Today they released the transcript of fired FBI chief James Comey's opening statement which the fired FBI chief will be delivering at tomorrow's intelligence committee hearings on capitol hill.
Dear readers, you must, you absolutely have to read this thing from beginning to end to understand the psychotic mindset of the individual who is currently in charge of the nation's nuclear codes.
The whole thing reads like a tawdry, dime-store mafia novel. It's completely fucking unfathomable that if James Comey is telling the truth, and since he will be under penalty of perjury for his testimony tomorrow, it stands to reason that he is - then it appears that America has the equivalent of a not quite as intellectually gifted Tony Soprano mob thug as it's leader.
Observe this extraordinary excerpt from Comey's prepared statement:
I felt compelled to document my first conversation with the President-Elect in a memo. To ensure accuracy, I began to type it on a laptop in an FBI vehicle outside Trump Tower the moment I walked out of the meeting. Creating written records immediately after one-on-one conversations with Mr. Trump was my practice from that point forward. This had not been my practice in the past. I spoke alone with President Obama twice in person (and never on the phone) – once in 2015 to discuss law enforcement policy issues and a second time, briefly, for him to say goodbye in late 2016. In neither of those circumstances did I memorialize the discussions. I can recall nine one-on-one conversations with President Trump in four months – three in person and six on the phone.
January 27 Dinner
The President and I had dinner on Friday, January 27 at 6:30 pm in the Green Room at the White House. He had called me at lunchtime that day and invited me to dinner that night, saying he was going to invite my whole family, but decided to have just me this time, with the whole family coming the next time. It was unclear from the conversation who else would be at the dinner, although I assumed there would be others.
It turned out to be just the two of us, seated at a small oval table in the center of the Green Room. Two Navy stewards waited on us, only entering the room to serve food and drinks.
The President began by asking me whether I wanted to stay on as FBI Director, which I found strange because he had already told me twice in earlier conversations that he hoped I would stay, and I had assured him that I intended to. He said that lots of people wanted my job and, given the abuse I had taken during the previous year, he would understand if I wanted to walk away.
My instincts told me that the one-on-one setting, and the pretense that this was our first discussion about my position, meant the dinner was, at least in part, an effort to have me ask for my job and create some sort of patronage relationship. That concerned me greatly, given the FBI’s traditionally independent status in the executive branch.
I replied that I loved my work and intended to stay and serve out my ten-year term as Director. And then, because the set-up made me uneasy, I added that I was not “reliable” in the way politicians use that word, but he could always count on me to tell him the truth. I added that I was not on anybody’s side politically and could not be counted on in the traditional political sense, a stance I said was in his best interest as the President.
A few moments later, the President said, “I need loyalty, I expect loyalty.” I didn’t move, speak, or change my facial expression in any way during the awkward silence that followed. We simply looked at each other in silence. The conversation then moved on, but he returned to the subject near the end of our dinner.
At one point, I explained why it was so important that the FBI and the Department of Justice be independent of the White House. I said it was a paradox: Throughout history, some Presidents have decided that because “problems” come from Justice, they should try to hold the Department close. But blurring those boundaries ultimately makes the problems worse by undermining public trust in the institutions and their work.
Near the end of our dinner, the President returned to the subject of my job, saying he was very glad I wanted to stay, adding that he had heard great things about me from Jim Mattis, Jeff Sessions, and many others. He then said, “I need loyalty.” I replied, “You will always get honesty from me.” He paused and then said, “That’s what I want, honest loyalty.” I paused, and then said, “You will get that from me.” As I wrote in the memo I created immediately after the dinner, it is possible we understood the phrase “honest loyalty” differently, but I decided it wouldn’t be productive to push it further. The term – honest loyalty – had helped end a very awkward conversation and my explanations had made clear what he should expect.
During the dinner, the President returned to the salacious material I had briefed him about on January 6, and, as he had done previously, expressed his disgust for the allegations and strongly denied them. He said he was considering ordering me to investigate the alleged incident to prove it didn’t happen. I replied that he should give that careful thought because it might create a narrative that we were investigating him personally, which we weren’t, and because it was very difficult to prove a negative. He said he would think about it and asked me to think about it.
As was my practice for conversations with President Trump, I wrote a detailed memo about the dinner immediately afterwards and shared it with the senior leadership team of the FBI.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/james-comey-testimony_us_59383bd8e4b00610547e9a95?az&ncid=inblnkushpmg00000009
Oh there's plenty more -- in fact, at one point in one of Comey's "awkward" meetings with Drumpf, the subject of "
hookers" is brought up, which would be Comey's reference to the "
salacious material" that he references in the above excerpt. But setting aside the intriguing hookers banter, the real story here is that James Comey is going to provide on-the-record, under penalty of perjury testimony which in essence confirms that Donald J. Trump attempted to obstruct an ongoing intelligence and possibly criminal investigation.
And it really does not look good for Drumpf that he was pressuring the FBI director in a private, one-on-one meeting to swear personal loyalty to him (like some mafioso chieftain) over dedication to honesty, the law and political independence.
Now -- The Gadfly is a fair-minded person dear readers and is content to wait for this whole Russian collusion affair to play out in it's entirety. But let's, for the sake of debate, pretend for a moment that The Gadfly is not a fair-minded person. What would The Gadfly's immediate response to this Comey statement be?
LOCK HIM UP! LOCK HIM UP! LOCK HIM UP! LOCK HIM UP! LOCK HIM UP!
Hey -- if it was good enough for Hillary Clinton and the handful of
allegedly mishandled classified emails, it sure as fuck is good enough for a corrupt, possibly traitorous president colluding with an enemy state to undermine the American electoral system and then obstruct law enforcement efforts to investigate said activities.
Tomorrow's Comey testimony should be a nice little powder keg combination of new revelations and clarifications of previously released public information.
And with Drumpf ensconced all alone in the White House shitter, door closed and locked with apoplectic aides outside pounding the door begging him to please stop, his fat little thumbs furiously
rage twittering away while Comey spills the beans -- oh lord it's going to make for one helluva popcorn fest . . .
via GIPHY
----TFG
