White House Admits James Comey Swung the Election to Trump
The Trump administration has been throwing every possible charge it can think of at James Comey, in order to scuff up the image of the fired FBI director. This morning, Kellyanne Conway made an accusation that she and her boss might not have thought through: “This guy swung an election,” Conway told George Stephanopoulos on Good Morning America . “He thought the wrong person would win.” That is probably true, but also probably not something Conway should admit.
Remember, the administration’s original justification for firing Comey was that he treated Hillary Clinton unfairly. Trump immediately blew up that line by confessing to Lester Holt that he fired Comey in order to stop the Russia investigation. But the administration’s messaging has returned to the original line anyway, acting as if Trump’s admission-against-interest never occurred. The official Republican site attacking Comey has heavily emphasized Democratic complaints that he publicly announced Hillary Clinton was under investigation in the campaign’s waning days.
The key to this message, though, is to ignore the context of the complaints. Trump wants people to hear that everybody is mad at Comey, but not what they are mad about — his decision to publicize the investigation into one candidate but not the other. That was Conway’s mistake.
In her eagerness to press the attack against Comey, she took the additional step of spelling out the consequences of his action. Not only did he treat Clinton unfairly, but his action was likely decisive in a razor-tight election. Comey believed Clinton had a safe lead and he could protect himself, and her, against postelection complaints that the FBI had protected her without risking her defeat. As Conway said, he actually swung the election to Trump.
And there is no way to read Conway’s comment other than as admitting Comey made the difference. You can’t “swing” an election to the candidate who lost. You can only swing it to the candidate who won.
Update : Conway now says she was being sarcastic. “I rolled my eyes and said ‘Really, this guy swung an election?’ It was sarcastic,” she tells the Daily Beast .
In the comments surrounding her “sarcastic comment, Conway made a series of non-sarcastic remarks supporting the charge that Comey swung the election. She cited a letter calling for Comey to resign over his treatment of Clinton, his confession of leaking details of a meeting with Trump, then mentioned that he swung the election – “This guy swung an election,” without saying “Really.” Immediately after, she noted that Comey “thought the wrong person would win,” which is also supporting evidence for the charge that Comey mistakenly swung the election to Trump because he believed Clinton had it in the bag.
Of course, it’s not possible to prove one way or another whether a person had earnest intent when uttering an admission against interest. “Yes, I stole the money” could be sarcastic, or it could be a confession.
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He can’t be trusted a real slimeball.
"slimeball". You are quoting Donald Trump. Can't you do better than that Dean?
Gimlet Eye wants you to describe his poop. I presume you are ready.
Comey politicized his position when the FBI is considered an apolitical agency.
He swung towards Hillary with an exoneration and then towards Trump with the re-open of the case...so it is wash.
Get over it...Trump won.
There was no basis to indict Hillary. Comey is hardly the only one who said that. Right wingers try to construct a false argument and then repeat it ad nauseum so that is seeps into the unconscious of the gullible.
who said it?
Numerous experts in the relevant law said that Clinton would not and should not be indicted. There was no precedent for it, as Comey explained. The nutjobs on the right continue to act like there was no legitimate rationale for his decision, which is simply not true.
This is from an article in April of 2016, three months before Comey announced the decision to not indict Clinton.
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"It’s the most explosive question of the 2016 presidential campaign: Could Hillary Clinton get indicted for her handling of sensitive materials through her home email server?
A POLITICO review of dozens of recent federal investigations for mishandling of classified records suggests that it’s highly unlikely — but not impossible.
The examination, which included cases spanning the past two decades, found some with parallels to Clinton’s use of a private server for her emails, but — in nearly all instances that were prosecuted — aggravating circumstances that don’t appear to be present in Clinton’s case.
The relatively few cases that drew prosecution almost always involved a deliberate intent to violate classification rules as well as some add-on element: An FBI agent who took home highly sensitive agency records while having an affair with a Chinese agent; a Boeing engineer who brought home 2000 classified documents and whose travel to Israel raised suspicions; a National Security Agency official who removed boxes of classified documents and also lied on a job application form.
Clinton herself, gearing up for her FBI testimony, said last week that a prosecution is “not gonna happen.” And former prosecutors, investigators and defense attorneys generally agree that prosecution for classified information breaches is the exception rather than the rule, with criminal charges being reserved for cases the government views as the most egregious or flagrant."
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People like you don't seem to understand that this type of article (and there were many others) destroys your belief that there was a "conspiracy" to exonerate Clinton. Conservative media duped you.
Do you always put words in peoples mouths? ....where did I say there was a "conspiracy"?
Comey exonerated Hillary...if you want to play semantics....knock yourself out.
Nonsense. There are many examples of convictions for much fewer criminal violations of Federal law
Here's a partial list of Crimes Hillary has committed with the email scandal and should be convicted of. There is no debate about these. The FBI Director Comey admitted before Congress these facts in July, but did not admit their criminal nature.
Unauthorized Removal And Retention Of Classified Documents Or Material
18 U.S.C. § 1924
Class: A Misdemeanor
Possible Penalty: Imprisonment for 1 year and/or $100,000 fine
Text: “Knowingly removing materials containing classified information of the United States with the intent to retain said info at an unauthorized location without the authority to do so”
Gathering, Transmitting Or Losing Defense Information
18 U.S.C. § 793
Class: Felony
Possible Penalty: Imprisonment for 10 years and/or $250,000 fine
Text: “Allowing [by means of gross negligence] any document relating to the national defense to be removed from its proper place of custody or destroyed –or- willfully retaining unauthorized documents relating to national defense and failing to deliver them to the United States employee entitled to receive them –or- failure to report that unauthorized documents relating to national defense were removed from their proper place of custody or destroyed”
Concealment, Removal, Or Mutilation Generally
18 U.S.C. § 2071
Class: Felony
Possible Penalty: Imprisonment of no more than 3 years, a fine, or both
Text: “Whoever, having the custody of any such record, proceeding, map, book, document, paper, or other thing, willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, falsifies, or destroys the same”
Destruction, Alteration, Or Falsification Of Records In Federal Investigations And Bankruptcy
18 U.S.C. § 1519
Class: Felony
Possible Penalty: Imprisonment of no more than 20 years, a fine, or both
Text: “Whoever knowingly alters, destroys, mutilates, conceals, covers up, falsifies, or makes a false entry in any record, document, or tangible object with the intent to impede, obstruct, or influence the investigation or proper administration of any matter within the jurisdiction of any department or agency of the United States”
NUMEROUS legal experts and news outfits looked into the basis for indicting Hillary, and MANY of them concluded that precedent would not sustain it.
Thats the fact. It was not just Comey. If you would like to lie about it, I suppose you have that right.
Note the date - months before Comey announced his decision.
didn't know they had access to FBI investigations...what did we need Comey for?
People convicted of Hillary’s crimes
Andrew McCarthy, former US Attorney for the Southern District of New York
As Andy McCarthy explained it in the National Review:
“In fact, the espionage act—which regulates the handling of intelligence by government officials — does not refer to classified information; it refers to information relating to the national defense. Moreover, it does not prohibit solely the transmission of such information; it criminalizes the communication, delivery, or transmission of that information; causing communication, delivery, or transmission of that information; permitting the removal of that information from its proper place of custody through gross negligence; permitting that information to be lost, stolen, abstracted, or destroyed through gross negligence; or, failing to make a prompt report to superiors in the government when an official knows that the information has been removed from its proper place of custody, communicated to someone not authorized to have it, lost, stolen, abstracted, or destroyed. See also Title 18 United States Code Section 2071 (prohibiting destruction of records).”
BS
i held a top secret clearance for many years. She lied about not knowing the security procedures that everyone holding a clearance is repeatedly briefed on including the warning that carelessness (as Comey cited) is not a legal excuse
Andrew McCarthy should have been the Attorney General or head of the FBI then. Then you might have got your wish.
The FACT is that MANY legal experts said there was no basis to indict Clinton. It was not only Comey, nor was there a conspiracy. Your crackpot conservative media has confused you.
I'm not going to rehash all of this with you.
Comey did what many legal experts predicted he would do, three or four months earlier. That is a fact and it destroys your conspiracy theory.
His explanation of why he changed his characterization of Clinton's actions from "gross negligence" (which matched the wording of the statute) in the original drafts he wrote to "extreme carelessness," was interesting. He basically admitted gross negligence is the correct legal term to describe Clinton's actions and then admits he didn't use it because it matches the language in a "100 year old statute."
Comey's problem is (a) The statute is still on the books (b) the Head of the FBI is law enforcement, not a prosecutor or a Judge. He doesn't have the right to decide which criminal statutes get enforced and which don't. Comey exercised prosecutorial discretion in declining to press for charges, but refuses to admit that's what he did.
Sean , we went through this extensively at the time. There was very little precedent for indicting someone under Clinton's circumstances. There is article after article stating this from various people including law experts. And all this was BEFORE Comey made his announcement. To say that it was clear cut that she should have been indicted is little more than nonsense. Comey, who was an objective judge of the evidence , decided she should not be indicted, just as many other experts had decided that she should not be indicted. Case closed. The right wingers want to keep holding their breath and turning purple until a time machine comes along and can rewrite history. Good luck with that.
Comey did nothing unusual or suspicious when he declined to indict her. That is a fact.
The eminent legal scholar Laurence Tribe has claimed that trump has already committed obstruction of justice and should be impeached.
If Mueller fails to recommend an obstruction charge against Trump should we then conclude that Mueller took part in a pro Trump conspiracy?
Alan Dershowitz says Trump didn't obstruct anything:
"So, there’s nothing Trump could do in the Russia investigation that would be obstruction in your view."
"No. If he bribed somebody, if he told a witness to lie, if he destroyed evidence, if he committed an act not authorized by the Constitution, which constituted obstruction of justice, he could be charged with obstruction of justice. What you can’t do is take an act that’s constitutionally authorized and then psychoanalyze the president and try to figure out what his motives were."
That's too funny. Below you list 1 person who thinks Trump is going to get indicted for obstruction, but you can't name ANY of the "NUMEROUS" legal experts and news outfits.
Deleted as Off topic {SP}
Any comments about a member are always off topic.
Tribe : In my view, we have clearly passed that point, both as a technical matter under 18 USC 1505, 1512, and 1513, and, much more importantly, as a matter of what might be called the “common law” of presidential impeachment, as established principally by the House impeachment and Senate trial of Bill Clinton and by the articles of impeachment of Richard Nixon.
Tribe : That’s a clear instance of witness intimidation under 18 USC 1512-13 and obstruction of pending congressional proceedings under 18 USC 1505, given the obvious likelihood that Comey’s testimony about who convened the infamous White House dinner involving himself and the president and who said what to whom at that dinner will be needed and sought by the pertinent congressional committees. It also helps form part of the damning pattern of obstruction of justice of which President Trump has all but convicted himself.
An eminent legal scholar, at least as impressive as Andrew Mccarthy , has said that Trump should be charged with obstruction of justice and impeached. Now, if Mueller fails to charge Trump with obstruction of justice will that be evidence that Mueller is part of a conspiracy on behalf of Donald Trump?
The only person who cost Hillary the election was herself.
Exactly. Comey is only involved in the process because she set up a private server to evade legitimate oversight and told countless lies about it. Everything that happened is the result of her scheme to hide her communications from Congress.