COMEY EXPOSES SELF AS BIASED, VENGEFUL, SOURCE OF LEAK

COMEY: REVEALS SELF AS VENGEFUL, BIASED, VINDICTIVE FBI DIRECTOR

We learned more about Mr. Comey during the infamous hearings yesterday (June 8, 2017) than about Mr. Trump, the Russians, or the faux charges of collusion the Democrats are hallucinating about to the exclusion of all else, these days.

Mr. Comey's smooth career-arc from his college days at William and Mary to his legal and political career in New York and  Washington and his rise to the pinnacle of power in Washington as the "seventh Director of the FBI" came to an abrupt flexion point in the last weeks, when this seeming huge, handsome man, who gives the appearance of a great leader was embarrassingly and summarily fired by President Trump.

Comey looks like the typical Washington bureaucrat.  Sure of himself and sure his is right.  The abrupt end of his career must have hit him very hard indeed.  His need to represent himself as forthright and honest--unlike all those he has so frequently claimed he is surrounded by in DC--led him to reveal many of his weaknesses that led to his demise.  His laser focus on self-advancement and his own job security over all-else, his partisanship, weaknesses, lack of good judgement, vindictiveness, and massive hubris all contributed to how he came to an end.  After this exposure in front of the Senate Committee and the Nation...he will sit a long time at home writing memos.

How a man with these traits reached the pinnacle of Director of the FBI tells a great deal about the decline of that organization and the process and procedures for advancement within the Obama Administration.

According to Mr. Comey's own testimony, while serving under President Barack Obama's Attorney General, Loretta Lynch, we learn that Ms. Lynch demanded that Comey refrain from using the perfectly accurate term "investigation" when referring in his official reports to the FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton's use and misuse of emails and a private server.  Ms Lynch directed Comey to use the term "matter" as a euphemism for the criminal investigation actually underway. She explained to him that this was in keeping with the candidate's own campaign usage. Mr. Comey uncomplainingly complied with this request and the overt political interference in the FBI's investigation.  Yet Mr. Comey testified that he was "anguished and upset" when confronted by Mr. Trump who made a relatively similar request when he suggested that Comey find a way to 'Let the Flynn thing go".  Neither one of these requests were up to "Comey's vaunted standards he claims to have set for himself and the FBI, but his radically different responses reveal how he let his bias against Mr. Trump color and control his actions.  His testimony revealed that of a political and partisan FBI Director. He deserved to be fired.

Comey also offered up the embarrassing fact that he leaked the contents of personal memos he penned to document the conversations he had with President Trump. He arranged for this leak revealing his intention was for the information to cause a political stir that would engender a call of a special investigator into the case.   He directed these government documents (he was still FBI director when they were written)  to the New York Times, via a close friend of his who was a Columbia University Professor.  Comey then lied about the motivation for this act---he claimed it was in response to the President's tweet about having "tapes".  But a time line of the events shows that the Times was using the contents of the memos a day before the President's tweet.  His motivation was purely vengeance for his firing.  The common and perhaps human reaction of a vengeful employee being summarily and embarrassingly terminated.

Mr. Comey referred to Mr. Trump's evaluation of the state of affairs at the FBI under Comey's direction and his style of administration as unsatisfactory.  The turbulent events during the 2016 campaign, when Comey first found "no reason" to indite Clinton in the face of massive evidence that she mishandled secret documents, and then soon, after reopened the investigation a few days before the election with what were universally characterized as drastic results for the Democrat candidate are only two examples.   These were job evaluations that many would agree with.  But they were not "lies"---a word which Comey bandied about at the hearing and were reported over and over again.   The only "lie" that occurred was that of Comey trying to give a good reason for his vengeful and illicit act of leaking government documents.