. Code § 552 - Public information; agency rules, opinions, orders, records, and proceedings

(in part)

"(b) Conditions of Disclosure.—No agency shall disclose any record which is contained in a system of records by any means of communication to any person, or to another agency, except pursuant to a written request by, or with the prior written consent of, the individual to whom the record pertains, unless disclosure of the record would be—

(exceptions)

(1) to those officers and employees of the agency which maintains the record who have a need for the record in the performance of their duties;

(2) required under section 552 of this title;

(3) for a routine use as defined in subsection (a)(7) of this section and described under subsection (e)(4)(D) of this section;

(4) to the Bureau of the Census for purposes of planning or carrying out a census or survey or related activity pursuant to the provisions of title 13;

(5) to a recipient who has provided the agency with advance adequate written assurance that the record will be used solely as a statistical research or reporting record, and the record is to be transferred in a form that is not individually identifiable;

(6) to the National Archives and Records Administration as a record which has sufficient historical or other value to warrant its continued preservation by the United States Government, or for evaluation by the Archivist of the United States or the designee of the Archivist to determine whether the record has such value;

(7) to another agency or to an instrumentality of any governmental jurisdiction within or under the control of the United States for a civil or criminal law enforcement activity if the activity is authorized by law, and if the head of the agency or instrumentality has made a written request to the agency which maintains the record specifying the particular portion desired and the law enforcement activity for which the record is sought;

(8) to a person pursuant to a showing of compelling circumstances affecting the health or safety of an individual if upon such disclosure notification is transmitted to the last known address of such individual;

(9) to either House of Congress, or, to the extent of matter within its jurisdiction, any committee or subcommittee thereof, any joint committee of Congress or subcommittee of any such joint committee;

(10) to the Comptroller General, or any of his authorized representatives, in the course of the performance of the duties of the Government Accountability Office;

(11) pursuant to the order of a court of competent jurisdiction; or

(12) to a consumer reporting agency in accordance with section 3711(e) of title 31.

Which of the above exceptions permits Mr. Comey to transmit, under 5 U.S. Code § 552a, through a friend, a memo he wrote in his capacity as F.B.I. Director pertaining to Trump?

Failing the showing of a valid exception, it would appear, then, that, in leaking a document to the press via a Columbia law-school professor who is a close friend of his, former F.B.I. Director Comey, violated the terms of 18 U.S. Code § 641 or 5 U.S. Code § 552 or both, when he disclosed a record "contained in a system of records by any means of communication to any person, or to another agency," in exception of the terms which allow disclosure, namely, "except pursuant to a written request by, or with the prior written consent of, the individual to whom the record pertains."

And no one here has "boo" to say about that?

>3 proximity1: And yet, according to this article, http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/06/08/trump_s_lawyer_suggests_james_..., he didn't break the law. The source for the article is "Texas School of Law professor Stephen Vladeck". I don't know anything about Vladeck but I bet he knows more about the law than you.

>4 jjwilson61:

Try reading this --esp. points 1 through 4--and then tell me that:

FD-291 FBI Employment Agreement, including provisions and prohibited disclosures.

https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/fd-291.pdf/view

____________________________________

ETA:

Did you even read the article you cited? (See my correction following this)

It contains this:

Paragraph 2 ( of this : FD-291 FBI Employment Agreement, including provisions and prohibited disclosures. ) states that all materials acquired in connection with an employee’s official duties are property of the U.S. government and that such materials must be surrendered to the FBI upon an employee’s separation from the agency. Paragraph 3 states that employees are prohibited from releasing “any information acquired by virtue of my official employment” to “unauthorized individuals without prior official written authorization by the FBI.” Paragraph 4 of the agreement requires FBI employees, prior to disclosing or publishing information acquired during their employment, to submit the information to FBI authorities for review to determine whether it is authorized for public release.

So if Comey followed protocol and surrendered all government property, including the memos he produced in his capacity as an FBI employee, it would have been impossible for him to provide the memos to his friend. The fact that he was able to provide hard copies of the memos to both his friend and special counsel Robert Mueller suggests that Comey did not surrender them to authorities as required by the FBI employment agreement.

Page two of the agreement lists the types of information disclosures which are strictly prohibited. Included in the list of information that may not be released without prior written approval by the FBI is “information that relates to any sensitive operational details or the substantive merits of any ongoing or open investigation or case.” While the agreement states that unauthorized disclosure of classified information is a violation of the contract, information does not have to be classified in order to be prohibited from unauthorized disclosure. Comey claims that his memos were unclassified.

Comey’s claim that it would not have been proper to publicly disclose that Trump was not a target of any FBI investigation because the investigation was ongoing and facts could change flies in the face of his decision to provide to his friends records of his meetings about the investigation with the president. If he could not publicly note that Trump was not a target of an ongoing investigation, then why was he able to release FBI records related to that investigation to his friends for the purpose of having those details leaked to the public via the news media? In light of the FBI’s prohibition on publicly sharing documents or information related to ongoing investigations absent prior written authorization, Comey’s dual explanations make little sense.

You are the single most error-prone poster I know of at this site. Whenever I see a post with you name on it, I know I can rely on its reasoning being partly or wholly factually-false and almost always absurdly ridiculous.

NOTE : Correction --

Well, isn't that just the way it goes? : in the very act of criticizing your nearly-perfect record of getting things wrong in posts between us, I get something glaringly wrong.

This is called a correction and admission of error-- it's where I admit having made a factual mistake in my claims or argument. In this case, I confused the content of one news or opinion article with that of another.

Specifically, I confused the article you cited, here,

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/06/08/trump_s_lawyer_suggests_james_...

with this one I which I had opened in a different tab,

FD-291 FBI Employment Agreement, including provisions and prohibited disclosures.

https://thefederalist.com/2017/06/09/james-comey-violate-fbi-employment-agreemen...

Thus, my confusion and my mistake in thinking that the content I cited was part of the article you cited.

_____________________

True, Comey is probably not or certainly not criminally liable for violating the terms of his employment agreement with the F.B.I. but for Comey, the former Director of the F.B.I., to violate the agreement sets a very bad example and doesn't do anything to burnish his image as a respectable witness before a congressional committee. He didn't trust the bureau he had directed enough to have left with its successor directorship his memoranda on Trump. How's that for a vote of confidence in the general integrity of the F.B.I.?

The fact remains that he seems to have violated both the spirit and the letter of the two sections of the US criminal code I cited in >3 proximity1:.

Obviously, many devoutly partisan Americans who'd like to see Trump run out of office by any means, fair or foul, aren't concerned with the details of Comey's efforts. For them, it's enough that his work here helps their cause in getting Trump one way or another.

It very seriously harms the nation--and, in the present state of affairs, that's saying something.

Trump's pseudo-liberal, pseudo-civic-minded enemies have failed to stop long enough to reason that, if they're successful in getting rid of Trump on such pretexts, they set a disastrous precedent which means that any president may be targeted for the same treatment--even one they happen to approve. This, again, directly arms the forces that are delighted every time something seriously undermines the foundations of what's left of a semi-democratic political order. By contributing to that, Trump's enemies prove themselves to be truly supreme fools. And none of the import of this psychodrama is lost on the Russian or Chinese dictators. They're watching all this and they understand what it signals about the depraved state of the American body-politic and the woefully inadequate capacity of Americans to demonstrate political "smarts."

More reading for reference on this matter:

Trump committed no crime. Democrats need to get over it.

... ...

Democrats will continue to lash out and contort Comey’s testimony, but the facts speak for themselves. President Trump has not asked anyone to lie, he has not prevented anyone from performing his or her legal obligations, and he has most certainly not obstructed justice.

Comey’s testimony was not flattering toward the president, but, as I wrote yesterday, it did more to help Trump than to hurt him. No matter how much the Democrats and mainstream media outlets try to spin a crime out of the straw that was Comey’s testimony, the facts just do not take us there.

The president still has the advantage of being innocent. If the Democrats want to impeach Trump, they will have to keep looking. I’m sure they will.

>5 proximity1: 'You are the single most error-prone poster I know of at this site. Whenever I see a post with you name on it,'

You got be mo covfefe when calling harvey keitel black.

The Wall Street Journal's editorial makes powerful points.

If a reader can't grasp the significance in the following, it's a very bad sign :

"James Comey's Passion Play"

June 8, 2017 7:24 p.m. ET
941 COMMENTS

James Comey’s first post-FBI appearance in front of the Senate on Thursday turned out to be a political anticlimax, with no major revelations about the alleged Trump-Russia nexus or the President’s supposed attempt to derail the investigation. But nearly three hours of testimony did expose the methods of the highly political former FBI director.

To wit, Mr. Comey is trying to have it both ways. He worked to leave the impression that Mr. Trump had committed a crime or at least an abuse of power, even as he abdicated his own obligations as a senior law-enforcement officer to report and deter such misconduct.

Mr. Comey confirmed that Mr. Trump never tried to block the FBI’s larger probe of potential Russian entanglement in the election and even encouraged the FBI, noting that “if some of my satellites did something wrong, it’d be good to find that out.” Despite this probative evidence, Mr. Comey claims that in an Oval Office meeting in February Mr. Trump importuned him to close the case on Michael Flynn, the National Security Adviser who had recently been fired for misleading the Vice President.

Mr. Trump, according to Mr. Comey, defended Mr. Flynn, saying “he is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.” Mr. Comey explained that “I took it as a direction to get rid of this investigation.”

But he wouldn’t answer when Senators asked if such a direction was illegal. “I don’t think it’s for me to say whether the conversation I had with the President was an effort to obstruct,” Mr. Comey said. “I took it as a very disturbing thing, very concerning, but that’s a conclusion I’m sure the special counsel will work towards to try and understand what the intention was there, and whether that’s an offense.”

Mr. Comey also admitted that after he was fired he leaked his personal memos about his Trump conversations, via a cutout at Columbia Law School, “because I thought that might prompt the appointment of a special counsel.” So Mr. Comey triggers Robert Mueller’s new assignment and then tosses him responsibility while still intimating that Mr. Trump violated the law.

This legerdemain is an awfully convenient self-defense. The important question is whether Mr. Comey believed Mr. Trump was obstructing justice at the time, and Mr. Comey’s behavior then doesn’t confirm his Senate tale.

Mr. Trump had expressed the same sentiments about Mr. Flynn’s bona fides in public and on Twitter , so his preferences were no secret. But if Mr. Comey really believed Mr. Trump was trying to block the Flynn probe, then he had a legal duty to report Mr. Trump’s conduct to his Justice Department superiors or the White House counsel. Obstruction of justice—intentionally attempting to impede an investigation—is a crime.

Mr. Comey said that he was “so stunned” that he lacked “the presence of mind” even to tell Mr. Trump that his request was improper. But he was able to gain enough composure to write up the experience in the car after the meeting, and to discuss the meeting, by his own testimony, with his chief of staff, the FBI deputy director, the associate deputy director, the general counsel, the deputy director’s chief counsel and the head of the FBI office of national security. But he never informed Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the Deputy AG or any other supervisor.

This abdication is especially remarkable for someone as experienced in the corridors of power as Mr. Comey. This is a government veteran who served three Presidents in senior positions and in 2004 predrafted a letter of resignation as Acting Attorney General to threaten President Bush over wiretapping.

Quitting and going public after his meeting with Mr. Trump would have let the country know what was happening in Washington, as many other civil servants have done over the years. Yet in an exchange with Senator Tom Cotton, Mr. Comey averred that “I didn’t find, encounter any circumstance that led me to intend to resign, consider to resign. No, sir.” In other words, Mr. Comey thought he was serving a corrupt President but wanted to keep that news a close hold.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/james-comeys-passion-play-1496964267

>5 proximity1: Well I'm at least reading, or skimming, your posts unlike most others here it seems. I'll stop though if you're just going to hurl abuse at me.

Watching Trump responded to Comey testimony, I thought Trump must be either uncharacteristically disciplined or not surprised--because Comey account of their conversations was true. If Comey had lied in any detail, the Trump we know and (don't!) love would have been apoplectic!!

>6 RickHarsch:

"You got be mo covfefe when calling harvey keitel black."

lol.
my late father-in-law used to lunch with keitel daily when they were both young court reporters.

The Comey hearing illustrated that few, if any, profiles-in-courage stories
are going to be written about GOPers during Watergate II. And, McCain
apparently thought watching a late-night baseball game was more important
than getting a long, restful sleep before the hearing.

>5 proximity1: I'm surprised that your so legalistic. Don't you believe that exposing wrongful gov't action outweighs the law, at least when it's unclassified info? And when it's just an employment agreement, isn't that a no-brainer?

Let's say, as a thought experiment, that in a few months Trump has to resign in order to avoid impeachment and conviction for obstruction of justice - because of this Comey thing.

Anyone want to bet against proximity still insisting that only he, the prox man, is right and that everyone else who disagrees is wrong - you, me, all of Congress, including all republicans and all democrats, including even the non-existence god himself?

Speaking of whom, if there is a god I would bet his ego is smaller than prox's - for sure prox believes god is less intelligent and knowledgeable on important subjects than the great and wonderful proximity. lol.

>11 Molly3028: McCain's diplay must amount to dereliction of duty (speaking and understanding 'plain English' presumably is part of the duty of a US senator).

>12 jjwilson61: That, yes, and the fact that almost every source I could find regarded the 'leak' as legal; that is, not a leak. That includes a judge on Fox News. Which leads to

>13 JGL53: Someone, somewhere, is a proximate intellectual doppelganger of the fellow.

Well, crap - Bat Man just died. But Bat Shit Crazy Man with the Comeyover still lives. Double crap.

>16 RickHarsch: Suggestion: find a depiction of the latter by Steve Bell of the Guardian.

(ETA: it makes me feel a little better)

> 16

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2017/jun/08/steve-bell-donald-...

Pretty fucking weird.

5: It is always funny to see non-lawyers try to argue about the law, since they usually don't actually understand what they are talking about. For example, the FBI regulation cited is all well and good, but it cannot override Public Law 101-12, codified at 5 U.S.C. § 1201 note which provides protection for Federal employees who expose what they reasonably believe to be a violation of a law, rule or regulation; gross mismanagement; gross waste of funds; an abuse of authority; or a substantial and specific danger to public health or safety.

>18 StormRaven:

LOL! so, you're a big legal expert, huh?

Say, MR LAWYER MAN, -- Riddle me this: how does PL 101-12 codified at U.S.C. § 1201 apply in this case: that of private citizen James Comey? -- leaking notes he penned on official duty as Director, F.B.I. and which, according to the employment terms he'd accepted and signed off on, were the property of the F.B.I. and he was under the obligation to turn them over to the Bureau on his departure.

protection for Federal employees who expose what they reasonably believe to be a violation of a law, rule or regulation

a) Not a Federal employee at the time of his action leaking the document;

b) No reasonable belief of a violation of law or rule or regulation --otherwise, why didn't Comey alert a U.S. Attorney or the A.G. or any Assistant Attorney General he trusted? Comey thinks Trump is attempting an obstruction of justice and all he has to back it up are these notes? Why didn't he take that (LOL!) "evidence" to a magistrate? Why did he testify that at no time did he--faced with a president he distrusted and suspected of attempting to obstruct justice--consider resigning and coming forward openly and quickly?

The man is a joke and so is your PL 101-12 attempt to excuse him.

Your motion is denied.

Oh, and by the way: you over-paid for your legal education.

;^)

Susan Shelley, who's not aa lawyer, has better legal judgment and reasoning abilities than you have:

"Comey should get his story straight on Clinton, Trump " (Opinion)
By Susan Shelley | Press-Enterprise
June 10, 2017 at 12:06 am

http://www.pe.com/2017/06/10/comey-should-get-his-story-straight-on-clinton-trum...

The most stunning thing in James Comey’s testimony to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence was what he said about special prosecutors, also called special counsels.

“After former President Clinton met on the plane with the attorney general, I considered whether I should call for the appointment of a special counsel and decided that would be an unfair thing to do because I knew there was no case there,” Comey testified, speaking of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server. “And calling for the appointment of a special counsel would be brutally unfair because it would send the message, ‘Uh-huh, there’s something here.’ ”

Sen. John Cornyn, who was questioning the former FBI director, asked, “If a special counsel had been appointed, they could have made that determination there was nothing there and declined to pursue it, right?”

“Sure,” Comey answered, “but it would have been many months later or a year later.”

Compare that to what he told Sen. Susan Collins at a different point in the hearing, when she asked, “Did you show copies of your memos to anyone outside the Department of Justice?”

“Yes,” Comey testified. “The president tweeted on Friday after I got fired that I better hope there’s not tapes. I woke up in the middle of the night on Monday night because it didn’t dawn on me originally, that there might be corroboration for our conversation. There might be a tape. My judgment was, I need to get that out into the public square. I asked a friend of mine to share the content of the memo with a reporter. Didn’t do it myself for a variety of reasons. I asked him to because I thought that might prompt the appointment of a special counsel.”

Let’s go over that again.

Comey wanted to prevent the appointment of a special counsel for Hillary Clinton, who was the subject of an FBI investigation, but he wanted to “prompt” the appointment of a special counsel for President Trump, who was not the subject of an FBI investigation.

He understood that the appointment of a special counsel “would send the message, ‘Uh-huh, there’s something here’” and that it would be “many months later or a year later” before the special counsel would announce that, in fact, “there was no case there.”

Any questions?

Here’s one: Is President Trump alleged to have done anything illegal or is this investigation just war, by any means necessary, against someone who has put a lot of swamp creatures out of power and out of work?

Comey testified that while he was FBI director, Trump was not under investigation by the FBI — not in a criminal investigation, and not in a counter-intelligence investigation, which, in Comey’s words, “tend to be centered on individuals the FBI suspects to be witting or unwitting agents” or “covertly acting as an agent” of a hostile foreign nation, or “targeted for recruitment.”

In the FBI’s judgment, Trump was none of those.

Comey revealed to Congress in March that the bureau was investigating “possible coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign,” yet he flatly refused to tell the public, until his testimony on Thursday, that Trump wasn’t under investigation.

Comey testified that after he was fired, he orchestrated a selective leak in order to prompt a lengthy special counsel investigation of the president, knowing full well that the FBI had found no reason to place the president under investigation.

That is genuinely deplorable.

(Susan Shelley is a columnist for the Southern California News Group. )

If GOP titans of the past were in DC today, the country wouldn't be experiencing this hell ~ they must be flipping in their graves.

Again and again I find that, interestingly enough, when it comes to the matter of James Comey, Donald Trump and the Michael Flynn investigation, the clearest, most incisive reasoning is being done not by Trump's critics--the Democrats--but by his defenders.

Once upon a time, in case after case of controversy, one could almost count on the Left-liberal view being the better reasoned, better argued case. What has happened?

Here's an example of the kind of incisive reasoning that for some time now one seldom sees from the political Left:

(from The National Review (Online) )

Can You Obstruct A Fraud?

by Andrew C. McCarthy
June 15, 2017 1:30 PM
@AndrewCMcCarthy

| Maybe Trump objected to the fraudulent notion, which Comey led the world to believe, that Trump was under investigation for collusion.
_____________________________

----On March 30, 2017, by his own account, then-FBI director James Comey told President Donald Trump that Trump himself was not under investigation — the third time he had given him that assurance. In fact, Comey told Trump that he had just assured members of Congress that Trump was not a suspect under investigation.

Think about that.

----This was fully six weeks after the then-director’s Oval Office meeting with the president, during which Comey alleges that Trump told him, “I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go.” Flynn, of course, is Michael Flynn, the close Trump campaign adviser and original Trump national-security adviser, whom Trump, with pained reluctance, had fired just the day before.

----Interesting thing about that. Most of the time, when public officials obstruct an investigation, there is a certain obsessiveness about it. Because, in the usual situation, the official has been paid off, or the official is worried that the subject of the investigation will inculpate the official if the investigation is allowed to continue. There is great pressure on the official to get the case shut down.

But not Trump, he of the notoriously short attention span.

-----Trump was feeling remorse over Flynn. What he told Comey, in substance, was that Flynn had been through enough. A combat veteran who had served the country with distinction for over 30 years, and who had not done anything wrong by speaking with the Russian ambassador as part of the Trump transition, Flynn had just been cashiered in humiliating fashion. The one who had done the cashiering was Trump, and he was still upset about it.

That, obviously, is why he lobbied Comey on Flynn’s behalf. And as I have pointed out before, it was an exercise in weighing the merits of further investigation and prosecution that FBI agents and federal prosecutors do hundreds of times a day, throughout the country. That matters because, as their superior and as the constitutional official whose power these subordinates exercise, Trump has as much authority to do this weighing as did Comey — who worked for Trump, not the other way around.

-----The thing to notice, though, was that Trump never did it again. After Comey’s description of this February 14 encounter, the word “Flynn” never appears again in Comey’s written testimony. This appears to be the one and only time that Trump advocated on Flynn’s behalf. If Trump was obstructing an investigation, he was awfully passive about it. Comey’s revisionist take on episode, after being fired by Trump, is that Trump was really ordering him to drop the Flynn investigation.

-----But Trump did not issue any such order. By the former director’s own account, the words Trump used left the decision about pursuing Flynn to Comey’s discretion — notwithstanding that, as chief executive, Trump had the legitimate authority to order Comey to close the case. Moreover, at the time these events actually happened, Comey took no action consistent with someone who understood himself to be under a directive by the president of the United States. He and the FBI continued the investigation.

-----Trump not only did not stop them from doing that. He never asked about the matter again. After the immediacy of the president’s anguish over having to fire his friend, Flynn seems to have faded from memory. Trump could have pardoned Flynn, he could have stepped in and ordered an end to the investigation at any time. He’s never done either. Comey, meanwhile, also took no action consistent with someone who believed he had witnessed a crime. He now says he can’t say for sure whether it was or it wasn’t obstruction. But he is a highly experienced former prosecutor and investigator who has handled obstruction cases. He is an expert in this area of the law. At the time it happened, he did not report to his superiors at the Justice Department that the president had committed obstruction — although he would have been required to do that if he believed it had happened. What about Congress? Did he report it to Congress, in whistleblower fashion? Actually, he did the opposite.
...

.... (more at the article's webpage; link below.)

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/448674/trump-wanted-comey-refute-false-not...

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