Admitting the Leak

Those of us who watched all of the testimony by former FBI Director James Comey in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee yesterday heard, well, what they wanted to hear.

Comey has a way about him, certainly, although it is a bit hard to tell what that "way" is, and how it affects his handle on reality and perception.  But as I said, everyone heard what they wanted to hear; I can assure you that the headlines yesterday afternoon on leftist Yahoo News online in no way resembled those on Fox News on TV.

That is not a surprise.  The whole Comey matter covers a bunch of potentially unrelated things.  We do know, for example, that the Russians tried to tamper with the 2016 election.  We know they failed, or at least find no evidence of any such changing of even one vote as a result of what they did, even after months of crack investigation.

Then there is General Mike Flynn, who did talk to a Russian last year and then at some point lied about it and got fired, and then became the subject of an investigation himself, although "of what" it still isn't clear; it is perfectly legal to talk to Russians, although it is not legal to lie under oath about it.  No one has a shred of evidence or even an indication that the subject of their discussion had anything to do with the election.  So that's completely different and likely unrelated.

Of course, from the perspective of the Democrats on the committee, it was a third issue, all about whether President Trump had ordered Comey to drop the investigation into Gen. Flynn or just, as Comey admitted, told him that he "hoped" the investigation would be dropped or otherwise disposed of.  Comey certainly didn't help their case, although they will simply lie about what he said in their normal manner.

Note -- it doesn't matter; as confirmed by Alan Dershowitz, the leftist Harvard law professor and scholar, President Trump could have told Comey to drop the Flynn investigation, as he is allowed to under the Constitution and the rights of the President.  No obstruction would be involved.

But for me, I heard a couple things.  First, there was the admission by Comey that former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, she of the participation in obstruction of justice by the former president, Bill Clinton, by meeting with him on the tarmac of an Arizona airport while his wife was under investigation by the FBI, had "tampered" with Comey.  L'affaire Hillary was to be called a "matter", not an investigation, quoth the AG.  Not a peep from Comey at the time.  He made a mental note.

Nothing will ever come of that, although Mrs. Lynch needs her butt hauled up before the selfsame committee to explain why she had to tell the FBI Director how he was supposed to refer to an investigation.  I want to see that -- heck, I absolutely demand that the Committee do that.  Get her up there to explain.  That one really stinks.

But the other thing Comey said was really, really troubling.  He had, as we all know, taken notes after the meeting with President Trump, where he was told the president "hoped" that the investigation into Flynn would go away, that the general was a "good man."

Whom, Comey was asked, did he tell about those notes?  Well, as it turned out, around the day after he was fired, Comey contacted a law professor friend at Columbia University, told him about what was in the notes and asked him to get that information to the press.

We call that a "leak."

Well, I was bothered a lot.  I am bothered by the fact that the first instinct of a senior Federal official is to leak information to the press.

You get what I'm saying?  Right now we have a huge problem with leftover Obama people leaking sensitive and classified material and information from the Intelligence Community out to the press, for political purposes.  We have Obama changing the rules about the unmasking of USA citizens during wiretaps of foreign conversations, right before he left office, and lots of unmasking going on immediately and leaks of that information by Obama leftovers since.

And now we know, unapologetically, that the now-fired FBI Director's first act was to go leak damaging information, or potentially damaging information, to the press so as to hurt the president who just fired him.

Lordy, do we need to clean house.  We need Federal officials who understand, first, what "classified" means, and second, that the press needs to be on their own as far as gathering information; they don't need help.  If you're a senior official in the Administration and you leak information to the press that has no business being leaked, you need to be fired on the spot.

It is beyond distressing that James Comey was no better than that.

Copyright 2017 by Robert Sutton
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