Sara A. Carter
Former FBI Director James Comey couldn’t remember much during his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee. He only knew what he read recently in news reports, he said. He didn’t answer questions directly.
The hearing with Comey was finally called by Chairman of the Committee Sen. Lindsey Graham, of South Carolina. He had been promising this testimony since before he took over as Chairman of the Committee.
The hearing, Graham has said, was to gain clarity of the FBI’s decision making in the early days of the probe. Moreover, he said they would be questioning the inaccuracies in the bureau’s FISA court filings, the secret court that grants or denies the bureau warrants to spy on Americans. Years of investigations by journalists, like me and others, along with intensive Congressional hearings and document disclosures by the intelligence community has painted a dangerous picture of malfeasance and corruption in America’s bureaucracy.
The weaponization of the nation’s most trusted agencies and the warrants used to monitor a political opponent by Democrats violated the very rights our founding fathers established when the American republic was founded.
What happened to Carter Page, a Trump campaign volunteer, and what happened to President Donald Trump should never happen again. The FBI appears to have relied on false Russian disinformation planted in an ex British spy’s debunked dossier. Further, evidence sheds light on the fact that senior members of the FBI actually knew this all along.
Unsurprisingly, Lindsey Graham is willfully, brazenly, & cravenly misrepresenting the facts in today’s Senate Judiciary hearing with Jim Comey.
I am so looking forward to the day when Graham, Trump, & the rest of their ilk are no longer associated with the U.S. Government.
— John O. Brennan (@JohnBrennan) September 30, 2020
Yet, those who violated the law, like Comey and his many minions, have yet to pay a price for what they’ve done. They have yet to be held accountable by the Justice Department or anyone else for that matter. Instead, they thumb their noses at the American people and make millions on books, as contributors for cable news outlets and plan for a future they hope will end with former Vice President Joe Biden as President.
They continue to spew lies, as did Comey in today’s hearing, which in my opinion was nothing more than political theater. Although, thankfully some of the Senators for historical record asked the right questions.
The best outing of Comey’s memory failure came at the questioning by Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas. It wasn’t surprising to watch Comey try to dodge Cruz’s well thought out questions.
Its Comey’s own seemingly arrogant manner that makes him so obvious. It’s how he and the rest of Washington’s bureaucratic elites see themselves. They are special. Beyond reproach, they think. In fact, it drips off their skin like a cool sweat on a humid day and glistens so everyone can see and smell it.
At one point, Comey told Cruz he was unaware that the primary sub-source in the debunked dossier compiled by Steele was actually a suspected Russian agent. Meaning, the FBI’s best, used a document that not only didn’t have any evidence of proof but very well may have been Russian disinformation planted by an FSB agent for Moscow that the bureau had been monitoring.
“I don’t remember any information reaching me about the source for Steele,” answered Comey.
It’s laughable that his memory failed him because the newly declassified documents actually reveal that FBI’s Russia analysts knew from as early as Dec 2016, that the primary source for the Steele dossier was being monitored by the bureau since 2009.
The good men and women at the FBI and those who’ve retired know it’s a sham. They say Comey is a disgrace to the bureau and has sullied their name.
I was chatting with a former senior FBI official recently, who made that very point. He noted that Comey’s leadership led to a culture of corruption at the bureau. He said the ‘purposeful failure’ of the Justice Department to actually hold those former senior Obama officials accountable is ripping the foundation of our nation apart and infecting the bureaucracy for years to come.
Showtime’s new series on Comey is also a joke and not based on reality. Like Comey, the television mini-series has convenient amnesia and is creating an alternative history, picking and choosing what will support the lies being spewed.
What about the discovery by the DOJ’s Inspector General regarding the 27 cell phones that Robert Mueller’s Special Counsel prosecutors and FBI special agents either wiped clean or destroyed? How do you think the FBI would handle you if you wiped your technology clean during an investigation?
The FBI’s Washington Field Office under Comey and his once right hand man former fired FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe was riddled with corruption and most of what the public will never be aware of. Why? Because the bureau believes protecting their own is actually protecting the institution and the nation.
FBI Director Christopher Wray is a part of this cover-up and is doing more damage, in my opinion, to the nation than if he’d just hold those who broke the law accountable and cleaned out his agency. But I guess asking the FBI and the DOJ to do the right thing is too much.
Guess what? If you did anything near as bad as these former senior officials you’d be in jail. It’s just that simple.
They expect the American people to get exhausted of this story and move on but the sad truth is this story has no ending if people aren’t held accountable.
Americans fortunately won’t. I have faith that most people aren’t willing to allow this type of banana republic behavior to continue.
I think Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, said it best when he held Comey accountable and questioned his alleged inability to remember his own investigation into a Presidential candidate.
‘You don’t install a wasp’s nest in your child’s bedroom and then get surprised when your child is stung by wasps,” Lee said to Comey regarding the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act abuse that took place at the FBI and the authorization of those powers that will be coming up for a legislative vote. “You don’t install an ex parte process and then get surprised when it goes off the rails.”
There couldn’t be a more true statement.
In fact, Lee’s statement goes far beyond the FISA issue because the wasps are all over Washington D.C. The sting isn’t a small one, but a deadly one that is infecting and killing the future of our great Republic.
