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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsJosh Marshall (TPM): Thoughts on Comey's Testimony
Thoughts on Comey's Testimony (from Josh Marshall editor's Blog)He starts thusly:
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First, for all the build-up, for all the drama, it was perhaps somewhat less earth-shattering than some imagined. I think that was largely because Comey covered most of the key points in his prepared testimony. That storm hit yesterday afternoon, dissipating some of todays drama.
One key takeaway emerges in both the written statement and todays Q&A: from close to the beginning, Comey believed President Trump was untrustworthy, a bad actor. True or not, that was there in really everything he said, every assumption, every decision he describes making. One can certainly interpret his remarks to mean that he thought Trump was a liar. (I was honestly concerned that he might lie about the nature of our meeting, so I thought it important to document.) This comes out just in the fullness of everything Comey said: the immediate decision to start keeping detailed notes, the entirety of the way he described the President, his descriptions of his own reactions in the moment when dealing with the President. They all paint a picture of Trump as dishonest, scheming and predatory. That is Comeys take and he went out of his way to make that clear. Perhaps the most noteworthy example of this though not the only one was going into some depth about how hed never felt the need to make a contemporaneous record of his dealings with either former President hed dealt with one Democrat and one Republican. Wed heard that Comey is a consummate note taker, recording virtually every consequential discussion he has. Apparently not. When it comes to meetings with major political leaders and presidents, this was only for Trump.
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There is a lot more before he ends with...
Josh's last paragraph summarizes things very well:
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At the end of the day, I think it all confirmed what we should know. Huge and far ranging cover-ups dont happen for no reason. Almost invariably they occur because of major wrongdoing. Its the cover-up not the crime as Ive said, thats almost always wrong. You cover up because you may get away with it and you cant afford the crime to become fully known. Usually cover-ups work, at least in part. What I think we have here is some major wrongdoing, possibly of various different sorts. That is matched by a President who acts as though the government is something like his own possession, his own company. He acts like it. His lawyer talks like it. Whatever the nature of the original bad acts which I am assuming occurred based on a lot of information but which we do not know with certainty the President has managed to stumble into a massive scandal with almost unbelievable speed. As was really clear throughout the campaign, he is predatory, bad-acting and impulsive and even self-destructive in a way that compounds and in some respects makes less effective the underlying malignant behavior. He and his lawyer are in way over their heads and will cause untold damage before this is done, however it ends.
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Highly recommended click through. A fairly great summary of what happened yesterday, and what didn't.
BTW, if DUers are not clicking to Josh Marshall's Editor's Blog daily, they may be missing important and intelligent discussion.
MUCH MORE AT LINK!
Achilleaze
(15,543 posts)this is an accurate description of the 2017 republican "family-values" role model: Comrade 'Two-scoops' Casino, the freaking republican Draft-Dodger-in-Chief and the worshiped example for all the young children growing up in republican households.
deplorable.
bucolic_frolic
(43,281 posts)IC and LE know. A lifetime of documents.
"dishonest, scheming and predatory"?
Really? lol
Hortensis
(58,785 posts)surprise to any intelligent person.
It's no surprise to Comey and others in the party either. Rump is disordered and could no more avoid behaving the way he always has than he could start understanding the ethics involved.
They all had to have been expecting Rump to continue shooting himself in both feet after he was sworn in.
I mention this because we now know Comey is also a major wrongdoer. He was watching Russia's efforts to affect the election since 2015, by his own admission. Comey watched two Russian intelligence services run free in the DNC computer system in 2016 while never informing the DNC leadership that it was happening. He used his position to make three highly inflammatory statements against Hillary, each of which his peers considered shocking breeches of professional ethics and she believes threw the election to Rump. Also right before the election the FBI even gratuitously informed the nation that it was closing a 15-year-old investigation into Bill Clinton's pardon of a businessman. The people need to know, right?
That's only what we KNOW Comey did to subvert our election.
All a way of saying, Comey betrayed his nation, is a player in subversion of the election, and is not to be trusted. Not his memo, not anything.
7962
(11,841 posts)Your post was alerted on as "spreading right wing propaganda"!!!
Yep. I'm still looking for it too.
Hard to believe how insulated some wish to live their lives.
Hortensis
(58,785 posts)That's bizarre.
To whomever alerted: Comey is a conservative and was a registered Republican for decades--until he decided to present himself as "resolutely apolitical." But in fact Comey has a history of immoral and unethical behavior toward the Clintons. There's a whole network of connections between Louis Freeh's FBI and the filthy Arkansas Project people decades ago, funded by nutso Pennsylvania billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife to take down Governor and then President Bill Clinton. Comey worked for at least two years under Freeh and for the Senate Whitewater committee trying to find reason to indict Clinton, but failed. According to some who were also there, that didn't keep him from urging them to push for prosecution anyway.
Next time you think of Clinton haters and their eager demands to "lock her up," just because, Comey should come to mind.
Cosmocat
(14,572 posts)He MIGHT have a small portion of integrity that hasn't been sucked out if his soul, but even if it makes him look special in the year 2017, hes still a pos.
YCHDT
(962 posts)... the enemy of America's enemy
YOHABLO
(7,358 posts)He's a mafia boss, not a President.