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Something to hide?

Justice Department won't allow FBI agents to testify before Senate about Russia probe



This is the Trump Justice Department of course, but it's Robert Mueller who's making these calls under the auspices of his independent counsel investigation of the Russia thing, as if there was a thing. This is one of the reasons you don't appoint independent counsels. They take their independence to mean they don't have to answer any questions or submit to any accountability over the nature of their investigations. They can expand the scope as much as they like, whenever they like. They can impanel a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich if they want.
And if the Senate Judiciary Committee wants to ask questions about the investigation, hey, thanks but no thanks:
The Justice Department says it will not permit two FBI officials close to fired director James Comey to appear privately before a congressional committee investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. The Senate Judiciary Committee had asked in July to interview the two officials, Jim Rybicki and Carl Ghattas, and then agreed to narrow the scope of questioning after the Justice Department initially declined to make the men available. But in a letter this week obtained by The Associated Press, the Justice Department said it would still not permit the officials to be questioned in order to “protect the integrity” of the investigation being done by special counsel Robert Mueller. Assistant Attorney General Stephen Boyd said in the letter that the overlapping areas of the committee’s investigation and Mueller’s probe had not yet been sorted out, or “de-conflicted.” Ghattas is the head of the FBI’s national security branch and Rybicki served as chief of staff to Comey, who was fired in May by President Donald Trump. Comey has said those men were among the FBI officials with whom he shared concerns about Trump’s behavior toward him, in the weeks before he was fired.

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The Justice Department’s refusal to make Ghattas and Rybicki available is an indication that Mueller, who is leading the Justice Department’s investigation into potential ties between Russia and the Trump campaign, sees them as relevant witnesses to the events leading up to Comey’s firing. Comey has said Trump asked him to end an investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn and had also asked him over dinner to pledge his loyalty to him. The July 27 refusal letter from the department, which CNN was first to report on, cites the department’s “long-standing policy regarding the confidentiality and sensitivity of information relating to pending matters.”
Comey's firing was well within President Trump's authority, and the reasons he gave for it were factual and easily defensible. The left and the media have insisted ever since that Trump secretly harbored other motivations, which mainly had to do with putting a stop to the Russia probe. That would actually be a very good thing to do, since the Russia probe is a ridiculous and politically driven waste of time. But how exactly do you go about proving that an action taken by a president, well within the authority of that president and for cited reasons that can be factually supported, was actuually driven by some other motivation? Apparently Mueller hopes those who were close to Comey can help him make this case by sharing things Comey told them at the time, but wouldn't that still only be Comey's opinion of why the big boss didn't like him and wanted him gone? These would be good questions to hear these people have to answer before the Senate Judiciary Committee. But that would get in the way of Mueller doing whatever he wants to do, so that is not going to happen.


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Dan Calabrese -- Bio and Archives

Dan Calabrese’s column is distributed by HermanCain.com, which can be found at HermanCain

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