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herding cats

(19,567 posts)
Fri Jun 9, 2017, 10:52 AM Jun 2017

Theres no indication Comey violated the law. Trump may be about to.

This article explains the legal issues Trump may be about to get himself into at the advice of his dimwitted, spelling challenged attorney.

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As the news broke, I was on the phone with Stephen Kohn, partner at a law firm focused on whistleblower protection. We’d been talking about where the boundaries lay for Comey in what he could and couldn’t do with the information about his conversations with the president. Kohn’s response to the story about Kasowitz, though, was visceral.

“Here is my position on that: Frivolous grandstanding,” he said. “First of all, I don’t believe the inspector general would have jurisdiction over Comey any more, because he’s no longer a federal employee.” The inspector general’s job is to investigate wrongdoing by employees of the Justice Department, of which Comey is no longer, thanks to Trump.

“But, second,” he continued, “initiating an investigation because you don’t like somebody’s testimony could be considered obstruction. And in the whistleblower context, it’s both evidence of retaliation and, under some laws, could be an adverse retaliatory act itself.”

In other words, Comey, here, is an employee who is blowing the whistle, to use the idiom, on his former boss. That boss wants to punish him for doing so. That’s problematic — especially if there’s no evidence that Comey actually violated any law that would trigger punishment.

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In a piece he wrote for The Post on Thursday, Kohn described a 2003 case involving Robert MacLean, an air marshal who was fired for leaking information about a Homeland Security Department decision. That case established a relevant precedent for the Comey question. The Supreme Court determined that the DHS rule prohibiting leaks was insufficient cause for firing in the whistleblower context, since it wasn’t a law. By extension, even if Trump tried to argue that Comey violated executive privilege, that, too, is not codified in law.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/news/politics/wp/2017/06/09/theres-no-indication-comey-violated-the-law-trump-may-be-about-to/

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Theres no indication Comey violated the law. Trump may be about to. (Original Post) herding cats Jun 2017 OP
Right !!! Leaking CLASSIFIED info outside of proper channels is against the law. Not what Comey did YCHDT Jun 2017 #1
Already posted. fleur-de-lisa Jun 2017 #2
There were no illegal leaks Gothmog Jun 2017 #3

YCHDT

(962 posts)
1. Right !!! Leaking CLASSIFIED info outside of proper channels is against the law. Not what Comey did
Fri Jun 9, 2017, 10:52 AM
Jun 2017

... leaking to the press is protected IIRC

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