Special Counsel Tag Team, James Comey and Robert Mueller

Former U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (F.B.I.) Directors James Comey and Robert Mueller have a tag-team history in the arena of Special Prosecutor-led investigations. Their past performance in that venue was duplicitous. Comey and Mueller teamed up in a 2003-2007 bout held in the Plamegate arena. Back then, Mueller was Director of the F.B.I. and Comey was U.S. Acting Attorney General.

Comey-Mueller Tag Team in the Plamegate 2003-2007

On December 30, 2003, Comey appointed his close friend, then U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, as Special Counsel to find who leaked Valerie Plame's identity, as an employee of the Central Intelligence Agency, to now-deceased Washington D.C. columnist Robert Novak.

Over the next twenty-two months and $2.58 million in expenses, the Plamegate investigation dominated the U.S. news cycle with a blow-by-blow account of the action to find, prosecute, and punish the leaker. It began to end on October 28, 2005, when Fitzgerald brought a five-count indictment of false statements, perjury, and obstruction of justice against Lewis "Scooter" Libby, then U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney's Chief of Staff. The Libby trial concluded in March 2007. Looking back, Plamegate qualifies as a long, media-driven, puppet show that captured viewers' attention and diverted it away from other events at the time. One big event underway then involved a large pile of U.S. money dropped into Iraq by the Iraq Relief and Reconstruction Fund (IRRF). The Fund was established by the U.S. Congress on November 6, 2003, with an initial allocation of $18.4 billion. But that was just a down payment. According to a 2014 CNBC article, "Government auditors say some $61 billion was spent on reconstruction projects in Iraq from 2003 to 2012. At least 10 percent of the money cannot be accounted for. Some 15 percent of the money spent, or roughly $8 billion, was wasted." Wars are expensive, and in their smoke money can disappear. It did in Iraq. And much of it remains missing. What also went up in smoke was the alleged purpose of the Special Counsel's investigation--to catch a leaker.

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"Scooter" Libby was eventually caught, but he was not the leaker. His crime was to entangle himself in a process infraction related to the F.B.I. investigative procedures, but unrelated to the criminal act of leaking Valerie Plame's C.I.A. affiliation. When "Scooter" was being investigated, the real leaker was already known to the F.B.I and the Department of Justice, and had been known since at least as early as October 2, 2003--three months before a Special Counsel was appointed to find the leaker. So before the Special Counsel had even opened an office, the leaker confessed. The story of his confession was told in a September 3, 2006 article entitled "The Man Who Knew Too Much," written by Newsweek's Michael Isikoff. In brief, here's the chronology of key events: Early October 1, 2003: An "agitated" Under Secretary of State Richard Armitage calls his boss, Secretary of State Colin Powell, to say he just realized he had inadvertently leaked Valerie Plame's C.I.A. employment to Novak. By then, the Department of Justice was looking into the leak. That morning the big wheels at the State Department spun-up, quickly. Later October 1, 2003: "Within hours, William Howard Taft IV, the State Department's legal adviser, notified a senior Justice official that Armitage had information relevant to the case," wrote Isikoff. October 2, 2003: According to Isikoff, a "team of FBI agents and Justice prosecutors investigating the leak questioned the deputy secretary." In May 2015, an investigative reporter for a Chicago-based website interviewed Taft concerning that October 2, 2003, meeting Taft attended at F.B.I. Headquarters along with Richard Armitage and Colin Powell. According to Taft, in that meeting "Rich" Armitage confessed to the F.B.I. that he was Novak's source for the Valerie Plame story. Taft also said that the F.B.I. asked him, Armitage, and Powell to not disclose the information--that Armitage was the leaker--to anyone. Taft said he, Armitage, and Powell all agreed to that request, even though they were under no obligation to comply.

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Three months later... December 30, 2003: Comey appoints then U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald as Special Counsel to find who leaked Valerie Plame's identity to Novak. And, with that appointment, the Special Counsel's time-and-money clock started rolling. Then, in... February 2004: "Acting Attorney General Comey clarified Special Counsel Fitzgerald's delegation of authority to state that the authority previously delegated to him is plenary. It also states, ‘Further, my conferral on you of the title of Special Counsel in this matter should not be misunderstood to suggest that your position and authorities are defined and limited by 28 CFR Part 600.'" In short, Comey gave Fitzgerald the green light to take the investigation wherever it led; it led to "Scooter" Libby. Finally, Armitage publicly speaks... September 23, 2006: According to a September 2006 CBS article, as the investigation unfolded, "Armitage says he didn't come forward because ‘the special counsel, once he was appointed, asked me not to discuss this and I honored his request.'" So, newly appointed Special Counsel Fitzgerald joined the F.B.I. (then headed by Robert Mueller), the Department of Justice (Acting A.G. Comey), and the Department of State's legal advisor (Taft) in colluding to keep secret Armitage's role as the Plamegate leaker. And that secret was kept until 2006 when Armitage asked Fitzgerald if he could go public with his role in Plamegate, and Fitzgerald approved his request. Looking back today, the covert protocol of the Comey-Mueller Tag Team's Plamegate Investigation was:

1. Appoint a Special Counsel for investigative purpose, other than those publicly stated, with an open-ended tenure.
2. Sanction the Special Counsel to explore matters beyond the stated scope of the inquiry in search of targets of prosecutorial opportunity.
3. End the investigation with a process crime prosecution, even though the infraction is not directly related to the initiating complaint, nor punishes someone who was complicit in that crime.

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Comey-Mueller Tag Team in Trump-Russiagate 2017

Recently, Comey and Mueller reunited in a second Special Counsel event, with different roles. This time, Mueller is the Special Prosecutor, and, before being fired, Comey was cast as the F.B.I. Director. Just as former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft recused himself from Plamegate, Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from any investigation into Trump-Russiagate. The wisdom and consequences of Sessions' decision are yet to be determined. The purpose the Trump-Russiagate Special Counsel is not clear. Stated generally, the goal is to explore the nature of Russian interference in the last U.S. Presidential election. But if left to roam widely, the exercise will, like Plamegate, suck-up the oxygen in the media news cycle and divert attention away from other, potentially-criminal aspects of the 2016 election--including, but not limited to: money and email matters related to the Clintons; the unsolved murder of Seth Rich; and documents stored on Anthony Weiner's (AKA: Carlos Danger) laptop. Although he is no longer involved, Comey gave us a hint to his motive in dealing with President Trump in his highlighted statement below from testimony before the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee on June 8, 2017.

SENATOR SUSAN COLLINS: Okay. You mentioned that from your very first meeting with the president, you decided to write a memo memorializing the conversation. What was it about that very first meeting that made you write a memo when you have not done that with two previous presidents?

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JAMES COMEY: As I said, a combination of things. A gut feeling is an important overlay, but the circumstances, that I was alone, the subject matter and the nature of the person I was interacting with and my read of that person. Yeah, and really just gut feel, laying on top of all of that, that this is going to be important to protect this organization, that I make records of this. COLLINS: Finally, did you show copies of your memos to anyone outside of the department of justice? COMEY: Yes. COLLINS: And to whom did you show copies? COMEY: I asked--the president tweeted on Friday after I got fired that I better hope there's not tapes. I woke up in the middle of the night on Monday night because it didn't dawn on me originally, that there might be corroboration for our conversation. There might a tape. My judgment was, I need to get that out into the public square. I asked a friend of mine to share the content of the memo with a reporter. Didn't do it myself for a variety of reasons. I asked him to because I thought that might prompt the appointment of a special counsel. I asked a close friend to do it. And, the unstated deep purpose of this upcoming Special Counsel investigation may be revealed in another highlighted sentence in Comey's testimony.

SENATOR RICHARD BURR: Director, is it possible that, as part of this FBI investigation, the FBI could find evidence of criminality that is not tied to the 2016 elections, possible collusion, or coordination with Russians? JAMES COMEY: Sure. BURR: So there could be something that fits a criminal aspect to this that doesn't have anything to do with the 2016 election cycle? COMEY: Correct, in any complex investigation, when you start turning over rocks, sometimes you find things that are unrelated to the primary investigation that are criminal in nature.

The purpose of the Trump-Russiagate Special Counsel could be to empower a Special Counsel to hunt for scalps in the Trump administration, including Trump's own. If so, Mueller has a double-O-seven license to hunt on the Trump Administration reserve in an exercise that will, with the cooperation of the liberal American media, deploy distortion, distraction and disinformation--the classic elements of psychological, political warfare. With Plamegate as a timeline model, the puppet show could last until the U.S. mid-term elections in 2018, or beyond.