By Dan Calabrese ——Bio and Archives--March 21, 2017
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Rep. Gowdy: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Director Comey, you and I were discussing the felonious dissemination of classified material during the last round. Is there an exception in the law for current or former U.S. officials who request anonymity? Director Comey: To release classified information? Gowdy: Yes, sir. Comey: No. Gowdy: Is there an exception in the law for reporters who want to break a story? Comey: Well, that's a harder question, as to whether a reporter incurs criminal liability by publishing classified information, and one probably beyond my ken. I'm not as good a lawyer as Mr. Schiff said I used to be. Gowdy: Well, I don't know about that, but the statute does use the word publish, doesn't it? Comey: It does, but that's a question I know the Department of Justice has struggled with through administration after administration. Gowdy: I know the department struggled with it, the fourth circuit struggled with it, lots of people struggled with it, but you're not aware of an exception in the current dissemination of classified information statute that carves out an exception for reporters? Comey: No, I'm not aware of anything carved out in the statute. I don't think a reporter's been prosecuted, certainly in my lifetime, no. Gowdy: Well, there have been a lot of statutes at bar in this investigation for which no one's ever been prosecuted or convicted, and that does not keep people from discussing those statutes, namely, the Logan Act. In theory, how would reporters know a U.S. citizen made a telephone call to an agent of a foreign power? Comey: How would they know legally? Gowdy: Yes. Comey: If it was declassified and then discussed in a judicial proceeding or a congressional hearing, something like that. Gowdy: And assume none of those facts are at play, how would they know? Comey: Someone told them who shouldn't have told them.
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“I've read a whole lot of stuff, especially in the last two months, that's just wrong,” Comey said. “But I can't say which is wrong.” Why not? “We'll give information to our adversaries that way,” he said. Also: “We can't because where do you stop on that slope? 'Cause then, when I don't call the New York Times and say, 'You got that one wrong,' bingo; they got that one right. So it's just an enormously complicated endeavor for us. We have to stay clear of it entirely.” Comey was responding to questions from Rep. Michael R. Turner (R-Ohio), who expressed his own frustration at reading news reports, based on unnamed government individuals, that he said he knows to be flawed. “What is the obligation of the intelligence community to correct such falsehoods?” Turner asked. “We not only have no obligation to correct that; we can't,” Comey replied. “It's very, very frustrating,” he added, “but we can't start down that road.” This “enormously complicated endeavor” is not just a hypothetical one. The White House last month asked Comey's agency to publicly shoot down a New York Times report about contact between Donald Trump campaign aides and Russian intelligence officials. The FBI refused.Comey went on to explain that many of these anonymous sources don't know as much as they think they know, describe them as several levels removed from direct access to the real information, but either convinced they know what's going on or wanting to appear that they do. This matters a lot because when you hear that the FBI declined to cast aspersions on something in the New York Times or the Washington Post, you might interpret that as a tacit confirmation. It's not. Comey makes it clear here that all kinds of stuff our there is utter nonsense, but if the FBI knocks down everything it knows not to be true, then its silence on other matters will indeed amount to a tacit confirmation, which would help the Russians an awful lot more than the left wants you to think Trump is doing. Here's why all this matters in the context of this Russia investigation, and why Trump is absolutely right to keep bringing it up: The only reason you're convinced there's a Trump/Russia connection is that anonymous sources fed things to the media that suggested this was the case. The FBI director himself comes right out and admits that anonymous leaks from inside the government are usually unreliable. Oh, by the way, they're also illegal. As the exchange up top between Comey and Gowdy establishes, there was no declassifying of any of this information, which means that at least the leaker (and arguably the recipient who reported it, if you read the statute as written) is guilty of a felony. That's the crime we know was committed, and in fact, is committed with startling regularity by people in our government. But since the beneficiaries of this crime are members of the press, they are never going to report it as a negative thing. They're going to focus on what Donald Trump may or may not have done based on the say-so of an anonymous felon. And if this investigation turns up nothing, how much of a price will the media pay for having become so invested in this narrative - especially when they collaborated with felons to create it in the first place? Whatever the price is, it can't be high enough.
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