The Comey/Mueller Tag Team

In a prior column, I pointed out how strange it was that Robert Mueller, the former FBI director, was leading the investigation of the Trump administration for its alleged collusion with Russia to hack and steal the 2016 election from Hillary Clinton. Mueller was appointed to lead the investigation even though one of the main witnesses in this investigation happen to be his protégé, James Comey, who was also Mueller’s successor at the FBI. Comey — it should be obvious — has a vested interest in embarrassing or harming Donald Trump, the man who fired him. I didn’t think things could get weirder, or more unsavory, but somehow, they have. James Comey was called to testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee on this very subject. As an aside, it sure is funny how the Democrat minority still seems to direct the agenda of the U.S. Senate committees and Congress itself. There is currently no investigation of the alleged Obama surveillance of the Trump campaign, and possibly other conservative/Republican partisan targets, in the Senate, but there is an investigation of the “Russia hacking scandal” in both houses.

Anyway, when asked by a U.S. senator whether he shared the memos he wrote about his conversations with President Trump with anyone outside the Department of Justice, James Comey answered: “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 – but I asked him to, because I thought that might prompt the appointment of a special counsel.” So, after getting fired by Trump, James Comey leaked FBI property, thereby violating the law, in the hopes of getting a special prosecutor/counsel appointed. And this indeed is what happened, with the person selected being Comey’s old mentor. And no one has a problem with that? Then more information came out providing additional evidence of Comey’s (likely) intense dislike of President Trump. In an excellent column by Andrew C. McCarthy, the former federal prosecutor exposed how Comey had essentially “trolled” the president regarding the FBI investigation he was leading. Twice, Comey privately assured Trump that the FBI investigation was not focused on him (Trump). Oddly, on March 20, the FBI director announced publicly that there was an ongoing FBI counterintelligence investigation focused on the Trump campaign’s suspected collusion with Russia, and that criminal prosecutions were a possibility. However, in contrast to his private actions, at the press conference Comey did not publicly exonerate the president. As McCarthy, a friendly Comey acquaintance, pointed out, refusing to announce that Trump was not the focus of the investigation would almost surely lead the ordinary members of the public observing the presser to believe the president was a possible target of the investigation. When Trump objected to this strangeness, a very normal response, Comey refused to correct the record, claiming that doing so would violate proper Justice Department procedure. This too was strange, since it was against procedure for Comey to make the March 20 statement in the first place.

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Also, recent reporting has exposed that Mueller may be stacking the deck on his investigatory team. The attorneys he has hired have histories of donating to Democratic politicians, including former President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Another one also represented the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation. As former Speaker Newt Gingrich, admittedly a strong Trump supporter, has said, “I’ve been very clear about the fact that Mueller, hiring four Democrats… He apparently couldn’t find a single pro-Trump attorney to hire, and I just think that that’s a rigged game. I think that it’s a mistake to pretend that this is going to be some neutral investigation.” One more thing – originally, the Mueller investigation was solely an intelligence investigation; but it has now grown to include criminal elements as well, involving the case against former National Security Advisor Mike Flynn. So now Mueller has the ability to use criminal charges against recalcitrant witnesses. Once again, none of this will end well for President Trump.