Today's Senate Judiciary Hearing (5/3/17) with James Comey

This lasted about 4 hours of which I saw the last 3 hours. Comey was grilled extensively. As expected, the Republicans concentrated on Hillary's emails while the Democrats concentrated on Trump's Russian ties.

About Wikileaks: Comey stated that after sometime, not stating precisely when, Wikileaks evolved from strictly a news or journalistic organization into a political actor. His justification was Wikileaks not asking permission of asking the FBI's permission to publish "possibly confidential" material. Of course, this is exactly what makes Wikileaks so valuable. They do not ask anybody's approval to print the truth. So in this country, one can lie with impunity but to tell the truth gets you put in jail.

Re Comey's announcement of reopening the Clinton email investigation after Weiner's laptop was subpoenaed, Comey admitted he was in a tough position. He did announce after his June 2016 decision not to recommend to prosecute Hillary for her emails, that he would inform the Congress that he would inform them if "anything changes". Because there were 40,000 emails on Weiner's laptop, sent to him by Huma Abedin, he felt that the sheer amount of information to be processed couldn't be accomplished before election day. However IT people in the FBI wrote new software which enabled all the emails to be more rapidly searched than originally expected. This software will now be used in other cases since it worked so well. Of the 40,000 emails, 4,000 involved government business sent by unsecured servers. Of those 4,000, only "twelve" were confidential, "most of which we had already".

Comey explained the reason for his two public announcements in the last 11 days of the election, following Weiner laptop searches was that he was in a very tough position, with which I agree. He was in a lose-lose predicament. If he did announce re-opening of the probe, then he would be accused of playing politics; and he was so accused. If he didn't acknowledge reopening the probe, then he would have been accused by Republicans of obstructing justice. This didn't occur however because he did reveal both the reopening and the re-closing of the Clinton email case.

Going back to June's infamous "no reasonable prosecutor would pursue an indictment" announcement, he kept falling back on mens rea in making decisions based on the subject's conscious attempt to evade the law. Comey did not find then, nor does he believe otherwise now that Clinton (and also Huma) had malicious intent. Of course conscious intent to violate the law is only part of the charge. The other part of the charge for prosecution is gross negligence. Comey re-iterated his belief that gross negligence was not part of Clinton's legal culpability. WRONG. WRONG. WRONG. He did give her a free pass.

So, in June 2016, why did Comey make the public announcement of non-prosecution followed by a listing of all the lies Clinton told both in public and to Congress? Because this was a very unique situation. That is the meeting of Bill Clinton with (Lying) Loretta Lynch 3 days before on her government plane. Indeed this is a very unusual situation when an ex-president intercedes on behalf of a current presidential candidate just days before the FBI was to report to DOJ on the conclusion of the FBI investigation. Lynch, of course declined to appoint a special prosecutor (see below) because she was severely compromised AND the unspoken knowledge of her position as AG being purely a political appointment. This latter part was not discussed today. Of course, the Democrats did not raise the question of having had a special prosecutor at that time since Lynch recused herself but did not appoint one.

On to the Trump investigation, which Comey admitted was occurring but refused to say anything more about, such as whether a grand jury had been convened or who was being investigated including possibly Trump. Now HERE is where Democratic hypocrisy comes to the fore. They absolutely, positively, most emphatically insisted that there should be a special prosecutor should be appointed. Sessions has recused himself but not appointed a special prosecutor. Democrats did not complain when Lynch, as mentioned above, did not do so.

Democrats on the Judiciary committee did accurately indicate Trump, his son-in-law and many of his associates had business ties in Russia. But none asserted at today's hearing that they had evidence proving such collusion, but that didn't stop their lines of questioning.

Note that although Wikileaks was called out for reporting the Truth, no one on either side of the committee seemed to have problems with unproven allegations about Russia or other current matters. Furthermore, the veracity of Wikileaks publications was not even mentioned.

Attack on the First Amendment

Both sides skirted the issue directly but there were several disconcerting lines of questions for Comey from Republicans and Democrats. These actually are much more chilling than the main lines of questioning, which, as mentioned above, were purely political.

Questions were raised about requiring makers of encrypted devices to provide decryption of such devices in particular cases. No one suggested outright that the manufacturers provide the government a description key. Both sides agreed, not in so many words, that a court order should be in place for each decryption.

Electronic Conversation Transaction Records (ECTR) were discussed. The government is allowed to collect information in specific cases information not only about phone numbers used but also internet sites visited. Comey stated that even though they can find out what sites are visited, they cannot detect what the reader actually read. I believe this is also the case with NSA, although that topic did not arise.

Sen. Tillis, Republican, seemed to want to extend section 702 of the FISA act to investigate American conversations with foreign persons or organizations NOT linked to terrorists or suspected terrorists.

Terrorists Residing in the United States

Comey said that the FBI is currently investigating suspected terroristic individuals living in the U.S. The total number involved is slightly over 2,000. Of these, 1,000 are native-born and 1,000 are Foreign refugees. Of the 1,000 foreign-born approximately one-third are from the six Muslim majority nations Trump explicitly desired to restrict entry. Two-thirds of the foreign-born terror suspects were from Iraq. So, of course we see another bit of Trumpian nonsense.

Comey said there is much better vetting of immigrants in countries where we have diplomatic relations than in countries, particularly Syria, where we have no working governmental relations. Hence vetting of Syrian refugees lacks the thoroughness of refugees from other countries.

Much information was requested which Comey said he would provide in closed session. Information about on-going investigations he would not disclose in any forum.

Comey was asked about today's 3 AM Trump tweet to the effect that Comey gave Clinton a free pass but was pursuing a phony Russian-influence investigation. Comey, as described above, denied the former accusation and refused to comment on the second statement. His overall demeanor was calm and controlled. He did not come across as a weasel, even though most of us here believe he made an incredibly bad judgement about Clinton's email culpability.

Share
up
0 users have voted.

Comments

OLinda's picture

(or WikiLeaks) did call govt. re Vault 7. Comey lies again.

up
0 users have voted.
Alligator Ed's picture

@OLinda but was unaware of its falsity. Thanks for pointing it out, Olinda.

up
0 users have voted.
OLinda's picture

sent classified docs over unsecured lines to an unsecured computer - - Anthony's - - so he could print them out for her. Oh brother. And, Comey says, no problem. That's cool. There was no "intent" and Huma didn't realize that was a no no.

This whole classified business is a joke. Whether someone is authorized to see classified docs doesn't matter, unless they want to prosecute someone, then they'll make it matter.

It sounded to me like Comey assumes Anthony didn't read them, since he was just supposed to print them.

up
0 users have voted.
Alligator Ed's picture

@OLinda but my aim in this essay was just report to what he testified. You are precisely correct. There was more ranting in which I could have engaged but did not want to enlarge the essay because I know the readers would supply the obvious details, as you did.

up
0 users have voted.
detroitmechworks's picture

As long as you never said it publicly, you could know what the truth was.

Now of course, revealing the truth has always been a death sentence.

Of course, now they want to apply that death sentence to everyone that knows the truth.

And that's how you keep democracy alive.

/snark

up
0 users have voted.

I do not pretend I know what I do not know.

Alligator Ed's picture

@detroitmechworks If I ever get back in gear, I shall write more about brain hacking, by which term I mean real-time sensing AND eliciting a desired response AT A DISTANCE. Work about thought-reading is already being done, though still in its infancy, but is possible now only in a laboratory setting in which the subject realizes the monitoring process AND is cooperative.

up
0 users have voted.
smiley7's picture

i watched in entirety:

Comey said that the FBI is currently investigating suspected terroristic individuals living in the U.S. The total number involved is slightly over 2,000. Of these, 1,000 are native-born and 1,000 are Foreign refugees. Of the 1,000 foreign-born approximately one-third are from the six Muslim majority nations Trump explicitly desired to restrict entry. Two-thirds of the foreign-born terror suspects were from Iraq. So, of course we see another bit of Trumpian nonsense.

Is this from a transcript? i'm old and don't recall this portion the above way. But, i've been in serious healthcare and on drugs for a year and half.

up
0 users have voted.
Alligator Ed's picture

@smiley7 Come together, brothers and sisters, and be enlightened by the Great Weasel who lives in Washington Heaven.

up
0 users have voted.
Alligator Ed's picture

In the following video, which she herself posted to YouTube, she asserts that there was Russian hacking of the DNC:

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPC3vmzZNxE]

Prove it! Tell the DNC to release their computers to the FBI so they can examine whether any Russian intrusion occurred into DNC computers. You know the DNC won't do it because there is a helluva lot more dirt hiding in RAT central

up
0 users have voted.

is that one of the worst conflicts a woman like myself has with the Clinton-styled so-called feminism is that a statement like this by Comey can exonerate her and her closest staff members:

http://dailycaller.com/2016/08/11/exclusive-joint-fbi-us-attorney-probe-...

08/11/2016

“Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information,” he announced in a July 5 press conference.

The impression is and has been about the entire State Dept. email crime that it wasn't criminal, it was flakey, air-headed, and careless, because that's what it is when women do it. They're just naturally flakey, air-headed, and careless. It can't be helped, and there is no intent because they're too stupid to think strategically.

People who claim this defense of Clinton and her staff are not feminists.

up
0 users have voted.
Alligator Ed's picture

@Linda Wood and knowing shills otherwise.

up
0 users have voted.